3 Tips for Maximizing your Layers with Danica
Milestones deserve to be celebrated. Whether it is a graduation, promotion, or a birthday, we all get our cameras or phones out to snap photos of the event. And as scrapbookers and memory keepers we will come home and document that event. But sometimes a simple layout just will not do. In this post I am going to share some tips to create a layout worth celebrating!
For my layout I used Traci’s newest release Milestones and a template from Brooke Magee. The photo is of my sister Susan’s birthday dinner, and it is one of my favorites of her. The first layout came together quickly by just following the template itself. It looks complete but the energy of that photo needs to be matched, don’t you think?
Layer It Up
The first way to kick that layout up a notch is to add more dimension. I varied the depth of some of the shadows of the background layers. I also popped the title making the original stroke around it on its own layer. I covered how to do this in depth in my tutorial “Creating Dimensional Elements From Stickers in Photoshop Elements” here on the blog. If you are a hybrid scrapper, these looks can easily be achieved by using pop dots of different dimensions.
Make Pretty Piles
I’m sure you have heard of the saying “Less is More,” well sometimes more is better. In the second layout I added non floral elements to my clusters like the party hat and word arts. Another technique I like to use to dress up my floral clusters is to add buttons (and sometimes bows) to the centers of some of the flowers. It is an amazingly simple and easy thing to do with lots of impact.
Sparkle & Shine
What would a celebration be without some sparkle? In Traci’s Milestones collection, she has many glittered elements included. I was able to add those to my floral clusters. I also scattered some of her glittered stars (which I extracted from the star garland) throughout my layout. If you have Photoshop Elements an easy way to add some sparkle to your page is with actions or styles. Mommyish has some glitter styles that I use regularly on my layouts. In this layout I used glitter styles on my title as well as the photo mat. For hybrid pages, there are commercially available products that you can paint on your elements or papers to add some sparkle to them.
I hope that you will be able to incorporate the tips that I have suggested above to take your layouts to the next level! Until next time, happy scrapping!
