Mosaic or Tile Effect

I've discovered quite a number of my blog readers loved the mosaic or tile effects on my layouts. The one layout that attracts a lot of comments is the "MP3" layout.



Most scrappers think that it is too difficult and it is very time consuming to do this. Actually, it is pretty simple.

You can buy one of the mosaic grid templates that they are selling in the stores or use computer softwares to create your grid and print it out as a template (ie. microsoft office softwares) or even using just a long ruler and a pencil to grid your layout (of course a little maths is involved here). It might be expensive to buy the templates therefore, I suggest to print it from your computer or manually grid it.

If you print it out, you can use a carbon to trace it to your photographs and then cut it out. Try to leave some squares out to further draw attention to your photographs. You can even add some matching colour card stock squares to replace some of the squares to add dimension.

Inking your papers, embellishments, frames, mats and photographs

The inking technique is quite a must for scrapbooking as it gives very fantastic effects on your scrapbooking work. There are various things on scrapbooking that you can ink. You can ink on your photographs to give a coloured soft focus effect. This can't be done using simple photo editing software. The softwares can only gives white colour soft focus effect. Therefore, it is interesting to ink your photographs for this special effect.

You can also inked your mats, frames, papers or even embellishments. By crunching your papers, frames or mats and then inked it, will give you a distressed looked and add textures to your layouts. You can also ink your embellishments to distress it or even add colours to it. There are various colours of ink in the stores. They even have it in white which I recommend to buy because it is very handy in lettering and inking of embellishments. There are also "distress ink" in the stores where they have different shades of it.

I've used inking in some of my layouts such as the San Francisco layouts in the USA travel gallery. Try it and you will be surprised!

Chalking embellishments, frames, paper-piecing or mats

The chalking technique used on scrapbooking are very useful in various types of situation. Chalking on embellishments can give various effects. Chalking edges of embellishments can soften the looked of it and even make it more colourful. If you use dark colour chalking on the whole of the embellishment, you will even get a distressed looked. Chalking on paper-piecing can lift the 3-D looked of it instead of a flat two dimensional looked. I've done various layouts using chalking, for example my Disney layouts in my USA travel gallery or even my latest layout, I've chalked the frames and mats to give it a softer looked.

The technique of chalking is very simple. Kindly use cotton buds, cotton balls, cosmetic foam pieces, cosmetic buds or even your fingers. Most of the time, I prefer using my fingers, as it is easy to control the amount of chalk and it can be spread more evenly. Try different colour chalks to give different effects.

So Tasty

Chloe had started on semi-solid food at the age of 4 months. I just had to take some photographs of her first reaction towards the food. The idea of "a frame on top of the others" came to my mind as I'm looking at the photographs. I wanted to draw all the focus point within the top frame. I've sanded the edges of the photographs to edge it (refer my tips and tricks) and I've also chalked the frames to soften it. The addition of a flower is to make the page looked a bit sweeter. All journalling had been done around the black card stock based.

Scrapbooking as a method of documentation (Reggio Emilia Approach)

From the comments of my last post "Easy scrapbooking in early childhood education", most of my blog readers understood it as including scrapbooking as one of the projects or curricular with the children. Actually, what I meant to say is that to use scrapbooking as a means of documentation of the observations made by educators, teachers or even parents towards projects conducted by the children. The documentation part is actually according to Reggio Emilia approach in early childhood education. Therefore, in this case, adults are the ones to scrapbook or do the documentation.

By reading the comments, I have an idea for an easy way out for teachers or educators whereby, they have to scrapbook to each children individually. Teachers can print self- made digital scrapbooking templates or layouts and print them without photographs or journalling. Let the children paste their own photographs on the project or add in any scraps embellishments/decorations and later on, teachers add in the journalling about the observation. This will allow certain educators who are interested in scrapbooking and are not allowed to save any digital photographs of their children in their computers or laptops (due to privacy and security purposes), to do layouts on their projects.