Simple Scrapbooking - Themed backgrounds

There are many ways of showcasing your photographs, one of which is to 'theme' your backgrounds.  To me a holiday would always involve the sun, sea and sand, although I appreciate that there are those that like the 'white stuff' (arrrrggghhhhhh !!!!) and would class skiing as an enjoyable pastime - personally it would be my worst nightmare.

But for the purpose of this exercise, let's stick to the gorgeous yellow globe in the sky :)  For this particular page, I chose a neutral background.  When selecting papers, I either try to choose colours that are already in the photographs, or neutral tones that will allow them to simply be a background.  Using some plain yellow, I drew around a dinner plate and made some elongated triangles to represent the suns rays.  I cut a wavy background for the sand (a slightly lighter shade than the main sheet of 12 x 12), and a more pronounced border to represent the waves.  None of this has to be a work of art, as it is your background on which you are going to add your photos and journalling.  As I mentioned last week, there are very few photographs of myself when I was younger, so this one page covers four separate years.  I labelled, where appropriate, the particular years, information which fortunately was on the back of the photographs.  I used a 1/4" hole punch to add 'studs' in the corners of the photographs (using the same yellow as the sun), added the title on the wave border, a few purchased embellishments and a journal tag.  So if you aren't sure where to begin with a holiday themed page, perhaps you can give this design a go.  

Below are a few more holiday themed pages.

This is a double paged spread, again using a neutral background (dark cream), picking out the turquoise of the swimming pool and some candy stripes for contrast (otherwise the photos would simply merge into the background and get lost.  If you notice, I have done the opposite with the turquoise and the candy striped pieces.  If I have placed one horizontal on one page, I have placed that same piece vertically on the opposite page.  Thus creating a frame - two opposite corners.  I have accented with a darker brown - tied tissue paper for bows, and wetted and torn tissue paper to edge the candy stripes.  A title, some journal and other embellishment and accents...et voila !!

 












Now for this page, I took my colour scheme from the red hat and the swimming pool.  There are some fabulous scrapbook stickers that can add to your photographs rather than detract from them.  The centre photo on the left has a splash picture with the wording 'cooling off!', which perfectly sums up this particular photo.

This one has a pre-printed border top and bottom, of cute little divers, as that was the particular purpose of this trip.  The remainder of the background was a mid blue page with curved yellow pieces placed in opposite corners, under the top/bottom borders.  Now if I wasn't pointing this out, you wouldn't have noticed, which is why I said at the beginning, don't get hung up on it being a work of art.  It does add to the page, but it isn't the focal point, that's for your photos and journalling.  A few die cut fish with wobbly eyes, diving gear and lettering, some punched white circles, with light blue pen to make them look like bubbles, and the photos matted onto the various papers used, so that it all pulls together.

Stop by next week for geometric shapes instead of a themed background. 

Christine