Featured Pattern Style: Strips

Featured Patterns:#216, #209 and #156

Featured Die: 1×3.25 Strips Die

Short vacations or longer extended trips, what was on your itinerary this summer? As summer draws to a close now is the perfect time to start scrapping your vacation photos and I have a few tips for creating vacation albums that I hope will help you to get started!

You can find many different ideas for mosaic vacation photo pages by selecting “vacation pages” from the section “Stuff We Talk About” at the bottom of our pages. Today I wanted to think beyond individual pages to creating whole vacation albums.

Two ways you can approach it are:
1. You can do a Chronological Album with a page for each day with highlights from that day as I did in the post “Scrapping the Numbers” or
2. You can create an Organized Album grouped by a series of events, people or places.
Let’s take a closer look at the latter with a couple techniques and tips.

Organized Album

TECHNIQUE ONE: Use a Title Page

You may remember a previous post Mosaic Layouts: Scrapping with Ease!  where I created a title page for an album I’m putting together of my trip back to Scotland. Instead of working chronologically in this album I intend to organize photos in groups like people, flowers, places, and castles. My title page included several castles. For this castle a two page layout covers the grounds and ruins. A second layout features several detailed photos of the trebuchet in a full page of its own.

Let’s get started!

TECHNIQUE TWO: Add “Chapters”

Urquhart Castle

When you have a beautiful view stretching out before you don’t you wish you could bring that same magnificent view to your scrapbook pages? You will find that possible with this week’s Pattern #216 and the use of one of our strip dies. There are now three different sizes of strip dies and we have used the 1×3.25 strip which works very nicely on your 4×6 photos giving you six strips. For the purpose of this pattern we will only being using it for three and four of those strips. The second pattern in the layout has four 3×3 corners all strips.

As I stood along the shores of Loch Ness taking photos of this view I was hoping for a glimpse of Nessie, but alas only a motor boat to give perspective of the vast expanse before me. The dramatic skies, the hills and loch made this a perfect choice for a panoramic stretch.

 

TIP ONE: Use varying photo sizes to create interest

I began by pre-cropping the photo to fit on half of an 8.5×11” photo paper then printed it out. Trimming away the excess white paper the photo was cut into three sections, with the center photo cut to fit the 3×4 block section on the grid. The remaining sections were cut lining up the die on the edge of the sections that would continue the photo and cut with the strip die. Excess photo strips from each end were discarded leaving a continuous photo across the top on the page.

At the bottom of the page I deviated slightly from the pattern with the addition of a journal block placed on top of the wall of stones that is divided into four strips using the strip die.

This page also has a large 4×6 spot that I wanted my castle photo to fill entirely, no mat, so it was printed at 5×7” and Die Set B’s largest die made trimming it to size smooth, accurate and easy. The mosaic sections on either side were a nice spot to add the pattern paper giving a horizontal band appearance.

The size of photos on the page also helps to create movement and interest. Beginning with the top panoramic to the center large print and the bottom row of smaller photos and journaling; your eye is kept moving downward to see everything.

 

TIP TWO: Use different perspectives to create interest

For Pattern #209 photos were chosen to give different perspectives. The photos in the top row are all taken from the same place. It was the gatehouse turret, first to catch the arch and stonework with the hillside beyond. The photo on the left shows the pathway to the gate with the Trebuchet in view. The one on the right is a close up (telephoto lens) of the sheep on the hills. In each photo the same hill is shown, same gorse (yellow flowering shrub) just a slightly different view.

“The Big Picture” is shown in each of the center row photos with the photo below in the bottom row showing a close-up view.

A sign that shows a drawing of the castle as it once was is included as a title; this helps to see the ruins as something more than rubble.

Adding tartan paper in the mosaic sections in the middle column accentuates the style.

TIP THREE: Use an additional page to highlight something special

Layout 2

A second layout is included to show you an additional page in this “chapter,” incorporating several photos taken of one of the outdoor displays of a Trebuchet.

The photos were whittled down to six and a pattern chosen to suit them, this time it was not a strips pattern but a columns pattern. I again used a photo with a sign as a title, used patterned paper in a blue tartan I bought there and Paper Tiles in Forrest. The 12×12 grid is Steel Blue. The Mosaic Moments Dies made this page very quick to put together.

The best about the layering dies is that they always gives a nice uniform and precise cut making your page look so professional.

Supplies for Strips Patterns #216 and #209:
• Mosaic Moments 12×12 grid paper in Ocean
• Mosaic Moments Die Sets: Set A, B, C , 1”-4×6 mosaic tiles die and 1×3.25″strip die
• Mosaic Moments Paper Tiles in Bermuda Blue
• Pattern Paper with red tartan pattern

Additional supplies for Columns Pattern # 156:
• Mosaic Moments 12×12 Grid paper in Steel Blue
• Mosaic Moments Paper Tiles in Forrest
• Tartan Paper Bits-N-Pieces Southfield Stationers, UK

With summer drawing to a close and fall just ahead take the time to organize your vacation photos and get started creating beautiful vacation albums and share your results with us on our Mosaic Moments Facebook page!

Andrea Fisher

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