Digital Scrapbooking 101 BLOG

Finding Inspiration

Posted on January 8th, 2008 by wwaddell.
Categories: Scrapbook Articles, Scrapbook Tips, Training.

Finding Inspiration

By Wes Waddell

With every scrapbook you will be able to create a lot of really great pages.  You may, however, at times find that it gets harder as you try to create a number of pages that go together.  Sometimes, you may not be able to place the pictures on the page in a graceful and symmetric way…  you feel that you are just in a rut.

When this happens, where do you go for inspiration?

Inspiration is everywhere and all around the world.  Turn on the television to check out the travel new or your favorite celebrity’s latest fashion.  This may lead you to a new color scheme for one of your pages.  You will certainly want to check out the current issue of your favorite scrapbook magazine and try to mimic a great idea or photo along with the written title words.  Billboards, advertisements, movie posters, and simply the scenes of your neighborhood can all become sources of inspiration if you look at the world with a scrapbooking eye.

Your favorite digital scrapbooking membership site it a wonderful source for ideas and scrapbook layout templates.

However, pictures are not just the only thing that will inspire you for a new page idea.  You will have plenty of words and feelings to help you along the way.  A funny or moving quote can be used on a page as an embellishment, or perhaps a catchy phrase can become the theme and title of your new scrapbook page layout.  You may just need to break out from the visual arts completely and try to find inspiration in quieter places.  Some of my best page ideas come to me when I’m doing something totally unrelated to digital scrapbook layout design, such as reading.  Take a break and walk away from your scrapbooking space when this happens.  If you were to just change your scenery, you will be able to learn to motivate yourself and create true memorable scrapbook pages.

Friends can be a perfect source of inspiration as well.  You will also want to ask for advice on any layouts and see examples of their hardbound scrapbooks to help you to find your muse of inspiration.  Ask for advice on your latest digital scrapbook layout or, if they hand scrapbook as well, browse through some of their home made scrapbook albums.  You don’t necessarily want to copy their ideas exactly, although you can, you will generally want to take some of the elements of their old fashioned scrapbook and use it to generate new ideas that you can mix together and make a whole different design of your own.  You can also achieve this by browsing through scrap booking and memory maker publications such as magazines, books and online scrapbook memberships.  Again, you don’t have to create exactly what you see, but the mark of a good designer is the ability to make a style or technique his or her own.

As for the best source of inspiration, you should think about the pictures all by themselves.  You may want to pull designs and colors from the picture scenery and backgrounds.  You may also want to use the pictures themselves as the digital scrapbook background or to help you to determine the layout and what your options are pertaining to the layouts.

Most of all… You will want to learn how to use your subjects to inspire you to do better.  You will want to stop, look around and “feel the memory” because the best inspiration of all comes not from what you see in the world, but what you felt when the memory was originally created.

Happy Scrappin’

Kathy and Wes

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