Oscraps

So here we are at the beginning of the New Year! It still has that New Year shiny look and new car smell. Have you made any resolutions, goals, or ideals for your year? I don’t really like to make any because life just happens sometimes and I’m not really good at giving myself lee way if I screw up. One thing I AM focusing on is being a better scrapper at the end of the year than I am right now. I am wanting to focus on learning to make my own artsy paint splooshes and brushes! We’ll see in a year how I did!!

Today is the wrap up of Robin Williams’ Design Principles of Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity. Repeating the concepts we’ve already talked about, Contrast is the enhancement of the apparent brightness or clarity of a design provided by the juxtaposition of different colors or textures. Repetition is the key to attractive, consistent designs. It creates visual connections and establish a strong visual style. Repetition can be reflected in the use of the same or similar colors, shapes, lines, fonts, and other elements, and it differs from its other principles because it is not always meant to be noticed. Alignment is an arrangement of groups or forces in relation to one another. We round out the principles with Proximity.

Proximity is very simple: things that are related should be nearer to each other, and things that are unrelated should be placed further from each other. The way we place things on our page should reflect this. In art journaling many things are placed willy nilly purposefully, and that’s okay too. Again, you have to know the rules before you can break them.

You can tie in Proximity and Alignment to make a really good Title for your pages. If you have journaling, you can have your title and journal blocks close to each other so they flow effortlessly. This is seen more in regular scrapping, but art journaling with actual journaling can use this too. It is a little hard to find a page to show you what I mean because journaling isn’t big lately in scrapping. It’s going through a real big paradigm shift to more pages with less photos, using AI (artifical intelligence) photos, and not so much scrapping personal memories anymore. I’m not sure I personally like the change, but it is there nonetheless.

Here is one that I found that shows the title with smaller words underneath that tie each of them together. The title “It’s Okay” is tied to the journaling by it’s proximity, and it uses all the design elements! Contrast = Bold title, chose a different font with thin lighter lines, Repetition = color, Alignment = left justified text, and Proximity = the title and the journaling are bumped up against each other without a large space between them.

“It’s Okay” by SeniorGal

And with this, we wrap up Robin Williams Design Principles! With the new year, we have a new challenge over at oScraps. January’s challenge led by Sonja. All January we will be art journaling about different aspects of the word Reflect.

January: Reflect

Choose a word that reflects on the past year or use the word “reflect” as a title.
Create a page that showcases your reflections, using colors and/or pictures or images that represent the highs and lows of the previous year.

Remember, you can create any style of page or other project that you’d like to create. It’s entirely up to you as long as it’s within the spirit of the challenge. Although I’d love to see some more travelers notebooks in the galleries (Vicki Robinson has some great ones).

Sonja has given us a great example here:

CREDITS:

• My Choice Digital Scrapbooking Collection Bundle by Lynn Grieveson
• Accounted For Brushes and Stamps for Digital Scrapbooking by Lynn Grieveson
• ArtPlay Palette Reflections by Anna Aspnes
• Artful Memories Travel Journal Papers by Vicki Robinson

Come join us and play! It doesn’t matter if it’s your first page or you are a seasoned veteran – all are welcomed!!

Happy New Year!