Technique Tuesday by Rachel!

Technique Spotlight: Touching

Not being a technique-y type person, I decided to focus on a design element for my technique challenge, and explain why I created my “In Daddy’s Arms” layout the way that I did. Having worked as a graphic designer in an advertising agency for about 16 years, I find that my design skills often come in quite handy when I'm scrapping.
I love scrapbooking because I can use my eye for design and the end product is entirely up to me. There is no client wanting the title smaller or the logo bigger… I'm totally the boss!

So I chose to talk about touching. You may have seen my 'I like touching' signature on the forum. I think touching is so important when designing a layout because it helps anchor everything to the page. When I say touching, what I mean is placing your rub-ons so that they touch the photo, or placing flowers so that they are touching each other in a cluster and maybe have a petal overlapping the photo a little bit. Touching helps hold everything together, helps lead your eye from one element to another, and anchors everything to the page.

This picture is an example of a layout where everything is floating on the page. The flowers have been placed randomly in an attempt to fill up every available space and corner—and nothing is anchored to the page.

Now on this layout, I've used the exact same products (with a bit more of the obligatory ric-rac thrown in :) ) to create a completely different layout. Everything is touching; there are groups of embellishments and they helps anchor everything together.

Subtle touches like these can really help a layout to be more aesthetically pleasing. See how much more effective the corner rub-on looks because it's touching the photo? It probably wouldn't look half as good if it wasn't touching, because it wouldn't be anchored.

So that's my technique for you—touching! Next time something doesn’t look quite right, try moving your embellishments around a little bit before adhering them and see if keeping things touching helps.