Scrapbook Solutions - Color Choices

One of the questions we’re asked most frequently, aside from how we come up with our designs, is how we go about choosing colors. Color choice is super important! It’s amazing what the right blend will do to your layout. It’s always a little challenging to answer that question because I have a unique situation. I have an entire wall of color at my disposal. I can pull 50 colors, rearrange, and change my mind when I want to. It’s pretty incredible!

Down Memory Lane's Wall o' Paper

But I know most people don’t have the luxury of a “Wall-o’-Paper” at their disposal, so what can you do? I’ve got a few simple things you can do that can help with color selections when you’ve just got to make a choice. When you’re standing in the craft aisle, staring at all the options, it’s hard to make decisions. There are so many options! Or maybe you’ve got a huge craft stash and you’ve got to decide which section to go for. This is not the place to start making decisions. It’s too overwhelming. You’ve got to have an idea in mind before you enter the paper aisle.

Here are 4 ways you can develop your skills and learn to create beautiful color combinations: 

1. Become a student. Learn from those around you who’ve got it down. Some people are just naturally good at color selection, but most of us – even those of us who design for a living – aren’t born with this gift. It’s a skill that’s learned, worked on, and sharpened. Who in your life has a good eye? Do you have a friend or fellow scrapbooker you could ask to help out? Invite her over to go through your stash with you and help you organize your paper into color groups. Pay her in chocolate, coffee, and good tunes. 😊 Or maybe she can hit the stores with you next time and help you narrow down your choices – I mean, how many different shades of green could there be?!? Just kidding, we totally need all of them. 😊 Make it a girls’ day. She’ll be glad to share her skills and you’ll get some valuable input!

If you don’t have a color-savvy friend in your life, learn from your favorite designers and companies! When you see a color combination you like, note the choices the designer made. And not just the big choices! Notice the smaller accent colors and the scale and proportion. Get some of our kits in your hands and really examine them. Take those favorite color combinations and match them with colors in your stash for future layouts. Here are a few of my favorite kits. 

All Bundled Up is one of my favorite winter color combos. It has some traditional elements, but the bright colors make me so happy!

For the Love of Scrapping is, of course, a big fan favorite. It's one of my favorites because of the fun color combination. Bright and grounded at the same time.

Family is Forever Navy is a personal favorite. These colors make me feel warm.

Grandparents has another classic color combination that works for so many different themes. This one is anchored in brown, so it gives another great option.

Their color combinations are beautiful and interesting to me, so I pulled the colors and I love to try to work them into new designs. Below, I've pulled out the color combinations from each of these kits so you can see them more clearly. When you see them like this, it's easier to see what other layouts you might work them into. The possibilities are endless!

At first glance, you wouldn't necessarily think "winter" with these colors, but they work! I'd also use this color combination for a number of other themes: birthday, school, celebrations.

I adore this color combo. Mostly because it's not something I would have pulled on my own. If I was looking at our whole Wall o' Paper, it's highly unlikely these would have ended up in my pile together. But look how GORGEOUS they are together!

These colors are right in my wheelhouse - deep blues and reds are my happy place - but I don't think I would have considered mixing in pink and olive green into the mix. All together, they create this beautiful little harmony.

I appreciate this combination because of the deep browns mixed into the color. This shows how some brighter colors can be placed together in the right sizes to create something beautiful. 

One other thing you'll notice is that we often take our color cues from the pattern paper that inspires us. In Family is Forever - Navy and Grandparents, the main colors come directly from the blends in the paper. 

Learn from designers! Follow us on Instagram and look at designs, but also look at photo composition. Watch some Ted Talks on design. Take an online art or design class. One of my favorite Ted Talks - one that revolutionized my views on color - is Beau Lotto's talk on Color Theory. You can find it here. It's a rule in my book to never count a color out. You can often take one color and, depending on what colors you surround it with, it can change it's look and feel. This talk explains why this happens and will show you some pretty incredible color tricks! A couple great starter online color classes are Color Art Theory and Color theory.

2. PLAY! Make some crazy choices just because it feels right. Don’t get pigeon-holed by ordinary or expected. We’re in the beginnings of the Fall season right now. It’s really easy to get stuck in the mindset of mustard yellows, pumpkin oranges, chocolatey browns, and rusty reds. 

They're tried and true Fall colors for a reason, but how can we make them pop?

Obviously, that’s a tried and true color combination – and you’re mirroring nature – but consider splashing an unconventional color in there. Try a navy blue or a deep purple. Splash in some light pink or light green.  Sometimes a color may seem too bold, but at the right size, it becomes a beautiful pop of color.

It's not a HUGE change, but if you work a little navy blue in there, it gives these Fall colors a depth it would not have without it.

Working a little pink into the mix gives it a lighter feel.

3. Hit up Pinterest – but not where you’d think. When I look for inspiration on Pinterest, I generally avoid using “scrapbook” as a search term. There’s a whole world out there full of design! I love to search for home décor and art. Artist and decorators are – of course – masters at color and scale, so I learn a lot from them. I often search for “wall art” or “home décor” and the topic I’m looking for and it’s a wealth of inspiration!

One of my favorite Pinterest searches is “color palettes”. It’s a fantastic resource. It pulls what looks like a paint sample from real photos and you can use that to find color combinations you may not have thought to put together. I also like to use these to choose shades. It’s one thing to say “put green, pink, and gray together” but if the shades are off, it would look garish. I love to use these to find a combo and then literally match my cardstock to them. 

Here's a few that I used to find a unique color combination with our cardstock.

I LOVE purples, but I usually gravitate to yellows, pinks, and tans when I work with them I loved the idea of this simple combination of purples and oranges.

Here's my selection using the color palette as a guide.

This palette invokes so many feelings for me. It's calming, beautiful, and beautifully mixes these cool colors together.

Here's my color selection using this palette as a guide. I love it SO much and I would not have pulled these colors to work together on my own.

I didn't pull colors for these, but I really love these color combinations. Pinterest is FILLED with gorgeous color palettes. Be sure to check them out!

I love this combo for alternative masculine layouts.

This combination gives me all the vacation vibes. 

I LOVE a feminine palette, but I get a little bored of pink. This gives me lots of ideas! 

Another feminine option. It's got pink, for sure, but those other colors can really balance it out!

These bold colors are fantastic!

This combination is classic and can work for masculine layouts, too.

4. My last suggestion is a little unconventional, but it’s changed my view of color completely. Download some color-by-number apps (Happy Color is the name of my favorite one). Color by number is one of my favorite things to do when I need something mindless or to wind down my day. I do it for fun. But shortly after I downloaded my now-favorite app, I realized that I was learning a ton about color mixing. There were colors I would have never thought to put together - combinations that seemed insane, but when you zoomed out and looked at the whole picture, it was gorgeous! I found myself taking a few more risks with color based on my increasing comfort with these color choices. I thought it was just a fun, free app, but I got a lot more out of it. You never know what you’ll find if you look! 

These are just a few of my favorite color tricks. I hope you’ve found one – or all of them – helpful! I’d love to hear your color tips or hear what you thought when you tried one of these tips. We always love to hear from you! Happy Scrapping! ~Chalsea

Add a little DRAMA!

You've heard me say it many times - when we design a page kit, we've got a few different customers in mind. There's the brand new scrapbooker. She's excited to get going, but just doesn't quite know where to start or what her personal style will develop into. There's our busy bee. She may have been scrapbooking for a while, but, man, life is crazy. She just can't fit it in right now. For these two ladies, our page kits can be a huge help! Just pick out your theme, assemble it, and add your photos - TA DA! You can get a whole album done in one day! 

Original Drama Page Kit

Then there's my personal favorite - probably because I identify with her so much - she's crafty and creative, but she's practical and time/cost conscious. She loves scrapbooking, but either doesn't have the space/time/money to transform a whole room in her house, or doesn't have the desire to buy every new gadget when there might be a better way. She can take our page kit and use it as her starting point - the hard work has been done, she can have the fun! And this has become my favorite challenge - to take our kits and revamp them (sometimes in big ways and sometimes with subtlety) into a layout that is both personal and beautiful. And that's what I've done with this week's new BONUS kit!

I loved the look of this original Drama kit, but I wanted to add just a few little personal touches to really add the DRAMA! 😉 Look how cute it turned out!

Personalized Drama Kit

The best part about this revamp is that it used just a few items from my personal stash and it only took a couple minutes! Here's a quick breakdown of the additions:

Add some simple curtains with cardstock and ribbon!

To me, the stage isn't "The Stage" without the big, red curtains, so I knew I needed to find a way to add some in. I decided adding some curtains to the photo mats would be the perfect way! I used less than a 4x12 of crimson cardstock and I simply freehand cut one curtain and then used that one to trace the others! Then, I grabbed this great, sheer black ribbon, and tied it around each curtain side, finishing it with a bow. Isn't it perfect?

Jeweled spotlight and stars make this page kit pop!

When I think of the stage, sparkly, bright lights come to mind, so I knew I had to find a way to get some glam in there. Sparkly gems to the rescue! I have a big container of random sized clear gems, so I pulled that out and began experimenting. I chose large gems to put in the center of each star so I could spread out some of the sparkle throughout the page. Then, I decided these spotlights needed a little work. I made a little pile of random sized gems and started moving them around on the beam until I found an arrangement that looked right. I used the largest ones on the bottom and, as I moved up, I transitioned to smaller and smaller gems and spread them out a little more. I just love this jewel-encrusted spotlight!

With just these few extra additions and only a couple creative minutes, I had a page kit that pumped up the Drama and makes me super happy! What would you do to make this great kit your own?

Fall Sports Revamp!

When we're scrapping, most of us want to create personal and beautiful layouts, but lots of things can get in the way. Time - it can take us between 4-8 hours to create a new layout from scratch from concept, design, set up, and then to cutting and adhering - and we do this every day!  Now, we could cut corners and make them much less creative, but we want them to be beautiful and worthy of our precious photos. When you think about each two page layout taking this long, it's no wonder it takes us FOREVER to complete a whole album! 

At that rate, it's an insurmountable task. That's why Down Memory Lane exists - to do the heavy lifting for you. We spend the time designing and cutting, and you spend your precious time making it yours. I love to encourage our customers to consider our kits a jumping off point for their creativity to come alive. I've taken our two new fall sports kits - Bump, Set, Spike and Eat, Sleep, Play Tennis - and done just that. Take a look at how I've made just a few simple adjustments to personalize them!

Let's start with our tennis layout: Eat, Sleep, Play Tennis. It's a wonderful layout - all on its own!

Eat, Sleep, Play Tennis Layout

I love this layout, but, as a former tennis player, there are more keepsakes than just photos that I'd want to display. In order to make that happen, I decided to make a little pocket out of the cardstock photo mats! This in an incredibly simple thing to do and you don't need anything additional!

Simple Hidden Pocket for Keepsakes!

 Instead of putting adhesive all over the back of the mat, I simply lined the left, right, and bottom sides of the photo mat with a very thin line of glue and pressed it down. The top is kept unglued, so - instant pocket! This is perfect for sliding extras into without sacrificing surface space or photo space on your layout! Save your schedules, your Win/Loss record, copies of newspaper clippings, whatever your heart desires!

Eat, Sleep, Play Tennis with my own little twist!

Our Bump, Set, Spike layout is great for your volleyball photos. I love the silhouettes! 

Bump, Set, Spike Layout

One of the difficult things when designing a sports layout is choosing which colors to include. When there aren't major colors involved in the sport itself, it can be difficult to work in color. But that's also the perfect blank slate to make it work for you! Just by adding a couple of pieces of cardstock in your school colors, you've got a spruced up page kit that will work beautifully with your photos. I've taken the colors of some of our local teams and switched up the kit to work for them!

Go Macks!

Go Crickets! Go Ramblers!

Go Huskies!

Go Thunder! Go Mounders! Go Orioles!

Go Old Abes!

Go Rails! Go Cards! ON WISCONSIN!

Go Hornets!

Go Blugolds!

 Take our kit, add just a couple items from your stash, and make something all your own! It's quick, it's often stash-busting, and it still results in a unique album that's all you. Happy Crafting!

What are your Scrapbook Villains?

I keep hearing the lament that scrapbooking is going out of style, but I beg to differ. Memory keeping is hugely important to most people – even social media has become a major place to record our special moments – who doesn’t love those memories that pop up each day from years past? Instagram is a wealth of memories in photo form. Add in Flickr, Shutterfly, “the cloud” and other photo storage platforms, and you’ll see millions of people who use the digital world to hang on to those precious memories.

No matter if you consider yourself a scrapbooker or not, who doesn't love looking back on these?

We scrapbookers – we memory keepers – are in very good company. What sets us apart is the effort to transform those photos into something beautiful, creative, and personal that we – and our generations after us – can hold in our hands. So what is it that holds most people – and, let’s be honest, us – from creating? I had some suspicions, but I wanted to know, so I polled our Facebook followers last week. We asked, “What are the reasons you don’t scrapbook as much as you like?” The answers were similar to the ones my non-scrappy friends list. It’s just tough to fit it into life!  

Here are a few of the comments from our Facebook crew:

Nancy B- “Overwhelming…don’t know where to start.” We hear you, Nancy. With so many options and directions and styles, where do you begin?

Betty E – “Overwhelmed. I prefer to scrap in chronological order and am very far behind.” And when you feel like you’re behind, it’s easier to say you’ll get to it tomorrow or give up all together. It’s a tough spot to be in!

Kelly O- “All of it!!! I can’t seem to find time and now I am overwhelmed on where to start.” It just spirals when we feel like we can’t get a step in! I feel you, girl!

Nichole S – “All. But mostly cost. Photos are expensive enough on their own, then add in the paper, scraps, buttons, washi tape, trinkets, etc.. I just cant justify it.” Cost is a big barrier for so many people. We are all about affordable and it adds up SO much when you purchase everything separately! Especially if you’re like I am and you impulse buy all that gorgeous paper, washi tape, and pretty gems…I don’t totally regret it…but they’re still sitting there unused.

We at Down Memory Lane understand this and making it easier to preserve your memories is the driving force behind our creativity and products!  We want to help because we are deeply committed to memory preservation – it’s right in our name! As a company and team, we seek to assist both brand new scrapbookers and seasoned veterans and everyone in between! When we design our kits, we want them to be multi-faceted. We know that time is a fleeting thing for some of our fans and customers. When we design a kit, we want people in a time-crunch to be able to pick out their layouts and simply adhere the die cuts and photos and file them in albums! We focus on making them user-friendly and ultimately, a beautiful addition to your album.

One of our best selling layouts: Drinks in Hand

We also know that we’re a stepping stone into creative scrapbooking for those who are new to the craft! Standing in the scrapbook aisle at your favorite craft store can be overwhelming! Where you do you begin? What’s the best paper? How much do I need? How to I color coordinate? It’s a lot to take in, and, let’s face it – it’s expensive to start from scratch! Starting with pre-designed and pre-cut layouts can ease new crafters into it. By examining how we put things together and learning the basics of layering, color choices, and design choices, newcomers can build their confidence and grow as a scrapbooker – while getting some of the memories scrapped and albums completed without spending a fortune on things you may or may not need!

We’re also a favorite of seasoned scrapbookers! When time, space, and money are crunched, we are a great starter step! Instead of starting with a totally blank canvas and having to hand craft everything yourself, our kits are wonderful for laying out the basics and letting your creative mind take it to the next level! We love it when our customers and fans show us how they’ve taken our kits and made them their own. It’s such a gift to be able to jump start their creative process and see where it takes them!

NO SCRAPBOOK VILLAINS ALLOWED!

Over the next few months, I want to take some time to really dig into these Scrapbook Villains. I’ll be sharing some of our favorite methods, products, and ideas we have in our Scrapbook toolbelt to get back to our favorite hobby. We’ll be looking at storage options and craft spaces. We’ll take a look at photo printing apps and programs that balance quality and cost. We’ll take a look at some design basics like color selection and techniques. As always, we’ll take some time with our kits to show you how you can use them as a starting point to create something personal and beautiful.  So what about you? What are the things that hold you back from the next level of crafting diva we all want to reach? In the comments, let us know what you’d like to learn more about and let us help you get there!