Sketch Your Way to Better Scrapbook Pages

Written by: Jaclyn Popola

If I had discovered the beauty of sketching out my scrapbook pages before sitting down to actual create them, I wouldn't have wasted two years' worth of paper and material producing, well, crap. Maybe that's too harsh of a word--I take it back. Those years were a learning experience for me if nothing else, and if I hadn't went through them I wouldn't be able to produce the quality of pages I do now.

However, sketching out your pages if an extremely valuable and useful tool. There are two methods: sketching down ideas (either your own, or someone else's you saw in a magazine or on a website) and following simple templates. The first method speaks for itself. Get yourself a medium-sized sketchbook and carry it with you whenever you can. You never know when inspiration will hit! I make sure I have mine by my side when I'm flipping through a scrapbooking magazine or browsing a scrapbooking website. If I see a layout I like, I copy it down in my sketchbook detail for detail. I jot down what materials were used, and what colors were used as the background, photo mattings, etc. This helps me later so that when I am ready to create, I can refer back to the sketch and it will jog my memory.

The second method is what I'll be focusing on in this hub. There is a wealth of scrapbook templates available in books or on the web that can be useful to both the novice and expert cropper alike. I have spent years collecting sketches off the web, and I'm glad to share them with you. We'll start with one page sketches first...

SKETCHES COURTESY OF THE FOLLOWING SITES: jencaputo.typepad.com, littlebit.com, scrappinstuff.com, scrapbook-sketches.blogspot.com, littlebookofsketches.blogspot.com, pagemaps.com