Arts ‘N Crafts Business Alliance

Colors have an amazing impact on our lives. From the red of our stop signs and traffic lights, to the ever important green of a dollar bill, color is integrated into every facet of our daily adventures. No where is this more clear, than in our art and in our artistic creativity.

Artists and designers are able to use color as a tool to capture our moods and emotions, to identify shapes and objects, and to convey messages. They use color almost like a gardener uses a shovel to dig in the soil. They poke us and prod us with harsh or depressing color mixtures, and they gently sway us or quiet our spirits with subdued or gentle pallets. Color can actually be the strongest element in any piece of artwork, due to the way it affects us on so many levels.

So, how about we look at a couple of the strategies for using color in our creative outlets and our designs, to have the greatest impact on our viewers and to help us become even more inspired.

Color adds a lot to any design, so we must be confident in our expression and use of it. There is a lot to learn from basic design theory, about color, so make sure you study color concepts thoroughly. For now, let us focus on two basics…

1. Experimentation is one of your most powerful strategies in using color. Never be afraid to try anything, with color, in your art. Discover relationships between different colors. Explore playful, soft, dark, bright, vibrant, and any other mixture of color with a fresh, new eye towards inspiration. Now, just to bring sanity back to the table, before you add new colors and inspirations to any piece you are already working on, please test your colors and combinations first. But the concept still rings true… experiment with and explore new colors.

2. Color wheels are another essential tool in any artist’s arsenal. Color wheels, paint chips, or even color reference books, like the “Pantone Guide to Communicating with Color”, or “Color Index: Over 1100 Color Combinations”, simplify the process of choosing colors by providing a reference for how colors work together. There is way too much to cover here, to make a color wheel understandable. Suffice it to say, whether you are a painter, a photographer, or any other artist, you will want some kind of color wheel, or color reference book, to help you get clarity on how colors relate and work together.

The most important thing to remember about working with color, in all your creative exploration, is to know that there is not, and may never be, a perfect combination. But, you can be confident in your own creative expression and artwork, if you will find colors that you enjoy, and that do not go against your own perception of great creative design.

Scrapbooking has been around for many years as a hobby. Unlike albums, scrapbooking can include more than just memorable photos. For more creative scrapbook hobbyists, their scrapbooks can include pieces of memorabilia: a rose petal from their first date, movie tickets to their first date, a poem written on a diner tissue, so on and so forth. Scrapbooking is an excellent way to preserve memories as well as a creative and positive outlet to channel emotions such as love, joy, gratitude and even longing. Scrapbooking is a form of collecting and compiling fond memories creatively.

Scrapbooks can have various purposes: for keepsake, as a going-away token for a best friend or a favorite teacher, or as a means of chronicling a part of your life in which you find the most significant memories with someone you love.

However, not all people take readily to scrapbooking. They hesitate at the thought of having to put things together for fear that it might not be what their recipients expect. But even the most non-creative person can put a scrapbook together if they follow these simple steps in starting with scrapbooking.

1. Choose Your Theme – What is the purpose of your scrapbook? Answering the question can make a lot of difference and can start you on the right track on scrapbooking. Themes can either be individual themes such as for a painter, for a teacher, for a friend, for a sister, for a new-born baby, or it can also be a group theme such as for an entire graduating class, for a family, for a group of friends. If you are making a scrapbook, it is important to keep that individual or group in mind while making the whole scrapbook: his or her favorite color, his or her favorite sport, his or her favorite line in a poem, etc.

2. Choose Your Photos – Photos are one of the major elements of a scrapbook. Photos capture memories and events in time and present them again and again in scrapbooks in different views. Choose photos that capture the emotion you want to evoke in your scrapbook. Photos that are clear and with up-close shots work best. Photos can be sporadically arranged in a single page or on two open pages of your scrapbook. Keeping them in odd numbers add variety and can subconsciously pique the interest rather than displaying photos in even numbers. As much as possible, use photos with people in them rather than exclusively displaying landscape photos without people all in one page.

3. Choose Your Colors – If you are using the scrapbook as a going away present, it would be thoughtful to use the recipient’s favorite color. However, the one making the scrapbook must keep in mind that each page should be decorated unique and different from the other pages. If you are displaying a photo, your whole page color theme may be built around a dominant color in the picture. For example, when making a concert scrapbook of your friend playing the violin in a dark green gown, use the color dark green to build your color scheme around for that particular page. Different color themes for each page adds variety and keeps your scrapbook interesting.

4. Choose a Focus Point – Each page should contain a focal point where the viewer’s attention may be drawn to the moment the page is opened. A good focal point need not necessarily be a photo; it can be a concert ticket stub, a dried leaf or dried petals, or it can also be a poem written on a tissue paper from the local diner. The thing is, anything ordinary can be transformed into something beautiful and meaningful with the right colors, the right set-up or arrangement and the right page decorations. Focal points are not only for visual purposes. They also give sentimental value.

5. Choose Your Texture – Scrapbook textures add interest, variety and layer to your scrapbook composition. Texture may be attained by bordering and layering colored materials one on top of the other. Texture can also be attained by methods of folding or crumpling art materials or using corrugated paper for decorations.

Scrapbooking is both a science and an art. It is a science in a way that it requires the organized and systematic, chronological collection of important event photos, and memorabilia. But it is also an art in such a way that it takes creativity and ingenuity to arrange these memories that can take its viewers back in time. It takes creativity and art to arrange these memories and make them worth reminiscing again and again.