Pages from Dorset by AMANDA KING

Hello Mad Scrappers! I’m bringing you a slightly different post today, with tips for producing a co-ordinating series of pages for a holiday or event. My pages are all from a short break in Dorset that we took in October; they will all go in my 2020 album but using one collection for them all makes it really clear that they belong together and are separate from the pages before and after them.

I always start a project like this from the paper and I chose Amy Tangerine’s Late Afternoon paper pad as the colours, leaf patterns and simple florals would suit my outdoor photos. It wasn’t clear which patterns were in the pad (there are 24) so I also got the Winding Down and Make a Wish double-sided individual papers as I loved those patterns and didn’t want to miss out. To these I added the Late Afternoon Ephemera Die-Cuts and the Darcelle Sugar Dots from Prima as there are no enamel dots in the Amy Tangerine collection.

I picked out a couple of washi tapes, a bottle of Nuvo drops, some camera flair, a sheet of gold chipboard stars and some tile letter stickers from my stash and I added two sets of Thickers from the shop; Grove, the green one that is part of the Late Afternoon collection, and Avenue, a black and gold alpha from 5th & Monaco, to give me a neutral option.

Tip 1 - Get cutting! 

We all know that first cut into a new paper is the hardest, but it has to be done. I made this page with a quadrant design, positioning two cream-based papers in opposite corners and two florals in the others. I tucked a couple of paper strips into the edge of my photos and fussy-cut a floral from the cut-apart sheet for my embellishment cluster. One page down and six papers cut.

Tip 2 - Repeat Combinations That Work

I used the same orange scallop and yellow floral papers here. It’s clear that the pages are related, but they come from Friday and Sunday of our weekend so won’t be next to each other in the album. I’ve repeated the floral embellishment using pieces from the die-cut pack, but I’ve also brought in a couple of new patterned papers.

Tip 3 - Ring the Changes

At first glance, the stripe and the green papers are a big difference from the last two pages, as is that large semi-circle, but look more closely and there are similarities too. The orange scallop and yellow floral are still there, and the plaid paper has reappeared. The stars are a new motif but there are plenty of pages left where I can repeat them.

Tip 4 - Bring Things Together

This page uses a neutral background with another piece of that orange scallop print, the bold multi-coloured stripe from my first page and the orange print from my second. The narrow washi tape seems rather prominent here, but look back; it’s actually been on every page so far. Those labels keep repeating too, and I’ve used the stars again. 

Tip 5 - Don’t Hoard!

I’ve used flowers on several pages, but they’ve been fussy-cut or punched ones so far, when there are some lovely floral pieces in the die-cut ephemera pack. I kept saving them for another page as I didn’t want to run out, but ultimately that could lead to me not using them at all! I took the plunge and used two at once on this page. It also sees the return of the stripey paper from the Stonehenge page with a whole sheet of the bold multi-coloured stripe that I’d only used in small pieces up to now as I was rationing that too.

Tip 6 - Regularly Assess Your Pages

Looking back, I need another page with a large circle like that on the Stonehenge page, and I have a layout design in mind. I should repeat that green too, and I have a page in progress now that does just that.  I have two camera flairs left, but I’ve only used a die-cut camera once, so that needs to be repeated. Also, my pages tend to have either stars or flowers (apart from the last one) so I want to combine them again.

I hope these tips help you next time you are tackling a larger project. It’s a tried and trusted method of working for me and I find it produces a cohesive album rather than just a set of pages. I’ve made about ten pages from this holiday so far, and I have more to do (where I’ll be incorporating the points at Tip 6). I won’t be sharing any more here but you can find them on my personal blog or my Instagram if you are interested.

Stay safe until I see you next time, when I’ll be sharing a page with Vicki Boutin’s Storyteller collection, which I am loving even more than Late Afternoon. How fickle we scrapbookers are!