Tone on Tone: Creating a Simple Layout using Tonal Colors with Vanessa

Tone of tone layouts focus on using one color in a variety of hues. For our project today we are going to use the new Story Foundations collection. The Story Foundations collection is a great choice for this type of layout because it features several colors in different hues namely the blue and orange colors. I chose to go with the orange tones for my layout today along with pulling in some of the black and white neutral elements found in the collection.

One trick I like to use with working with tone-on-tone color schemes is to use a cut file or a repeating shape for the background. To create the background for this layout I used my silhouette and a cut file of a petal shaped quilting pattern. I pulled all the orange patterns and solid papers from the collection and cut several petals from each pattern. With my petals cut I inked each petal with some orange ink.

With all my petals cut and inked I placed the petals into a circular design on my background. For my background I printed the diagonal striped, orange pattern paper and then the neutral white and black grid paper which I cut at 11 ½” x 11 ½” and mounted to the diagonal stripped paper.

Once the background was done, I matted my photo with both a white border and a border using the diagonal orange strip using on the background. I placed the photo in the center of one for the petal circles.

In the top left circle, I placed my title which was cut using the black and white neutral block letters and an overlay in orange. I then took ephemera from the collection and created clusters below my tile, above my photo and in the bottom left circle on the layout.

I kept the layout simple in design and to finish I added some orange and black enamels dots, black and white twine in the tag and some black splatters.

The addition of black and white really helps the tone-on-tone colors to pop and keeping the design simple using the repeating shape plays up the monochromatic feel. If you would like to see this layout come together you can check out the link below and if you create a tone on tone layout we would love to see it so be sure to tag #tracireeddesigns so we can see what you create.