You Are My Sunshine

Happy Labor Day everyone!  I hope you are all enjoying a nice long weekend.  We are just hanging out around the house this weekend and getting excited for school to start on Wednesday (some more so than others - hee!).  School is already back in session at Two Peas In A Bucket . . . Design School that is!  If you haven't checked out this free class you really should.  It's a great way to learn about (or brush up on) some basic design principles and see how they can be applied to scrapbooking.  Today's lesson is about Rhythm & Proportion. 

Proportion usually refers to the relationship between two or more elements in a composition with respect to size, color, quantity, etc. Good proportion adds harmony and symmetry among the parts of a design as a whole, while bad proportion creates a lack of balance. Design elements are said to be "out of proportion" when the balance among the two seems wrong. For example, the elements are equally divided and therefore create monotony or the elements are too unequally divided and therefore create a lack of harmony.

This layout is copyright Two Peas in a Bucket

 
I created this layout about my youngest son Brandon by playing with the proportions of the different elements on my layout - namely my title block and my photos/journaling. Playing with proportions (creating unexpectedly larger elements) is a great way to add visual interest and impact to your layout. While my title block is quite large and draws lots of attention, no one element overshadows the others despite the obvious differences in size - it is still in proportion to the other elements on my page and creates an overall harmonious feel to my project.

I created my large title block using the Silhouette and lots of different patterned papers by Echo Park, American Crafts, My Mind's Eye and Jillibean Soup.  I used the striped paper from My Mind's Eye Hip Hip Hooray collection as my color inspiration and mimicked the stripes in the paper with those of my title block again playing with proportion.  

I printed my journaling directly on a tag from My Mind's Eye and tucked it behind my photos along with another tag from American Crafts and date sticker from My Mind's Eye.  

And finally I added a collection of stickers, brads, and jewels in the upper left corner of my photos thus creating a visual triangle with my title block and journaling.  This is another design principle that I adhere to and you will see that visual triangle in nearly all of my layouts.  That's it from me today - be sure to check out examples by several of my fellow Garden Girls as well as some very special guest designers here.  Thanks so much for stopping by! :)