Thank you everyone for emailing us about the forum. We’ve been working on it and our site host was sure they had it fixed but if you’ve been there today it’s obvious it’s not.

Izzy is going to try and move the forum to a whole new site (and will hopefully be able to keep all the original messages as well). It will probably take him until mid-next week to do that. Thank you for your patience.

If you were in the middle of a circle journal swap, maybe you can all connect in comments to this post until we clear it up.

Also, I did have posts planned for the week but deadlines and tomorrow’s camping trip has put a hold on everything else. I’ll post tonight if there is any leftover time.

Scrap Your Scraps

Are you swimming in scraps? Some of us hate them. Some of us love ‘em. This week is all about those leftover pieces, large and small–how to store them; how to share them; how to use them.

Paperclipping Live

We’ll kick off our scraps-week with tonight’s show at 6:30 p.m. PST. For this event, a group of us participated in a Scrap Swap where we made kits of (mostly) scraps to exchange with each other. I’ll be making a layout with my kit and the others will be in the chat room, making theirs.

If you didn’t participate in the swap, why don’t you dig through your scraps and embellishments and put together your own coordinating kit and join us tonight? When I made my kit, I discovered a really cool color combination and found a new love for those scraps. Try it!

New Interview With Ali Edwards

I will be interviewing Ali about her soon-to-be released book on mini albums Thursday. We’ll release the resulting audio podcast free over the weekend. Is there something you’d like me to ask her? Questions do not necessarily have to be about mini-albums. Send me your question and I’ll see if I can fit it in. You can email me at noell(at)paperclipping(dot)com.

Today we have an awesome video for the Premium Subscribers. In this tutorial I take inspiration from a very old layout, but make key changes on my new one using my understanding of design.

Make sure you stick around for the outtakes at the end of the video!

If you want to learn more about the premium membership so you can have access to all of the videos, click here.

Alvin Ailey Dancer
Originally uploaded by Omega418.

Modern Dance Proved There Are No Rules

Mia Michaels, a choreographer and judge on So You Think You Can Dance, has been introducing the non-dancing world to the unique beauty of Modern Dance (or Contemporary, as they call it on the show). It’s usually a very interpretive, story-telling type of dance where you “read” the language of the body movement and shape.

It all started about 100 years ago when a few women like, Isadora Duncan, decided break away from the strict authority of ballet. You often hear from people that Modern Dance “broke the rules.” It broke the rules of ballet but it didn’t break any fundamental general or universal rules. It’s still a very technically rigorous dance form. It uses principles of music, design, movement, human nature, and visual communication to tell stories.

There Are No Design Rules. Just Principles.

Some people get uncomfortable when scrapbookers talk about design because they think the principles are rules. Scrapbooking is a hobby. Who wants to get bogged down with rules?

Fortunately, there are no rules. Just principles.

Design Principles Are Like Recipes

If you mix certain ingredients when baking, you get a specific effect, whether you wanted it or not. The same holds true of design principles. For example, if you gather a group of photos together and place them opposite of an over-sized photo with lines directing toward it (like on the layout above), people will notice the solo photo first, whether or not that was your intention.

There is no rule that says you have to place your photos this way. It’s just a recipe: if you do A+B, you get C.

There is also no rule that says there must be a focal point at all. But the general principle is that your layout will be easier for people to digest if there is one. What if you have a story about chaos and you want your layout to exemplify that reality? The principles that help you to avoid chaos can also help you attain it.

A Principle You Might Think Of As A Rule

Here is a perfect example of using a principle that people often think of as a rule: In general, people are most attracted to photos where the subject is one-third in from a side with a little space above their head and at the edge of the photo. Some of my favorite photos, though are like the ones below, where the subjects are about to fall out of the frame because they’re laughing.

The photographer didn’t break a rule. She used a principle (even if it is sometimes accidental). Placing a laughing subject at the very side, or slightly out, of the frame shows movement and energy and realness. It’s unposed.

We see the laughter on the subjects face, but we feel the joy because of the cropping.

Whether in dance, music, scrapbooking, or other types of art, design principles are a language for communicating. A clear understanding that they are options, not rules, will help you see how they fit in with your role as a visual story-teller.

* * *

This article is part of a series: All I Really Need to Know I Learned From Performing.
If you enjoyed this, you’ll probably like the others, as well:

Skill Before Style: Why Scooping Can Wait

Advanced Design: Visual Dynamics

Blurred piano playing (B&W)
Originally uploaded by chrismear.

I recently performed a sort of scrapbooking experiment. I wanted to see if I could make really good pages using lots of 4×6 photos. With the sudden popularity of 6×12 layouts about a year ago, it occurred to me that 2 12×12 pages was equal in proportion to the 6×12. I wondered if a rectangular block of 4×6 photos on 2 12×12 pages could look just as hot as one 4×6 photo on a 6×12 page.

My conclusion after doing a whole lot of layouts like this is no. It doesn’t look as hot. It’s okay. It’s decent. But it lacking in terms of dynamics.

Dynamics

Dynamics are a term in music that refers to the variation in loudness and softness. Soul-stirring music has enormous dynamic change. A piece might begin with light touches of the keys, an amazingly controlled voice that is so barely-there it’s almost haunting.

It will begin to grow in loudness and may even speed up at times. It will dance like this, getting quieter then louder. It will back off, and then grow more intense. This will continue until the climax of the song where you heart races with the music, until it drops once more and fades to a quiet end.

Dynamics In Scrapbooking

Does this apply to scrapbooking? Of course! Why would I have brought it up it didn’t?

In the visual arts, we can think of dynamics in terms of contrasting elements. Think size and variation; empty space and filled spaces; areas of simplicity and areas of complexity. Focal point also plays a major role.

For example, empty space on a visual piece offers the same results as playing music pianissimo, which means, very soft. A focal point photo with layers of embellishments, perhaps flourishes and bling, would be the climax. You play it in forte, which means, very loud.

Low Dynamic Variation Is Boring:

Here is an example of one of my experimental layouts.

Journaling reads: Every Saturday we turn out living room into a studio for our podcasts: Move the sofas*Cover the light socket*Remove the paintings*Use the chocolate wall as backdrop*Give the kids a movie to watch in the bedroom.

All of the photos are the same size. As much as I tried to create intensity at the lower left, and to contrast it with the white space around the edges at the top and to the right, this layout doesn’t deserve a standing O. It’s a little boring because the photos are static.

High Dynamic Variation

By varying the size of my photos, I had much more room to play with the dynamics of this piece:

This layout begins with a few small voices in the upper left-hand corner. It gets louder as other voices join in, until we reach the bottom right where we have a whole chorus celebrating the unbelievable cuteness that is my son, Aiden.

Dynamics Tell A Story

Here is another example of a very different layout that has nice dynamic variation:

This layout has a strong beginning. The focal point photo in the large empty space has a chorus of embellishments to announce its debut appearance. This side of the layout is the musical overture.

We then drift into the softest part of the piece, which is the open the area containing the smallest photo. It’s the empty space that calls our attention to this spot. Here we enjoy the story of friendship and joy.

Our eyes pause on this moment until the energy picks up once again to the trio of larger, busier photos, the loudest, most energetic part of the entire page. It ends strong with Grandma Gertrude looking straight at you, offering you a piece of cake.

How To Achieve Great Dynamics

It’s not always easy to create great dynamic variation in a layout. Sometimes our photos limit us. That’s okay. Not every layout is going to be perfect. Much of it is in our control, though. Here are some options to help you achieve greater dynamic variation in your scrapbooking:

1) Vary the sizes of your photos, whether by cropping in Photoshop or cropping with scissors.
2) Give the page some empty space.
3. Gather and layer embellishments in places that could should sing in forte.

Music is a form of story-telling. So is scrapbooking. Use dynamics, or variation of visual elements, to tell a more intriguing story.

* * *

This article is part of a series: All I Really Need to Know I Learned From Performing.
If you enjoyed this, you’ll probably like the others, as well:

Skill Before Style: Why Scooping Can Wait
Design: Rules? What Rules?

Don’t forget to share with a friend.

Hot Pink and Black

Originally uploaded by catface3.

I was junior high age, in the car with my Dad, singing along to the radio and enjoying the sound-bounce off the windshield. Knowing I was serious about singing for an audience, he handed me some advice that guided me not only in my singing, but also in dance, and scrapbooking. He told me I was scooping.

Do you know what scooping is? It’s when you don’t hit a note right on. Instead, you land just below and then scoop up into the correct note. The less skilled one is at singing, the farther away they tend to land from the target note and the more they scoop.

“But professional singers scoop.” I protested.

That’s when Dad delivered the key principle. “If you want to perform, you need to learn to hit the notes right on. Then you can scoop if you still want to. But you can’t scoop effectively until you can hit each note exactly.”

Scooping In Dance

This principle also applies to dance.

Hip-action is a favorite characteristic of Latin Ballroom dances like the Cha Cha or the Samba. Another interesting characteristic is the sensual arm movements. What I learned when I took good technical classes from skilled trainers was to forget the hips and the arms. We had to first focus on strong and centered foot and weight-placement. Once a dancer nails that skill, good weight-placement will push the hips out naturally. With increased training a dancer will eventually be ready to put more emphasis on the stylistic arms and hips.

Scooping is Stylistic. To excel, good skills must be the foundation. Style can build from there.

How I Overcame Premature Scrapbook Scooping

Have you ever tried to emulate another scrapbooker’s style without outright copying their pages, and found that you couldn’t pull it off? I have. Not long before I began to learn principles of design, Elsie Flannigan hit the scrapbooking world and I loved all the bright colorful pieces she gathered around her photos. Of course, she did mainly single-photo pages and I did two-page layouts with multiple photos. I once tried to apply some aspects of her style to a four-photo page. My result was some out-of-control scooping. Here it is:

I remember how excited I was to use my products, but how frustrating it became to work with all my photos. I could see that the page looked chaotic but I couldn’t figure out why. Now I know that I was ignorant of basic design principles. In other words, I was scooping without the skills.

The layouts below are some examples of pages with similar style characteristics to what I was trying to attempt. You can see that these other pages all make more visual sense.

Ordered Chaos

There is a lot going on with this layout. Why do so many busy products work here?

1) One strong photo with a clean background stands out in all the pattern.
2) The solid matte and straight angled journaling within it provide a firm spot for the photo.
3) The tags are gathered together so they act like one piece you can digest when you’re ready. In the first layout, each piece is separated and demands its own attention.

Simplicity

In Artsy Girl I used products from the same line as in City Walk, the first layout. Sure, it helps that I’m only using two photos, as opposed to four, but even a two-photo page benefits from a foundation of skills. Here are the principles that made this one work:

1) All of the elements have their own defined spaces. The journaling extends along some lines. The drawings lie in a sequence that form a line. The title sits in a box that fits into an empty spot. The photos line up with the drawings and the patterned paper.
2) Each of the embellishments debut in clusters of three.

Managing Multiple Photos

In case someone was thinking how much easier it is to make sense out of one or two photos as opposed to four, I included a nine-photo spread.

1) With more than three photos, I it becomes imperative to gather them into one or more groups. In this case, I made one giant gathering.
2) I prioritized my photos over my products. I first decided where my photos would go, and then I saw how much space I had left to add embellishments and patterned paper. I determined that no matter how fun the bigger stuff is, this layout would only remain manageable with small-scale items and patterns.
3) I clustered embellishments together.

Scoop Or Don’t Scoop: My Disclaimer

There are those lucky few who have a natural sense for design, music, or dance skills without even knowing what they are. These artists will find their way to an aesthetically pleasing result more often. But even these gifted ones have their days when their art isn’t working and they don’t know why if they haven’t learned what the skills are.

Does that matter? It’s up to them. Scrapbooking is a personal thing. For some it is like singing alone in the shower. Maybe they do it for their own pure pleasure. The joy they feel to be carefree with it is all they need. Others find fulfillment in improving their skill.

Learning about design principles and how to apply them is just as fun for me as sitting down to scrapbook. It’s part of my hobby. It may not be fun for you. And really, isn’t fun our main reason for doing this?

But if you want more satisfactory results more often, remember that style and fancy products only shine within the framework of good principles.

* * *

This article is part of a series: All I Really Need to Know I Learned From Performing.
If you enjoyed this, you’ll probably like the others, as well:

Advanced Design: Visual Dynamics
Design: Rules? What Rules?

Alvin Ailey Dancers

Originally uploaded by Omega418.

All I Really Need To Know I Learned From Performing

When I began learning about design I had no idea how often I would revert to things I learned during my performing arts days from middle school to college. A lot of the principles carry over.

If you’ve never been a dancer or singer, you may only appreciate this week for the heavy emphasis on design. But if you also have a love for performing arts, it will be a double-delight as we focus on some of the cross-over principles.

Huge Apologies

I posted an announcement last Monday that I would be taking a “summer break” from blogging that week so I could take care of some pressing commitments. Perhaps it is because of the server upgrade that my post vanished and left no sign of ever existing. I’m sorry if some of you were checking the blog daily with no luck.

We do know that it is because of a server upgrade that is incompatible with our subscription service that is making the video tutorials inaccessible right now. Again, we apologize that we are experiencing a technical glitch. And while the server is trying to do its part to fix the problem, the people at the subscription service must leave the office for the weekend because we haven’t been able to reach them. So, while we had a great video that I was excited to post for our premium subscribers today, it will have to wait, probably until next weekend. Huge apologies. Thank you for your patience.

Paperclipping Live

A kit club called, The Treasure Box Club, asked me to review their product. I just received two of their kits in the mail and on Tuesday night (6:30 pm PST), during Paperclipping Live, I’ll pull out the contents and we can see together how their kits “perform.”

This will be a high-audience participation show because I’d like to hear what you look for in a kit. Why do you buy kits? Why don’t you buy them? What makes a kit good? If we can get Skype and UStream to work together, you can call into the show and share your opinion via Skype. If not, we’ll have to use the chat function.

Either way, please register for the Paperclipping Live chat and with Skype so that you can share your opinion about scrapbook kits.

I’m looking forward to a high-performance week on Paperclipping!

Paperclipping 50 - Puffy Paint from izzyvideo on Vimeo.
I hope you enjoy today’s free episode of Paperclipping where I demonstrate a fun product with a few tips.

As usual, there is a high-quality version available, which is worth the little bit of download time. I also included show notes for this episode.

Most of my scrapbooking inspiration comes from the mood or feelings I associate with the subject of my layout. I try create a visual expression of how I feel. When I think of the outdoors, I often think of relaxation, play, and whimsy. Below are two techniques for adding details that evoke those three characteristics.

Enhance A Floral Pattern with Beads

What you need: Floral patterned paper, a transparent glue like Diamond Glaze or Glossy Accents, two different colors of beads.

1. Working in small stretches at a time, apply a line of glue about half an inch long along the inside of a petal. Using a pen, pencil, or other pointed tip, pick up one bead at a time and place them in the glue, just inside the outline of the petal.
2. As you place each bead, press it into place with your fingernail. If you use your fingertip it will get sticky and the beads will stick to it.
3. Continue alternating between glue and beads until you’ve outlined the petal.
4. Fill the bud in with a small amount of glue and add beads until they fill the bud.

If you feel like you have some weak spots (perhaps the glue was almost dry when you added a couple of the beads), you can add some glue to the sides of the beads to make them stable.

Add Whimsy To A Colorful Tag With Wire

What you need: A decorative tag, two colors of wire, glue dots, wire tool (optional).

1. Cut two pieces of wire to about 4 inches each.
2. Feed wire through hole of tag and bend wires in half so they straight out from the top of the tag. You’ll have 4 ends.
3. Twist the wires around themselves a couple of times at the top of the tag.
4. Working with one end at a time, twist the wire with a tool or with your finger so that you get a fun spiral. For a playful look, don’t try to make the spirals perfect.
5. Place a glue dot on the bottom side of the top of the tag so it holds the wire in place.
6. After adding the tag to your page, arrange the wire so they stick up in different directions for a totally fun and carefree look.

Combining The Details

Here is another example of the same two techniques together. Don’t they feel happy?

Spin & Be Merry
Two-page 12×12 Layout

Below are two sets of instructions for layering embellishments the way they are on the layout above. You don’t need to have the same products. Look through your own stash to find items with similar characteristics. If you don’t have a lot of embellishments, look for designs you can cut out of patterned paper.

Top Left Cluster

I used this pair of birds on a branch as a way to pull attention to my focal point photo.

1. Nestle the bird duo with a word that supports the layouts’ story.
2. Highlight the word with a circular embellishment.
3. Apply foam dots to the back of your bird embellishment to raise it on the page.
4. Place the entire set on top of an area of patterned paper that you’ve lined with a ribbon (like rik-rak).

Lower Right Cluster

I cut this trio of flowers from the K.I. Memory Lace Cardstock.

1. Highlight your “bouquet” with half of a circular shape, like this screen-printed transparency by Hambly.
2. Add three-dimensional buds to your flowers with brads or epoxy stickers.
3. You can extend the plant-life on your page by adding a subtle transparent grouping of leaves. Mine are a soft orange and come from My Mind’s Eye.

When layering embellishments, start with a focal point piece, like the birds or the flowers. This doesn’t mean the embellishment will be the focal point of the page–just the focal point of that cluster. Find smaller pieces like words or buttons to gather around the focal point, and a shape, such as a circle, to act as a frame.