I have hosted a few speed scraps here and the step that seems to stump people the most is never anything like “use a patterned background” or “include some journaling.” I am surprised that many scrappers get flustered by something I love to do on my pages: use more than one photo!
Not only do I love to use more than one image, I often include anywhere from 10 to 20 photos on my pages! Every Christmas, I give my relatives a scrapbook of pages I made during the year. Sadly, they’re not really interested in trendy elements or pretty backgrounds. They want to see pictures! So while I do create the pages that might highlight just one image or story I love, I make sure I scrap those special events that capture our family’s memories.
I am often asked how I get all those photos on my pages, so I’m going to share some of my secrets because it’s really not as hard as it looks!
Take lots of photos. I’m sure that this is something most scrappers already do. I take my camera everywhere and try to take pictures of everyone and everything so I have lots of faces and details to scrap.
Organize. I start my pages by going through my photos from an event and deciding which ones I want to include. I use iPhoto to tag the photos I might want to include on my page. You can also do this with other programs such as ACDSee or Lightroom. If you don’t use an organizer program, you can save copies of all the photos to a new folder. Even if I don’t use all of the images, I like starting with them all in once place.
Have a plan! My biggest trick in multi-photo and double-page layouts – I use templates. I stock up on templates that feature multiple photos. Or I just create a document and sketch it out myself.
Get scrapping. I start my pages by placing all the photos on the template. Then I add backgrounds, elements, my title and journaling. I don’t usually add lots of embellies because I like to keep the focus on the photos. But I do like to place elements throughout to help guide the eyes across the page. Horizontal elements, arrows and repeated elements and colors really do the trick. I like to use frames or borders on my photos to make the photos look more unified or place a frame or a cluster of elements on a photo I really want to stand out.
Save! When I’m working on a two pager, I usually like to work on both pages in one document. But page files can be very large and really slow down my computer. I make sure to save often. You don’t want to lose all that work if your program should crash.
Posting Pages. I prefer to save my double pages for galleries as separate images, but sometimes I like to keep it together so I can see the whole picture. You can also upload the full version to a hosting site, such as Photobucket, and then include the image full two-page image in your credits. I say, do what works for you! I do split my pages up when I save a flattened copy so that I’ll be able to print them.
Give it a try! All it takes is a little planning so why not give it a try. Here are some templates from our One Story Down designers to help you get scrapping!
One Response to Scrapping Multi-Photo Pages
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GREAT post!!