Simple Scrapbooking Layout
Design Ideas and Tips

Find out how good design basics and tips could generate strong scrapbooking layout design ideas.

Why is a scrapbooking layout so important? For the compelling reasons that it either makes you just wanna skimp over the page in a second, or it's appealing enough to grab your attention and draw you into the page.

An appropriate scrapbooking layout could practically make or break your page's success. ;-)

So here's a few tips to guide you along in your scrapbooking layout design ideas whether you're doing a baby scrapbooking layout or heritage scrapbooking layouts or others.

Simple Steps to a Good Layout

1) Let a Theme Rule

Build your scrapbook page around a theme like your family's picnic in the woods or your son's class outing to the zoo. If more than one photo are used on the page, each photo should relate to the theme or to each other. So that the page could tie together meaningfully as a neat scrapbooking layout design idea.

Three to six photos can generally fit into a page. For more photos, a two-page spread would work great. From each occasion or for each theme, select the best photos for your scrapbook page.

Tip 1: You don't have to use all your photos for your scrapbooks. It'll likely to drive you bonkers and you'll never be done and, it'll usually stop you from scrapbooking altogether because it's too tedious.

To keep the fun and your sanity, give yourself permission to scrapbook only your best photos or photos that hold significanceeven if it's not fantastically taken.

Tip 2: If you still need more help in doing effective layouts, a recommended help would be to use scrapbooking sketches. You might like these two e-Books on scrapbook sketches/blueprints which you can download immediately.

A Scrapbooker's Guide: Floorplans (E-Book)

A Scrapbooker's Guide: Floorplans II (E-Book)

2) How to Arrange Photos

Select a focal point - Choose a main photo that can arrest the eye for a start before leading it to the rest of the page. A good scrapbooking layout design idea would be a photo that represents the overall theme. Generally, such a photo will require minimum cropping.

The focal point doesn't have to land right smack in the center of the page. Highlight its importance by placing it slightly off-center, tilting it ever so slightly or even giving it a multi-layered mat.

Maintain a Flow and Balance - With the focal point settled, the placement of the other photos should contribute to the whole flow and balance of the page. A good photo placement is one that seamlessly leads your eye from one photo to the next.

A degree of overlapping or angling works to direct the eye from the start to the finish point of a layout. Make a stronger visual impact by skewing only one or two photos and not every piece of photo.

Try experimenting with different locations, sizes and angles of the photos to see what works best for your scrapbooking layout design. Do the slight changes contribute to a more balanced feel to the whole page?

After experimenting with different scapbooking layouts, I would usually take a step back and observe the layout for a few moments. Then I would ask myself, "Is there a good flow and balance?" If the answer is no, I'll continue to make some little adjustments here and there to get the right balance. If the answer is yes, I'll move on and mount them onto the page.

3) Crop It the Right Way

Cropping a photo could improve the look of it by taking off the unnecessary details. Cropping narrows down the focus on the subject of the photo. Cropping also allows you to fit more photos into a page. Ah...the wonders of cropping for scrapbooking layout design ideas.

Besides cropping your photos in the common and popular rectangle and square shapes, other eye-pleasing shapes include circles and ovals. However, avoid overdoing with various shapes, as too many shapes on a page could end up making a page looks very busy.

Great Starter Tips on Creating Balance

Bring focus to your page by making sure that the eyes of your people are towards the center of the page. Alternatively, the eyes can be looking towards the next item, as a form of lead on to the next element on the page.

Apply the "Rule of Thirds". Place focal point of your layout at the points where the lines meet after dividing your page either horizontally or vertically.

Be careful not to place anything that looks out of place on the page. Every element should relate or connect to another item on the page.

Repeat color, shape, texture, etc throughout your layout to maintain consistency in your scrapbooking layout design idea.

Create visual unity by grouping related items close together rather than far apart.

Develop a visual triangle with photos and embellishments to pull the items on your pages together. On the other hand, pairs or groups of 4 will make them look as if they are separated into sections.

Establish a more finished look to the page by using the same embellishments in odd numbers of 1, 3, or 5.

Balance is important in any good scrapbooking layout design idea. Watch this scrapbooking video for the basic principles of a good layout design.

Set the Mood with Your Background

Place your chosen photos on different colored backgrounds and select the color effect that pleases you the most. Your color effect decision will affect the mood of the page.

Dull colors like navy blue or grey probably don't bring out the sunny brightness of your summer vacation at Hawaii. Red and yellow might not suit your cold, cold adventure to Alaska. Extreme examples, but that paint vivid images about the importance of good scrapbooking layout design. :-)

Reminder, please don't go overboard with way too many colors. Concentrate on bringing the best out of your photos and not overshadow them with rainbow colors on your background.

Likewise, when doing baby layouts, keep the focus on your baby's expression. Your baby is the lead, not the colors.

Enhance with Accents

I agree that it's tempting, but please don't distract away from your photos with accent overloads. The page can look cluttered instead of pleasing to the eyes.

Grasp the ABC's of Scrapbooking Layouts