How to Create a Scrapbooking Focal Point

It may sound easy, but creating a scrapbook page is actually quite a bit of work.

When you are putting together a layout you are telling a story to the person who is looking at it without having to say a word. In order to do this you are going to want to be sure you have a scrapbooking focal point.

A focal point is where your eye is going to be drawn to and settle on when it looks over the page. This is important to have because if you are missing it anyone who looks at your scrapbook can actually become very easily overwhelmed by everything on the page, and they may not understand the point of each page. There are a few easy tips that can actually help you to create the focal point that you want to be sure that you have.

Bigger is Better

Do you have photo that you want to be the most important thing on the page? If so the easiest way to do this is to make sure that that is the largest picture on the page. When selecting the main photo you will want to be sure that it tells the story that you want told. For example, if you are highlighting your daughters third birthday you may want to choose a photo that is of her and her birthday cake with three candles on it. Then take this photo and ensure that it is the biggest sized picture on the page. You can accomplish this by either enlarging the picture itself or reducing the size of the other photos on the page.

Simplify and Shrink

Your scrapbook page will undoubtedly include accompanying photographs, and to ensure that these enhance your page instead of distracting you will want to either crop or shrink the photo. A smaller photo will keep you from upstaging the main photo or cropping a very busy photo to simplify it can help as well.

Frame the Picture

Simply gluing the pictures onto the scrapbook page will not create the finished look that you are going for. Instead you may want to create a frame around each of your photos with matt board. You can use a single matt, a double matt, or even a triple matt to really highlight your page. Be sure that you save the most intricate matting for the most important picture on your page.

Direction

A great way to vary where you eye travels on a page is by varying the direction of the photos. If your main picture is a vertical picture you might want to use horizontal pictures for your accompanying photos. This variety in direction can actually really make your page visually interesting to look at as well as making it easy to focus on the most important images.

Close ups are Key

Photographs that are close ups are wonderful to use as the focal point of your page. A picture that is magnified and featuring a lot of detail will instantly grab your eye so you should try to choose this type of picture whenever you can if you want it to be the most important image on your page. Consequently, you will want to avoid this type of shot for the accompanying photos because you do not want them to upstage the most important picture on your page.

Creating a focal point on your page is not as difficult as it may seem. The most important thing to do is to take a fresh look at your page and truly see where your eye is drawn to. Is it going where you want it to? If so then you are on the right track, if not you know you need to make some changes.

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