Get out of your comfort zone!

Anybody who knows my scrapping style might know that I normally use lots of product with all  the edges inked, layered up on tons of foam pads and my layouts are usually so lumpy and jam packed that they don't always go in an album. I rarely embrace white space and find it hard to be a 'clean' scrapper. At the retreats, I often hear people in my class saying that they don't want to ink and distress everything and I sometimes try to encourage them to step out of their comfort zone and give it a try. So, I thought - time to step out of mine for a while.
So for September's design team work with Teresa Collins papers I decided to use white cardstock backgrounds and try to do clean and (almost) flat layouts.

In this first Layout, I wanted to put a border round the page, so, to keep the layout clean I did this by scoring from the back of the paper to give an embossed effect... (and look at all that white space!!)

In this Layout I used a patterned paper border and highlighted it by ruling a line around it. In this one I kept everything flat and simple and tucked a journaling card behind the photo ...

 

In the last example, instead of my usual haphazard way of packing elements onto a layout I decided to make my page very straight and ordered. This way even though there are a lot of elements on the page I still end up with quite a clean look.

 

 

So- off you go, stock up on some white 12"x12" and have a go at some clean scrapping...unless this is your normal style, in which case get your ink out and I'll see you at the retreat!