Have you ever been browsing through socials or a scrap gallery and just fell in love with someone’s layout and thought to yourself, “Wow, what a beautiful layout! Look at that clustering! I can’t scrap like that!” I’m here to tell you, yes you can! Today I am going to give you some tips for creating gorgeous floral clusters.

Use a template. Sounds very obvious right? But seriously, use a template. There are tons of talented template designers out there that have already done the work for you. Templates are great because they take the guesswork out of making your clusters. They show you placement of elements even down to what size element to use. And guess what? They are also fully customizable. If you think there is too much stuff, take some away. Want more of something, add more. And don’t forget, you can flip them and rotate them too. This is why I think for a newbie, a template is the way to go.

For this layout I used a template from Fiddle Dee Dee called All Fir You as well as Traci’s newest release Plot Twist. I kept my layout pretty true to the template but there were some personal touches added.

I love buttons. They are a fun element that can be used to kick your florals up a notch. I often use them to replace the centers of flowers. This creates a little more variation if similar flowers are in a collection. I also will stack buttons of different colors on top of each other. This can also be seen in this layout on the yellow and purple yo-yos as well as the yellow flowers. I will also add bows to some of the button stacks.

Now what if you don’t really want to use a template? Think of a top view of a flower bouquet. Not all the flowers are the same height. That’s why shadows are so important . Sometimes I will even duplicate an element on top of itself shadowing both to create more depth.

Odd numbers of flowers generally look better than even numbers of flowers. Try to use odd numbers of blooms. Be sure to surround these blooms with some sort of foliage. Doesn’t matter what kind, just something. Green leaves, autumn leaves, or some pine needles will elevate your cluster and give it a finished look.

Symmetry is another great way to create a cluster. I use this technique when I want to surround my photo or focal point with a cluster. This is the technique I used in my second layout. I used Traci’s Routines collection. I did not use a template. If you look closely you can see the cluster to the left of the typewriter is exactly the same, but a mirror image to, the cluster to the right of it. When using this technique, sometimes I will also extend the cluster across the bottom of the focal point which creates a pocket for it to rest in. I opted this time to just use the word strip instead of a garland of flowers.

I incorporated stickers into my clusters in both of my layouts above, but used them in completely different ways. In layout one, I left the sticker as is leaving the stroke around the flowers. They can easily be seen on the layout. In this case they work well with the stroked word arts that I used on the page. For the second layout I removed the strokes from all of the stickers that I incorporated into my clusters as well as the doodled flowers behind the typewriter. This can be easily done using the Magic Eraser Tool in Photoshop Elements. I did this because it gave my clusters a more cohesive look. This is probably one of the reasons why I love digital scrapbooking. Things are easily customizable.

My final tip for creating floral clusters is scrap lift them. Go look through Pinterest, blog posts, digishop galleries and find layouts that you like. See how others make their clusters. Honestly this was one of the things I did early on when I first started digital scrapbooking. I had the worst time making floral clusters on my layouts. I would go through galleries and look for samples and lift them.

Hope these tips were helpful. Soon you will be creating beautiful clusters on your layouts like a pro! Until next time, happy scrapping.

Story Foundations: Plot Twists

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