Layout Deconstruction: Trick or Treat

I love sharing my digital scrapbooking and digital art journaling pages with my readers.  However, I think it might get a little boring just looking at the pages. For some people anyway. So I have decided to do a layout deconstruction from time to time. Mix things up a little. Today, I am going to deconstruct my Trick or Treat layout.

To begin, I want to let you know that everything on the page is from Little Somethings v.8 created by Tracy Martin Designs. I went with a photoless layout because I don’t have a lot of Halloween pictures since I don’t have kids, but I still wanted to create a fun Halloween layout, because I love Halloween.

This layout is a little different from most of my work of late as I only used one paper for the background. I usually use multiple papers layering them on top of each other or blending them together to give the background a different look.  But this time I only used one paper for the background.

I have used plenty of paint layers on this page. (Okay, I use plenty of paint layers on every page I make. I have fallen in love with paint over the last couple of years and I just can’t help but want to add more.) There are a total of six paint layers on this page. I placed one purple splatter paint layer behind the spider web in the upper left-hand corner of the page.  The other five paint layers are placed around and under the word art to help draw attention to the word and at the same time helping the word art to stand out on the page. There are two paint layers directly behind the word art, two to the bottom left and one toward the top right of the page.  I used the Lighter Color blending mode on the paint layer in the upper right-hand corner of the page so that you only see the lighter colors that are part of that paint layer.

Directly behind all the paint and the word art is a stamp element to help draw attention to the word art.  To the upper right hand-corner, above the paint layer that has been blended in to the background is a glitter element. Here are the shadow settings I used to help give the glitter a little lift without having the shadow overpower the glitter.

For the word art, I used a color overlay of red as it didn’t stand out like I wanted in black. I also added a slight bevel to lift the word art off the page a bit.  Here are the bevel settings that I used.

If you look under the word art, you will see a duplicate of the word art in yellow in order to increase the visibility of the word art on page. (The word art visibility was a big issue with this page, so I really had to make use of a lot of tools to help it shine.) The duplicate was created by selecting the word art, highlighting the yellow paper layer and then using Command+J (Control+J in Windows) to create a a copy of the word art in yellow.  I then increased the size of the yellow later just slightly so that it stood out from the original word art. I think it gives it a slightly painted look that I really like.

On the bottom right-side of the page, you will see a small confetti scatter. I used the confetti to keep that corner of the page from looking empty since there isn’t even really in paint in that corner.

In addition to the paint layers, stamp, glitter, confetti and word art, there are five more elements on the page.  In the upper left hand corner, I placed a spider web element that I then shrunk so that it did not over take the word art. I then added a drop shadow to give the spider web depth. These are the settings I used for the spider web drop shadow.

When I was done with the spider web, I pulled a spider element on to the page, duplicated three times and then placed the spiders in various positions on the web. I used the same drop shadow settings for the spiders as I did the glitter except the Size is only 5 pixels.  As tiny as the spiders are, the size of the shadow had to be really small.

Finally, I placed the candle, black cat and ghost shadows on the page so that they are arranged on top of the word art. I chose these three elements, because I think they are super cute and I think they definitely add to the Halloween feel of the page.  I have added a drop shadow to all three elements. (If you are new to digital scrapbooking using shadows on your page is very important. I wish this is something I had known when I first got started.)  I used the same settings as the ones above for the spider web.

Speaking of shadows, let me give you a little trick I learned on the web for picking the color of your shadow.  With the drop shadow setting box open, click the color swatch so that the color picker opens.  With the color picker open, click on an area of the background you would like to use for your shadow color and click on it.  You will then want to drag the white circle down to a dark area to help the color be more realistic.  Here is what the drop shadow color picker looks like when open. (BTW, the color shown is the shadow color I used for this page.)

With that, I have completed the deconstruction of my Trick or Treat layout.  I hope you enjoyed finding out a little more about how I created this page. Until next time, don’t forget to document your memories.

(Note: I am a member of Tracy Martin’s creative team. I receive free product in order to create pages using the product given.)