13 Ways to Personalize your Page Kits. #1: Embellishments!

It's January 1, 2019. TWENTY-NINTEEN - can you believe it? Down Memory Lane turns 13 this year! Time passes so fast. How can we be 13 already? But we're preaching to the choir here. We scrapbookers are keenly aware of the speed that time passes. That's one of the reasons we pour our heart and soul into our page kits and designs. We know how important it is to capture those memories so we don't miss them! 

We're proud to have been a part of preserving your memories for 13 years - with many more to come - and we think that's worth celebrating! For the entire month of January, we're celebrating our birthday with lots of fun, games, deals, and new offers! If you're not already a Facebook fan of Down Memory Lane, head on over there right now to make sure you don't miss out on all the fun! 

This month, we've got 13 new kits ready for release and I can't wait for you to see them!  We often like to say that our page kits are multifunctional. They are great on their own for the scrapper who is in a time crunch, or they are a great starter kit for those who want to use their creativity to take them to the next level. With each kit, I'll show you one simple way you can take them to the next level and make them your own!

Personalizing Option #1: Embellishments

Our first new page kit of 2019 is Love, Joy, Peace. Let's first take a look at the layout in it's original form.

Love, Joy, Peace original layout

This layout is gorgeous. I know it's literally the first day of the year, but I'm willing to already say this is going to be one of my favorite layouts of 2019. The colors are perfect, the deer and the cardinals are beautiful, and the layout is everything that title says. At first, I didn't want to touch this page kit. It's so pretty on its own, but when I see snow in a layout, my instinct is to add sparkle, so I pulled out a few different embellishment options and started playing around.

I knew I wanted to add some shine to the page kit, but I wasn't totally sure which embellishments I wanted to use, so I pulled out a few options that caught my eye. In the upper left corner, I have an assortment of dew drops - clear, white, and chrome. These are similar to epoxy dots, but they aren't as flat. In the upper right corner, I have an assortment of clear gemstones. In the bottom left corner are some small red gemstones, and in the bottom right corner is an assortment of buttons. Once I had some solid options, I started placing them around the layout to see what looked best.

Original Title Love, Joy, Peace.

Title with gemstones.

 My original thought was to only add clear gemstones to the layout to add some sparkle to the kit, so I began with those. The title was an easy place to start because it has punctuation marks, which you can see in the original. Any time there are periods, commas, dots to "i"s, my first inclination is to cover it with something special. This title sequence was perfect and I love the addition of the gemstones. They're small enough that they don't take away from it, but they add just enough extra.

After I added the gems to the title, I decided the snowflakes would pop a little better with something added. Since there are both small and large snowflakes, I decided to add small and large gemstones to the snowflake centers. You can see the effect on these snowflakes surrounding the Cardinal.

Original Cardinal and Branch on Love, Joy, Peace layout.

Gemstones on snowflakes.

I placed clear gemstones on all of the snowflakes and, although I liked the additional sparkle, it just seemed a little too much. The subtle beauty of the layout was lost under all the bling.

The sparkle is nice, but it was just a little too much with all the gemstones.

I removed the gems from the snowflakes, but left them on the title. I still wanted to highlight those snowflakes, though, so I thought the dew drops might be just enough and tested a few colors.

White dew drop on the left and clear dew drop on the right

I liked the white dew drop, but I thought it blended in a little too much. The clear dew drop made it look like wet snow, so I decided to use the clear ones on the snowflakes. 

 Right side of layout with clear gems in title and clear dew drops in snowflakes.

Left side of layout with clear dew drops in snowflakes. 

Just lovely! At this point, I took a step back and assessed whether I should go further or add more. 

Love, Joy, Peace layout with the clear gems and clear dew drops.

I decided that I love the look of this, but I really wanted to find a way to use those white dew drops. I'm not sure what it was about them, but if I could make it work without pulling focus away from the layout, I was going to do it. I pulled them out and started playing around with the snow at the bottom to see if they could add a little something there.

Right side with white dew drops scattered in the snow. 

Left side with white dew drops in snow.

Turns out, I LOVED it. Those little snow drops made the large swatch of snow on the bottom more interesting and they were subtle enough that the original design of the layout still shone through.

Whole layout with clear gems, clear dew drops, and white dew drops.

Now, on any other day, I may have stopped here, but since this was all about embellishments, I wanted to see if I could add some red in here to make those berries burst on the page. I pulled out some red buttons and red gems and took a look.

Berries with an assortment of button options: small red, small green, or large red. 

Berry branches with small red gemstones.

I decided the buttons, although cute, had a little too much of a homemade look to them. If I had been doing this layout for my grandma who loves to sew, I probably would have kept the buttons. Since that was not my plan, I decided the small red gems gave just enough extra red, but didn't take away from the layout. The red gems were a great addition.

Love, Joy, Peace layout with all added embellishments.

Isn't it beautiful!? It keeps the original design of the layout in focus, but the embellishments just make it stand out a little more and make it personal to me. Someone else may have this layout, but the gems and dew drops take it to the next level and create something original and beautiful for my album.

To get the full effect, let's take a look at the originals and finished pages side by side!

 Original Left Side

Embellished Left Side

 

Original Right Side

Embellished Right Side

Final embellished Love, Joy, Peace layout

I just love how this turned out! The original design shines through, but the added embellishments just give it a little extra sparkle! Exactly what I was going for. What do you think? I'd love to see your comments below.

It's simple, but adding embellishments to a layout is a great way to bring our page kits to the next level and to personalize your kits! It's just 1 of the 13 ways we'll be showing you to make our kits your own. Stay tuned through the rest of the month for all 13 of our new releases and 13 ways to personalize them!