Hello everyone. All over blog and forum land I am reading about people losing their impetus to create layouts, finish them and be happy with them. I really understand this frustration - you can sit staring at your stash for what seems like hours and nothing seems to jump out at you. You look through magazines and blogs and feel even more down about the fact that you think you will never be able to re-create what you see. Even when you start to scrap and stick your elements down, you realise that you don't like your layout and decide that what will help you is to go out and buy more stash, which if you are honest with yourself, will just get stored away until your mojo returns. 

We have all been there or are there now. The answer is not to go out and spend hundreds of pounds on every Prima flower just released or 50 sheets of patterned paper with all the matching accessories. You will never use these things unless you address why you feel you can't start or finish a layout that you are happy with. I feel I can say this because this is exactly how I felt and what I did until recently. I thought I would share some top tips with you this week to get you motivated to scrap. I will obviously include layouts that I have completed following that day's tip. I thought I would show you what I do to get myself going. I try to think about 3 or 4 layouts at a time. I gather up all of the elements I like and think will complement my photo or patterned paper I want to use and place them near each other on my table.

Okay, so today's tip to get your mojo kick started is to print your photos out in various sizes and in black and white only. If you haven't done this before you will be amazed how much easier the whole process of laying out all of your elements can become. By using black and white or sepia even, you will not have the difficulty of matching colour elements in your photo to patterned paper that you don't own. That said, if you do love colour photos then select a key colour from the photo and use that as your starting point for selecting colours of your cardstock and papers. Here is my layout for today:

 

 This paper is from the Prima Melody collection and has a lovely frame which is a great starting point to help you arrange the elements on your page. I have selected an 8x6 photo which will ensure that it is the main element on my page. I wanted to frame the picture so I used some coordinating Prima flowers and then some AC ruffle ribbon. I have added some large pearl brads and Prima pebbles. You can see that all the elements on the page coordinate and have a 'relationship' with each other. The frame I have made with the flowers and butterfly leads the eye around the page and the rub ons (Lily Bee) provide some balance to the layout as a whole. There is no real journalling on this page but I don't think it's necessary here. The photo says it all. I'll be back tomorrow with tips on composition and dimension.  Here is the sketch I had in my mind when I was creating this simple layout. If you want to see some more examples of my layouts then hop pver to my blog for some ideas.