Finding Me, Take Two

I've read a lot lately about finding your own scrappy style.  And I've been trying to work on that.  So last night I went through the stack of recent layouts on my desk.  And at the end of the night, after some thinking, this is what I knew about my style.

• I like color.  I use color on my layouts and rarely work just in neutrals.  
• I'm often attracted to deeper colors for my layout bases.  And if I choose a neutral base, it generally has some subtle pattern.
• I like to mix a variety of papers and embellishments.  
• I like clean lines and/or a fair amount of white space.

Most of my recent layouts clearly fell within these boundaries and they were some of my all time favorites.  But one layout was different - there were parts I really liked - the color choices, the mix of patterns, the title placement and the diagonal photo placement - but it was overdone.  There were no clean lines and no white space.

 

So I decided to take it apart and do it again, thinking about the things I knew I liked to incorporate in my layout.  I was careful and tried to remove each element so that it could be reused.  I spread them all over my desk.

I needed a new base for my layout because I had journaled directly on the base previously.  So I picked a base and went to work. The grey patterned paper was pretty damaged so I picked a similar sheet.  And then I started to incorporate the elements from the prior layout.  Here is what I ended up with.

I kept my favorite elements - the colors, the title placement and the diagonal picture placement.  I edited my selections and kept clean lines.  I also added a few elements that weren't in the original layout - the wood circles, cork circle, cork arrow and enamel dots.  But I kept my favorite quote and most of my favorite elements.  And I like this much better.  I guess finding me at 50 is a work in process.  

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you have a great day!