In her book Designing Photo Mosaics and More Tami Potter gives us photo tips that can truly help us spice up our scrapbooking pages. Besides taking those close-up photos of our loved ones and details of our lives, she advises us to step back and take long distance, full-view shots as well, such as a field of green or a span of snow. I’ve taken her advice while on my recent outings and want to share with you how I utilized these photos as backgrounds for my pages.
It’s cherry blossom time here in Okinawa, but due to the unusual cold there is not much in bloom. On a recent drive I found a single cherry blossom tree coming into flower and with the blue sky as a backdrop, let the flowered branches fill the frame.
I used this photo as a backdrop for the Love in Bloom page using the pretty new Raspberry Grid Paper. You will need to print five 4x6 photos to fill a background this way. Here is what mine looks like before decorating the page.
To finish was easy. With the help of my Cricut and a few buttons, this page came together so beautifully.
For my next page, a sunflower field became my photo background.
Like the cherry trees, the blooming this year is delayed because of our unusually cold weather. After taking a few close-ups of the stray blooms, I stood back and took one single photograph of the field showing all the greenery. This photo became the backdrop for sunflower page. Each flower close-up was then hand cut and layered over the background field.
For the page title, I followed Tami’s advice on Page 22 of her book: take photos of signage. This yellow banner became the title for my page. It reads ‘Himawari in Kitanagusuku’ (Himawari translates to sunflowers and the other word is the name of the town).
For the last page I used this photo of a close up of some snow taken recently by my sister Trish Collins.
Printed once at 10x12, it makes a beautiful background for my own snow photo. Now who says scrapbooking has to be about only happy times? I was truly not happy when I woke up and saw snow outside my window last year while living near the Tokyo area. Once again my Cricut provided the page décor and I love how this page turned out.
Give it a try – go out and take some full view shots with the idea that you can build a background out of it. I would love to see what you come up with using this idea!
