School Album : Kindergarten Layouts by Kris

I think part of the reason I'm dawdling on my son's school album layouts is that since he's my "baby", once I am done all of his Kindergarten layouts, I'll never be able to do those kindy layouts again! There are certain stickers and embellishments that really don't apply so well in those later school years, so I think the last layout in his Kindergarten years section will be an entire montage of classroom-themed items from crayons to counting aids!

At least I did finally get started on his first layout of Senior Kindergarten (also known as "kindergarten 5")... I continued to keep some of the colours and themes consistent with the rest of the album (bright colours, white rub-ons, geometric shapes, buttons, and contrast), while still giving the new layouts their own look.



This layout, for the First Day of Senior Kindergarten, starts out with a great background that has squiggly lines in primary colours. On the left side, two matted 4x6" photos (one cropped a little to show more of the frame), with an embellishment of a scalloped circle with layers on top - a paper-pierced orange circle that's "popped" out with dimensional adhesives, and a green inner circle with a white rub-on star. I wanted to keep the picture of my son and the bus un-cropped because it really shows the size difference!! He is still so teeny tiny compared to that big huge bus, even with his special hat to make him a bit taller (that was the school's way of identifying which kindergarten class each child was in, based on colour). The journaling block in the bottom left corner has white rub-ons for "First Day" and the numbers in the blue circle, and a black rub-on letters for "SK". The journaling is in white gel pen. The tiny green button is a cute little accent. In the right corner we have the third matted 4x6" photo - you can barely make out my son's little face in the 2nd window.

For the more decorative area of the layout, the photos in the top right side are matted closely together on one piece of card stock but are from two different photos, showing how large my son's new backpack is compared to himself! The extra mat underneath has a very pretty scallop "lace" border - I have really been going nuts on this new border punch since getting it a couple months ago. The flowers in red and orange were cut using a die cut and my Cuttlebug, and the center of the flower was created using a clear "Stickle". I made a circle underneath it in silver gel pen before adhering the Stickle with clear glue and I really like how this effect turned out. Then another couple buttons to the right of the flower.

Two visual techniques used in this layout are that of the "Triangle" of focus and leaving some white space for your eye to focus on. I can't for the life of me remember where I first learned about the Triangle effect, but since then I have been aware of it when doing scrapbooking and really any other design as well! The idea is that if you create a triangle, anchored with strong embellishments, you draw the eye of the perceiver to the content within that triangle. And what's at the very center of my own triangle of focus? My adorable small son, about to board his big bus, of course!



So those are all the details on this layout! I hope you've discovered some new techniques to try to play around with the next time you're putting together a scrapbook page or other design project.

The two other pages that went along with the featured layout didn't turn out quite so nicely, which is why I didn't include them. We can be our own worst critic sometimes, can't we? The layout that is right beside the "First Day of SK" layout in the 12x12 album was one I spent a lot of time on and ended up pulling apart partially and re-doing!! Those other layouts can be found in the "Avery's School Album" folder of my Scrappy & Stampy Gallery!

Thanks again for the honour of being a featured artist here on the Ideas for Scrapbookers blog and I hope you enjoyed seeing my work! :)

Kris (a.k.a. krismom)

(CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT KRIS)