Bruce the Chef

By: Tom Ambrozewicz

When designing pages for your scrapbook, the two most important
elements will be design and color. Even if you have great designs,
without brilliantly coordinated color schemes, your album will be
nothing more than mediocre. Choosing good color combinations does not
have to be difficult. By following a few simple steps, you can use
color to make a statement in your album.

Black and White

The two most effective colors to use in your album are black and white.
Both create a clean slate for your pictures and embellishments. White
tends to hide as a background color, while black will give you a bolder
look. If you have black and white photographs, these two colors work
very well on the page, but your pictures will stand out more if you
also add a third and maybe even fourth color to the mix. Beware of
using too much color with black and white pictures; you will distract
the eye from the photograph.

Contrasting and Complementing Colors

Just as black and white are opposites, every color has its exact
opposite, and these two colors usually work well together because they
balance one another on the page. To find a color’s opposite, you can
use a color wheel. The most basic pairs are purple and yellow, orange
and blue, and green and red. Another way to group colors is by using
complementing colors. Three colors that are next to one another on a
color wheel (blue, purple, and red for example) will create a nice
effect.

Color Families

Yet another way to think about colors is to chose a single color (brown
for instance) and use all the tints and shades of that color family
(tan, medium brown, chocolate for instance). This works stunningly well
with black and white photography as well, just as black and white do.
You may even try using all the colors in a family plus black and white
for a modern look.

Choosing Colors

Once you have an initial color to use as a starting point, choosing
colors to create your layout is not difficult. However, how do you
choose that first color? If your page has a holiday theme, that might
be easy, but in all other cases look at your photographs for a cue. If
your subject matter has bright blue eyes, for example, use blue papers
that will showcase this. Also try to pick colors that will complement
the idea behind the pictures-a child’s birthday party will probably
look better with bright colors than natural browns and greens. In the
end, go with your gut and experiment with color and design in your
everyday life, and use this as inspiration when creating pages.

About the Author:

Tom Ambrozewicz is one of the pioneers in using breakthrough audio technology on his web sites. You can read, you can listen to professional narrator reading to you or having MP3 files ready to download if you hate to keep printed files. You can check all scrapbooking tips at Ask-How.info now.

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