I started out as a clean-and-simple style scrapper because I had zero skill at clustering or applying elements to my page. Ever heard the term "sticker sneeze"? Where it looks like someone just sneezed a bunch of elements across the page with no rhyme or reason to it? Yeah, that was me when I tried to get fancy.
So this was largely my "native" scrapbooking style for years:
But I've always loved the look of layered, detailed clusters and the cool effects we're able to create digitally that you can't easily do in a traditional format. It took me a while to figure out how to use layered templates properly - it was actually a couple of
@Cheryl Ashcraft's videos that helped me get the hang of how to place flowers and leaves on a template and rotate them and build visual triangles and balance out your colors.
And then my scrapbooking was totally "Level: Unlocked" when I started extracting element clusters from my templates and building my own library that I can mix-and-match on layouts.
I'm still not the most artistically inclined scrapper (after all, I'm a SugarBabe for my
writing skills, not my layout ones) but these days, I'm pretty pleased with my more intricate layouts.
One of my all-time favorites:
And a couple more with clusters I like:
