Scrapbooking Sketches with Becky Higgins

First, let's talk a bit about sketches. What's all the hype about scrapbook sketches anyway?

A sketch provides something like a plan or map for you to follow.

Instead of spending precious time cracking your head over how best to place your photos, it'll shows you exactly where to place your photos, where to insert your page title, and where to write on your journaling.

With sketches, you simply concentrate on your color schemes, embellishments and meaningful journaling.

Below are two samples of Becky Higgins' sketches that she has created over the years:

So for beginners, following along with sketches is a great start, especially when you have no idea on how to do effective layouts. It cuts down on your indecision time too. And better yet, now with your page layouts mapped out for you, you can get more pages done in quicker time.

Another benefit of scrapbooking sketches? They help us to think out of the box. We humans are creatures of habits and we tend to do the same thing over and over again. Are you getting bored with your recurring one-photo or two-photo layouts?

Ah... this is where sketches slide in to offer you fresh ideas on how to layout your pages. Basically, sketches unleash your creativity by creating options for you.

Suddenly, you find yourself overflowing with ideas on how to do three-photo, five-photo or even ten-photo layouts. No longer would you be caught in the few, standard layouts you keep repeating day in and day out. Yeah!

Another thing, even if five persons use the same sketch, many different looks can be achieved from the same sketch. Purely because all your choices of color schemes and embellishments differed from each other.

Sometimes, when inspiration hits you, you may even adapt and vary the chosen sketch and come up with something "new" and different. How about combining and mixing two different double-page sketches and arriving at something refreshing?

Becky Higgins

Talking about scrapbooking sketches, the name of Becky Higgins naturally pops into mind. She's probably the one who stirred up all the interest in scrapbook sketches years ago and inspired others to create their own sketches.

She's the author of bestselling books, Creative Sketches for Scrapbooking and Creative Sketches, Vol. 2 offering original and fresh sketches, beautiful sample layouts and scrapbooking inspiration.

These two scrapbooking sketch books have been raved about by others. I own both copies for a few years now, and if you can still get them in your local scrapbook store or elsewhere, you might like to get your hands on them.

I would say that useful scrapbook sketches books can act as reference guides and idea launch pads whenever you're stuck on placements.

Prefer Single-Page Layouts?
500 Scrapbooking Sketches!

Update 2008: This is a brand new e-Book by Jennifer Gormly containing 500 sketches created specially for single-page layouts.

Differences between Becky Higgins' books and Jennifer Gormly's e-Book?

Becky Higgins's sketches are double-page sketches contained in a "physical" book that has to be shipped and it might not be available in your local scrapbook store anymore. Many have difficulty in locating her books. She offers 52 sketches in each book and sample layouts for inspiration. But some readers find that it's more like a magazine than a book and yes, there's quite a bit of advertisements in there.

Jennifer Gormly specializes in single-page sketches in an "e-Book" that can be downloaded immediately (no shipping fee!) to your computer. Though her e-Book doesn't come with sample layouts, but she packed in 500 sketches into one easy and compact 54-page reference guide. No advertisements in there. And if you signed up to receive her tips, she'll email you a series of emails that contain layouts she has created based on her own sketches to inspire you!

You can click on the image below to find out more about this new e-Book that can help you start creating stunning layouts even today.

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