Bye-bye Triple Mats!

My layouts have become boring. There, I said it. Well, actually I wrote it.

I have been looking at my pages, especially the martial arts pages for the D's (husband, daughter and son) and they are not at all exciting. Triple or double matting, the same font in all three books (QK Mini Indigo) and not very exciting embellishments. I have a Kanji Strength stencil and stamp and two sizes of that martial arts die from Delta Die Cuts (which is now closed and thus no more help in that area.) Let's not forget the QK Kimono - which is a pain to alter to make it match the ghees.

I had to do something. First, I need some fresh embellishments. I looked on line and found Kanji. I found Fire, Danger and Father. Those were easy to convert to .gsd files and they give a punch to the pages. Then I found more figures via Google images and converted them. Luckily Sherri had a fantastic sale on QK Rev dies and I bought the Chinese Lanterns. They are terrific - and can be used with the Kanji symbols and Delta Dies - thereby increasing my embellie options.

The triple matting had to go - too much wasted space and serious limitation on how many pictures per page. I am not creative enough to branch out on my own - that's how I got into this rut to start with. Luckily I remembered about the Deluxe Design's Colorblocking Books. I got the second one at GASC and the first one via ebay. I also picked up a few of their templates.

Long story short (I know, too late!) but they were the final piece to my scrapbook liberation. Looking at the books and playing with the templates (I only used the first one exactly), I have managed to make much more dynamic pages. I am able to get up to four pictures on a page, plus journaling and embellishments.

So, no more triple mats. Maybe no more patterned paper, either. I need to play with that since the two I have done with pp didn't turn out as well as those I have done with solid colors.

Of course, border dies are a whole 'nother matter.....