Incorporating More Journaling Onto Your Layouts

Posted by Aaron aka Sir Scrapalot on Jan 20, 2011 | View Comments

For a long time, I didn’t journal on my layouts.  There are a lot of excuses I can give for bypassing this step in the layout process, but the bottom line is I didn’t journal because I was lazy.  I didn’t want to spend the time to think about what to say and I didn’t want to figure out where it would go on my page.  Over time, I started to really realize how important journaling is to this scrapbooking process.  Realistically, if I am working at creating layouts to preserve memories, what good is it to not record those memories.  It was a major duh moment for me.  Today, I wanted to share with you some of the techniques I use to get my journaling onto the page.

Use a journaling spot as part of your design – This is one of the easiest ways to get your journaling onto the page.  If you incorporate a journaling spot into the design of you layout, you have an automatic place to put your journaling.  On the page “Christmas Show” the journaling spot is part of the design of the layout, leaving me a space for my story.

Use your journaling to balance the layout – With such a strong cluster and photo placement in the lower left corner of the page, having the journaling in the upper right corner helps create balance on the page.

Put your journaling in a frame - Often, when I am working with a template, I don’t have as many photos as the template has on it.  Sometimes, I’ll replace one of the photos with a journal spot and put a frame around it.  To me, this kills two birds with one stone: I have one less photo spot to worry about, and my journaling gets on the page.

Tuck the journaling along the edges of the main focal point –  In the layout, “Snow Much Fun” I was working with a heavily blocked design, so the journaling is tucked along the bottom and it formatted to match with the blocked design.