TTT - Creating Direction - Trixie Scraps Designs

Hello everyone! Welcome to TTT Tuesday. I’m going to talk about some tips today that really draw attention to the most important thing on your layouts…your pictures!

I think we can all agree that digital kits nowadays are chock full of gorgeousness! Myriads of ribbons, flowers, leaves, stitching, strings, so many beautiful papers you can’t just use one or two, and on and on. A digital scrapbooker’s dream, right? In order to use all these beautiful products and still not lose focus on your pictures, it helps to use a few tricks of the trade to draw the viewer’s eye to your photos. For example, here is a page I created using April Templatetopia and Sunday Afternoon. Since I knew I was going to be using a lot of pictures and various papers and elements, I really didn’t want the photos to get lost in the mix. So I tried to change up the way I matted the pictures. I love how the template already had different shaped photo holders and then I used different colors on the mats to really grab your eye.

I also took a spin through Trixie Scraps’ gallery (you should really try it sometime!) and found some more great examples: Here is a page by Carrin using Blue Skies Ahead. The thing that immediately grabs my eye are the arrows as they point upward toward her photos. Arrow elements are a great tool to direct the viewer’s eye but it’s all the coordinating elements that really come together to make the page amazing.

This next layout by Stacy is an amazing example of framing. She also used April Templatetopia and another one of my favorite kits, Oceanside. There is no doubt what the focal point of this page is! The white space in the background and then the super wide frame over the top of the photo with amazing clustering around the edges gives this page an amazing and elegant look. No need to sacrifice the use of gorgeous elements in order to focus on your photos!

My last example is one of my favorite techniques to use to draw in the viewer’s eye. BIG pictures! Trixie Scraps has some great BIG photo templates. On this page, Jamie used Large and in Charge Vol. 1 Templates as well as Natural Beauty. If you love the photo, blow it up! Let everyone see the detail and complement it with all the other goodies in the kit. Changing the shape of the large photo like Tracy did with this template draws the eye even more.