A Swirl Heart for Your Romantic photos!

First I just wanted to say how excited I am to be joining the team of artists here at “Ideas for Scrapbookers.” This is a wonderful opportunity to share inspiration, information and collaborate with all of you who are as enthusiastic about scrapbooking as I am!

Since February is the month we bring our focus on relationships and give attention to those special people in our lives, I created a template you can use to scrap those “Valentine” moments that are just a few days away. This template is simply a heart shape incorporated into a swirl I drew broadly across a piece of cardstock. If you are adventurous you can even try drawing one of your own! Here is the template.



I put together two examples of how the template could be used. The first is fairly simple with a single photo using the heart swirl and a simple band of patterned paper on a solid background. This layout uses only a couple of parts from the template.




On a layout like this you can have fun embellishing your highlighted photo with any number of items. There is plenty of space for flowers, flourishes, die cut butterflies, etc. I love to add flourishes to my layouts so I chose a fancy flourish to adorn both the top and bottom of my layout. I added a flower I made from coffee filter paper which I painted with water based ink. You can purchase water based ink in small bottles, generally referred to as “re-inkers” for stamp pads. My flower is painted with the color “Pretty in Pink” from Stampin Up. Another great product for coloring coffee filter flowers is Glimmer Mist.

The second example uses all the template pieces. My layout incorporates 4 photos, one inside the heart and 3 filling the template band that runs through the center of the layout.



I didn’t draw specific divisions in the wavy band of the template because you could have an equally enjoyable layout using more photos, or even less. The photos you have available should dictate how you divide up this wavy line. To bring emphasis to the heart, I choose to use a full color photo inside the heart and black and white photos in the wavy band. I used patterned paper for the template pieces running along the bottom of the layout. When I had all my pieces cut and laid out I decided that my black and white photos didn’t have enough contrast with my pink background paper, so my wavy line was getting a little lost. To bring attention back to the wavy shape, I took my template piece and traced my wavy line on my striped paper. I then added the stripe at the top of the wavy line shape. This re-emphasized the template shape and was a nice repetition of the pretty stripe paper. I distressed my patterned paper template pieces to give the layouts sections further definition. To finish the layout I added a handmade flourish at the top and repeated my flourish look by journaling in curvy shapes in the open space beneath the heart. I created the flourish by dotting iridescent Candy Pink and Watermelon 3D paint on clear craft plastic. When the flourish dried I simply cut it out. You can place clear craft plastic on top of any flourish picture to use as a guide to place your dots. This is a fun and inexpensive way to create flourishes and they can be any color you want! Hope you all take some memorable romantic photos to scrap!