As you pursue the craft of scrapbooking, you’ll develop a sensitive touch for what works best on a page. Laying out your material to the best effect requires imagination and a little flair, but you can develop your skills with practice.

One of the most difficult decisions can be getting the right spacing of items. There is a fine line between having a balanced scrapbook page and a gaudy mess. If items are too closely spaced your reader will feel overwhelmed. If your items are spaced to far apart your viewer will feel as if you haven’t enough material.

Try this technique to develop your visual judgement for what works well on your scrapbook page:

• look at your page
• close your eyes
• open them again

Does your page look cluttered? Does it have more photographs than background? Are your embellishments drawing the focus away from your mementos?

If the answer to any of these questions is ‘yes’, you need to simplify your page a bit and increase the spacing between objects. Remember, you can always add more pages.

Is your page bare? Or is it uninteresting and colorless?

If so, think about adding some more mementos and colorful embellishments. In this way, you can decrease the spacing between objects and make your page more energetic.

You’ll find more ideas like these in our main section on scrapbook layouts - or browse through some of the other articles listed in the sidebar.

Looking for wholesale scrapbooking supplies or information on scrapbook companies? Check out our resources page!

It’s an exciting moment when you’ve decided on your scrapbook theme, collected some photos, clippings and other items, and are ready to start laying out the material. You’ll have several choices about the pattern of these elements on the page. Want some inspiration? You can find many free scrapbook templates and other printables online if you do a search.

Choosing The Right Pattern

So how can you arrange your scrapbook page to best show off your mementos and embellishments? Here are some examples:

• you can place everything in the center of your page
• place a single focus item in the center
• divide the page into sections and add items to each section
• lay the items out in a standard recipe or calendar layout

Shapes also make interesting placement patterns. Common shapes include circles, squares, hearts, and stars. However, you can also place items in object patterns such as mountains, trains, or Christmas trees.

The shape you choose for your scrapbook will depend entirely on your theme. For instance, a logical shape for a wedding or Valentines Day scrapbook is a heart. A nice shape for a Christmas scrapbook is a Christmas tree. You might make a cake pattern for you niece the pastry cook. Let your imagination and creativity be your guide.

Various ready made patterning templates are available from online suppliers. Visit joann.com for offers on all kinds of scrapbooking supplies and tools. You can also find more ideas in our section on scrapbook layouts.

Looking for scrapbook totes or information on scrapbook organization? Check out our resources page!