Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of our Tutorial Tuesday series here on The Digital Press blog! Today, I’ll be sharing ideas for using large photos creatively to emphasize them on your scrapbook layouts!

Have you ever heard the phrase “go big, or go home”? I love it, and I say it to myself quite frequently when creating scrapbook pages that feature my favorite photos. The photos that tug at your heart strings, tell a story or just deserve a large spot in your scrapbooks, those are the photos I am talking about!

A big photo makes a statement, and is the perfect way to showcase a photo that tells a story. Use one large photo to fill the entire background of your layout!  Photos that work perfect for this are ones that show the entire landscape or are a wide angle shot with lots of white space. You can add more photos in the white space of your photo as I did on the layout below. Frames help to ground the photos you place over top of the background photo and help tie multiple photos together cohesively on a layout.

Tip: Use the opacity slider to make your background photo look more transparent. This can give the photo a look of a faded memory! If you layer your photo on top of a textured cardstock, it will take on the textured look of the paper below it!

Trick: Frame your large photo to give it more definition on the page. Use stitching or other attachments to anchor your photos and elements to the large photo. That way they don’t look like they are just floating on top of your background photo!

Trick: use a template as the guiding point for your design. Fill the background layer of that template with a large photo and work from there. On the layout below I started with this photo of the skyline and added other favorite photos from our vacation on top of it.

A large horizontal or vertical photo can be used in its natural shape on a scrapbook page by layering patterned papers and embellishments below it. You still get the emphasis of a large photo layout, without filling the entire page with the photo.

Large photo layouts are the perfect way to document a conversation or quote you want to remember from the moment the photo was taken. Keep your design simple and let the photo shine! Not only does the large photo speak volumes, the words you document right on top of it will help to recreate the story from that single moment!

Tip: Use the white space on your photo to write your journaling.

So there you have it… a few simple tips and tricks to use large photos for emphasis on your scrapbook pages.  I hope this has inspired you to use a large photo on your next layout!

Jennifer Hignite is a mom of three boys and new homeowner with her fiance in the mitten state of Michigan. When she is not scrapbooking, she enjoys photography, watching her boys play sports, decorating, and shopping at Target.

met·a·da·ta
ˈmedəˌdādə,ˈmedəˌdadə/
noun — a set of data that describes and gives information about other data

There is a lot of information stored here — and under the “Basic” tab is where we will type our information.

You are welcome to edit other fields if you wish, but all I do is fill in the “Description” box. I type in any product names (kit, template, etc.), as well as the actual links to the products in the shop (especially important for creative team members who are posting layouts into galleries)…

After entering the information, select “OK.” After this step, you’ll want to re-save your layout (to ensure the new changes to the metadata stay put).

I hope that taking this extra step becomes a habit for you, too, and that it eventually will become a huge time-saver when you are posting your beautiful creations into online galleries like the gallery at The Digital Press!

About the Author  Amie is a craft-loving dental hygienist who lives in Washington state. She loves her husband, her two crazy kids, and her English Bulldog… as well as coffee, baking cupcakes, daffodils, glitter & sprinkles, reading a good book, and lip gloss — not necessarily in that order.

Hello everyone, and welcome to yet another edition of our Tutorial Tuesday series here on The Digital Press blog! Today, I am going to share a few very simple tips for creating hierarchy on a layout in order to create a focal point.

The definition of “hierarchy” by the Oxford Dictionary is: “a system in which members of an organization or society (or photos on a scrapbooking layout) are ranked according to relative status or authority.”

I love using multi-photo layout designs in my memory-keeping, as they give a great overview of the context of the photos as well as up-close details of the event. But the question becomes… how to include so many photos without them all competing too much for attention? How to focus on the most important part of the story?

For example, let’s use the following group of photos as an example…

Step 1. Six same-sized photos will be “read” from the top left, across and then down to the second row… left to right… in our Western culture. But I want a way to cue the viewer as to which photo is more “important”…

Step 2. As you can see, I experimented with making the first photo smaller and the “after” photo of her hair much bigger. Just by changing the photo size I draw more attention to it (in a similar way, keeping one photo in color and converting the others to black and white would create the same sense of hierarchy). Then, to cement the large photo’s importance, I add the embellishments, layering them to be eye-catching and to add a pop of contrast in the glittery gold border and the light viewfinder, which also contrasts as a circle shape below the rectangles of the photos. I also add a large flower to visually anchor the photo, and add a subtle cue to the colour of her Dance dress, finally adding a pop of dimension and movement with the floaty string.

Step 3. I begin my second hierarchical cluster with the gold date tab. This is the final photo in the sequence, showing her delight at the finished view of her hair. I add some more gold wire elements to complete that visual triangle. A second smaller flower and layer some gold splatter under that cluster. The point of the heart faces into the photo.

Step 4. My third cluster at the top left is the entry point into the layout. I add the third circle element, the third pop of the pinky-purple in the wordstrip, and finally three spots of stitching. The third cluster is the least dense, made up of smaller elements… so while it serves as an entry point into the layout’s design, it does not steal any of the focus away from the focal photo.

Step 5. This is when I usually save the layout, make a cup of tea, and then come back to re-evaluate it later. At this point, I decide to move the paper clip into the top cluster and add a curled ribbon up there. This is pretty and plays off the curls within her hairdo. I add the journaling at the top of the layout in a white hand-written font so that the eye will now be led from the top left, through the top row of the photos, down to the date tab and then from right to left across the bottom row of photos. This solidifies the circular movement into the foundation of the design. 

Step 6. I resize, sharpen and save it.

I hope that this post has given you some ideas and tips on how to create a focal point within a layout (especially one that uses a large number of photos). I hope you’ll give it a try and create this sort of flow within your next scrapbooking layout.

About the author Stefanie is a member of The Digital Press creative team and a stay at home mother of three older children living in Cape Town, South Africa with her hubby of 30 years, two of their three children, and 3 Siamese cats. She loves photography, traveling, and digital scrapbooking — documenting the good and the ordinary everyday.