Polishing Your Page in the Project Life App: Focus on the Pictures

Welcome to my new series “Polishing Your Page in the Project Life App”. My goal with these blog post is to help you take your pages to the level. By that I don’t mean a bunch of fancy techniques but just simple tips that will help polish your pages and make them look a little more finished and aesthetically pleasing.

**A couple things before we begin:

1) my drop shadow is always turned off. If you are following this and maybe want to mimic one of my pages make sure your drop shadow is turned off in the preferences section of the app. You can’t turn it off mid page...you will have to start all over again.

2) I already edited these pictures in PicTapGo. You can do it at anytime during your process. But I like to do it before it even began because I get a real sense for what theme and colors and I’m looking for.

3) Every set of pictures might require a slightly different approach than the one below. I tried to choose a pretty typical grouping of pictures so hopefully the advice is more generic.

So there are SOOOOOOO MANY cute cards on the app!! It’s overwhelmingly wonderful to have so many options but, for me, my pictures are the point of memory keeping. It’s why I started scrapbooking in the first place. Heck, I barely journaled for several years. I just wanted my pictures in an accessible format. My traditional pages focus on the picture and now, with the Project Life App, I want my card choice to support the pictures, not the other way around.

So in the page below it’s tempting to leave it as is cause all these cards are so cute but what are your eyes drawn too? Not necessarily those cute kiddos!! 

To begin the polishing process I focused first on trying to weed out the cards. The colors in the pictures are all over the place so it is probably best to focus your cards by sticking to a limited color scheme. If the colors of your pictures are more in harmony and/or there are multiple close ups it’s nice to have wider palette of color. 

I chose to stick to classic black and orange...

The page still seems all over the place and I still need to fill those empty pockets. I could switch designs? I don’t want to use a Big Shot layout because the quality of the photos isn’t that great so smallish is better (ugh...2010 phone cameras were really horrible). So I think I will pull everything to the center square rows.

So what to put in those empty pockets? To keep the focus on the photos and those few cute cards I am going to fill it in with just the orange polka dot cards...yep! all of them with the same card!

I could stop here but there are a couple more things that would shine this page up even better! I am going to try to minimize the gutters (those gray lines between the pockets.) On some pages it looks great to have those lines contrast but these pictures might look better if we try to make them blend.

Look how the pictures are starting to really become the dominate focal point! Now to pull them to the front I am going to add a couple border overlays from the Just Add Color Overlays. I chose to use a light line border to add just a little hint of focus.

So now? We journal and title!! A quick tip about the font choices for this page? Since we are keeping the focus on the pictures I chose to mimic the existing fonts as close as possible (besides the journaling). The cards already say everything I need so I only had to add the year. 

[Squared Away 10, Seasonal Snapshot Edition (retired), Just Add Color Overlays]

ANNDDDD...it’s done!! 

Here are a couple other pages I have made recently that really bring the photos to the forefront:

[Design A, Orchestra Themed Cards]

This is my 8th grade! He’s a stud...no cutesy back to school cards for his page. I tried to just support the colors and loved that primary colored picture on the bottom left. 

[Squared Away 16, Let’s Get Away (retired), Drop Shadow ON]

Nothing calls more attention to your pictures then making them big! I love Squared Away 16 and all the Big Shot Templates for this reason. The cards I chose are in keeping with the theme of the pictures but the color scheme doesn’t distract from the pictures. They actually play off the colors in my baby girl’s swimsuit so all the attention on her (which is fitting for our life right now anyway)! The hints of black really anchor all the blues.

I hope that helps give you some ideas. Tune back in later for a couple more tips!