With a toddler running around, it is not often that I get to take my time when capturing our daily moments. If I want to get a photo, my camera has to be on and ready and I have to be prepared change up the ISO or white balance at any moment. He has no idea of what it means to be still for a photo. I have to sneak up on him to catch him. Because the moment he sees me coming with that camera, my son squats down and smiles directly at me and gives me the loudest “cheese” that he can. He got it from. Yup. It is pretty much my fault, but when I was saying it all the time, he was barely crawling. I guess it was something he held onto. At least for now I know he enjoys having his photo taken. I saw for now because my 8-year old is kind of hit and miss with the photo thing. Some days she is all for it and others she just wants to be left alone. I will admit that at her age, I was the opposite. Camera – still or video – I always tried to get in the front when my dad had them out.
So, back to these photos…. when I have time to go with the flow, and be in the moment, it’s like magic. I enjoy the process, the kids enjoy it and I get moments captured that I don’t want to forget. Like these, in this post. My next step after a little editing is to scrap them. Sometimes it is nice to just keep it simple. Let the photos take over the page and be the center of attention. One of the newer designers at The Lilypad, Lynn Grieveson, released a new set of album templates, Sharpshooter, that can help you easily do just that. Now, these do not have to be just for scrapbook pages. These could also make great templates to use for a collage for a blog post or a collage of photos to print and frame.
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I decided to keep these as simple as possible. At first I was going to add a few elements and then decided I would like a more flat design for these. Keeping it simple does not mean it has to be boring, though. Playing around with color choices and choosing fonts that complement your photo story will help add to your design. A lot of times the difference between a layout (whether it is scrapbooking or a web site) is the style and quality of fonts that are used. The size, weight, kerning (spacing between characters), the height and width of each character play a big part in your design. I am not an expert, this is just something I have gathered from experience and reading about it.
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For the titles of these layouts, I used Boho Serif Bold. I wanted a playful, serif font with lowercase letters that looked almost handwritten. For the notes I included on my layouts, I used MB Empire Regular, a sans-serif font. I did not want to use too many patterns and distract from the photos. Now, choosing accent colors for each page was a different process. For my son, I knew I wanted to play off the red of his jacket. For my daughter, I wanted colors that were bold, feminine, and modern.
digital product credits:
- Sharpshooter Album + Glitz Girl – Lynn Grieveson Designs
- Everybody Dance Now Solids + Practical Plaid v. 6 – Allison Pennington
- Memory Pockets Monthly: Charmed – The Lilypad
- Fonts: Boho Serif Bold + MB Empire Regular