Technique Inspiration

Journaling: We had the flippin most fantastic long weekend in Portland and Hood River. We LOVE it in the Pacific Northwest. Could go ever year. Could like there. So much to do. This time - condo rental near Burnside. Japanese Gardens. Sushi happy hour. Beer tasting - of course. Pearl District. Golding at McMeniman's. Drive to Hood River. More beer. Waterfalls. Watch kite surfers. Saw Mt. Hood. Saw Food Inc. at a Brew 'n' View. Please let's go again!

Lately I've been looking around at other people's scrapbook pages for new inspiration. I even started a list of techniques I like and want to incorporate more often into my pages. A lot of times I start a page and just stand there trying to think of what to do to make it look the way I want it to. Sometimes I even do this over the course of a few days. I'll start, then stop, then revisit and try again. So having a-go-to list of ideas should be helpful.

I thought I'd try to start a habit of sharing the techniques I'm trying out, in case others need the inspiration. I don't claim to have invented any of these, but scrapbooking is all about recycling other people's ideas so here we go.

Several techniques I used:

• Transparency layering I have been hoarding this grid transparency from Hambly and decided to layer it under my title for texture and depth.
• Photo collage I've been making a million photo collages lately. I used the Picasa collage feature to create two 4x6 photos that contained 6 photos each. Then I could just glue down the two 4x6s to run the whole width of the 12x12 cardstock. You could do this in Photoshop too and have more control over how the photos are cropped in your collage. Or by hand.
• Magazine and freehand lettering cut outs I love using magazine cut outs because it takes me back to my middle school days. For my title I used a magazine page of a cool illustrated map of Portland that I kept from our trip. I then cut out the title freehand from the magazine tear out. This could be done with magazine, a map, a menu, whatever is fun. The letters contain names of the places we visited, and have the colors I associate very strongly with the Pacific Northwest. Worked out perfectly with the photos. I also used a few more bits from the map as embellishments. Love this. And it was free. I picked up the magazine from a free stand at Powell's Bookstore.
• Repetition of colors  I choose yellowish beige as a neutral background, then some brown to ground the page, with pops of blue and red.
• Hanging and ripping a tag I think I got the idea of tearing off the bottom of it from Tara Whitney's pages, and the idea of hanging it off the top of the page from Ali Edwards. Work well for a subtitle or the date. It also breaks up the square lines a little.
• Clustering embellishments I'm not a big buyer of embellishment so often I create some from bits of paper, stamps, tags, staples, etc. Clustering them in one spot rather than spreading them out helps focus the page.

Here's another page where I used some of the same techniques. Particularly, clustering, a freehand letter, and photo collage.

Journaling: Oh my lands little one. This was the trip home where we really got the time to bond with E and get to know her vivacious personality. Impromptu photo shoot with Aunt Sara. She worked it!

What techniques do you love? Please share!