A riot of colour! Mixing patterned papers, scrapping with colour.

Hello, it's Jo here again, with some thoughts on scrapping, colour and patterns. The more I've scrapped, the bolder I've become with my choices for colour and pattern mixing. I will admit right now that I am much happier scrapping bright than muted colours, and bright colours seem to match in better with my photo subjects, (usually my children's very colourful clothes!!) All of the layouts below have been published before, either in magazines or in online galleries, so I hope you don't mind me giving them another airing here, for the purposes of illustrating my post! When I'm choosing papers to use on a particular layout, I always start by looking at the photograph or photographs I'm about to scrap, and deciding on a colour or colours for papers that tone in with the predominant colour/s in the photo. In this photo, as you can see, there is a mix of blue, yellow and green, in addition to the pink baby ;), and I felt that the best way to bring out these colours, without losing the photo, was to use a combination of patterned papers in a simple design so that the photo took centre stage, and the colours in the paper complemented the colours in the photo. I sometimes find that I have photos I really want to scrap, and no papers that immediately stand out as being a good match; in these cases, I like to use black and white papers, with embellishments that tone with the colours in the photograph, as with this layout: This photo of my sister and I in our matching 70's kilts and capes, with bright red umbrellas, didn't lend itself to the use of highly patterned or very vivid papers, so I used the Blonde Moments black, white and grey papers, and matched my large blossom with the umbrellas. Sometimes, I have a particular patterned paper line that I'm desperate to use because it's so pretty that I want to paper my bedroom walls with it, but I don't have any photos that will really 'go' - in this case, a simple solution is to find a photo you like that you're happy to convert to black and white (I use Photoshop, but I think there are various programs that will do this) and, hey presto, you can use pretty much any patterned paper you like! This photo of my daughters was very 'busy' as they were both wearing brightly coloured (though not matching) clothes, and I would have struggled to find papers to coordinate, so using a black and white images and these gorgeous SEI papers was the ideal solution! I sometimes like to set myself a challenge to produce a layout using only scraps and off-cuts from other projects. My favourite example of layouts done like this is this one, where I went to town and tried to use as many different patterned papers as possible, all very pink and girly! The different strips of patterned paper were all stuck onto a cardstock background, and the end result looks like one crazy, pink, floral piece of patterned loveliness!! I almost never throw anything away, and have a scraps basket that is overflowing. As well as using the scraps for layouts, I almost always find a suitable off-cut for any card-making project. And lastly for today, sometimes you just want a riot of colour on your page, and one of the best ways to achieve that is again by mixing lots of contrasting pieces of patterned paper. The layout below was my audition piece for the UKScrappers 'Scrappers' Block' competition in June 2005, and, whilst I wasn't sure whether or not it was any good, I was fairly sure it would stand out, either in a good way, or a really bad way :D All the papers are different, but they do tone in with each other, and the cardstock is matched to the papers. I like the finished result, and, at the end of the day, scrapping should be about what YOU like - the layouts are for your albums, and you should scrap to suit you. That's all for today - wishing you all a pleasant weekend, and, for those of you, like me, who have children starting back at school next week, try not to stress out too much when you can't find book bags/library books/PE kit/school ties - will be thinking of you all as I hunt through the ironing pile!!! xxx