How do I find my style?
I hear this question a lot, especially among those who are somewhat new to scrapbooking. I don’t have all the answers, but I do have one technique that has worked for me.
In this week’s pep talk I’m sharing a specific approach you can use to determine your scrapbooking style.
While the way you arrange products on a page is certainly part of your style, let’s focus on products. The paper and embellishment choices you make are the predominant factor in the overall style of your finished page.
When I started scrapbooking, I was attracted to saturated and fairly bright colors. It doesn’t matter whether the shop is physical or online, products with bolder colors stand out. It’s no surprise I reached for what most caught my eye.
As I started to shop more and scrapbook more, I bought what I liked. At the same time, I didn’t like my pages very much and was ignoring parts of my growing stash.
Then the rise of Pinterest had me browsing even more layouts than ever before. As I gathered page after extraordinary page, I finally made a big realization.
The layouts I love don’t use the products I buy.
This was huge for me. There was a very large mismatch between the products I was purchasing and the scrapbook pages I most wanted to emulate. Even though my compositions were similar, the colors and patterns of the products themselves were quite different.
This led me to really studying the pages I was attracted to. Subtle tones, softer edges, and small patterns predominated in the layouts I loved most. So I started buying products with that in mind.
And I started to love my layouts more.
When you’re trying to define your style, the place to start is your stash. Are the products you’re choosing to work with the ones that most put you at ease when you see them used. Is there a match or a mismatch?
Paying attention to not only the technique and composition of layouts I loved, but also the product choices, shifted my scrapbooking dramatically. I quickly picked up on my preferred style by better matching what I was shopping for with the look and feel I desired.
The Weekly Pep Talk shares one strategy to help you simplify scrapbooking and focus on what matters most.
P.S. My friend Debbie Hodge is hosting a 5 day event on finding your style and it’s in a similar format to the events we host here at Simple Scrapper. Whenever I have a scrapbooker who wants to understand design better, I send her to Debbie.
Click here to check out Style is Leverage.
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