Clean Scrapbooking Style: Ideas
Discovering the joy of clean scrapbooking
Clean Scrapbooking. Ever wondered what this about? Never heard of it? Curious? Just keep reading and I’ll try to enlighten you about this great style and how you can use it within your own layouts.
The whole focus is on the pictures. That’s the most important point when following this style. As you might have noticed I am a fan of concentrating on the main reason of a photo book and still trying to be creative. When I saw these layouts I fell in love immediately. However, I never used the style for one of my albums. Hope to catch up this year :).
There are some awesome designers which are pretty amazing using this style. For example Paislee Press or Wendy Bretz Designs. For our very own clean scrapbooking style it is useful to have a look at some existing layouts to learn from them.
Here are some layouts, tips and of course some great freebies for this style.
Tip #1: Use a solid and subtle background
All those clean layouts have in common that the designers use a solid and subtle background, no colorful patterns etc. Thus, the focus of the eyes is on the photos. I know it’s amazing which stunning background papers are out there but in the most cases they distract a little. Here are two nice example layouts:
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| Credit: “Horses” by nolwenn | Credit: “Beach Beauty” by margote05 |
Freebies
There are some awesome solid papers available for free – if you use overlays you can even adapt it to your favorite color. Here are some free texture overlays:
| Freebie from HG Designs: grunge texture overlay | Freebie from HG Designs: texture overlay |
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Tip #2: Play with simple shapes
Flowers, circles, stars – there are many great shapes in this world. Within clean scrapbooking you concentrate on some simple and basic ones like lines or squares. You can still play with the whole composition so it doesn’t mean necessarily a boring layout. What do you think of the two following layouts?
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| Credit: “I love this face” by MarjoBene | Credit: “stillframe” by dlhoffer |
Tip #3: It’s all about the frames
I feel like I say that about all the scrapbooking styles I analyze. Frames. But also within these layouts you can see how powerful a simple frame around the pictures can be. I love playing with different frames and shadows to make the photos pop. See how your eyes focus on the pictures in these two layouts:
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| Credit: layout by Susanne | Credit: layout by Leontien |
Freebie
Look at this nice freebie from maybemej:
Tip #4: Small text is part of the whole composition
I think it’s fascinating how you can improve a whole layout by adding a little bit of text. In a lot of clean layouts you can find this small text sections enhancing the entire combination. Just like you can see it in these two examples:
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| Credit: “that moment” by Amanda1201 | Credit: digital layout by sue |
Freebies
While looking for some great freebies we could use for clean scrapbooking I came across the awesome blog from Mediterranka. Here are two of her amazing wordoart freebies:
| Freebie from Mediterranka: Wordart – autumn by Mediterranka | Freebie from Mediterranka : wordart PHOTOGRAPHY” by Mediterranka |
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Tip #5: Don’t be afraid of white space
I know from myself that it is not easy at all to leave that much white space around the pictures. I mean, there is so much awesome stuff existing which I could use to fill this. But I think it is a little bit like with a conversation: you don’t have to fill every silent moment with words, sometimes silence is all you need. So try to give your awesome photos some “silence” around them. See how the designers did it in the following layouts:
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| Credit: “Each day counts” by veer | Credit: “Remarkable” by Soco |
Freebies
For me a template is very useful in order to “enforce” the white space. Maybe one of these awesome templates is helping you as well:
| Freebie from Margote: template Nr 89 by margote | Freebie from Margote: template Nr 88 by margote |
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You can find a lot more sample layouts on my Pinterest Board. You might want to check it out and get inspired:
Follow Isabell Hauck’s board Scrapbooking: C&S Style (clean & simple) on Pinterest.
How do you like the Clean Scrapbooking Style?
