ScrapMentor - Scrapbooking 101

Week 12 - Art Theory

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Finding Inspiration in Unusual Places - Products

Product packaging is a fantastic source of inspiration for scrapbookers. The whole goal of product packaging is to get consumers to purchase a product. Companies invest billions of dollars into figuring out what pleases the eye, and how to attract attention. Apply some of the elements of product packages to your scrapbook layouts, and you are sure to catch eyes, yourself!

A trip to the grocery store can be about more than just getting the gallon of milk and dozen eggs you need. Some time when you are not in a hurry, take a leisurely stroll through the aisles of your local supermarket. Look at the boxes, bags, and bottles with a new appreciation. Instead of just trying to figure out which brand of canned peas is the better buy, figure out which has the best label. Is there something there you can apply to your next layout?

I did this exercise myself, and here were the results:

Never in a million years would I have thought to put red-orange, red, yellow, brown, and blue together, but somehow it works! The brown is a warm, almost orange tone, so everything except the blue in this palette is on the "hot" side. In my layout, it gives blah-colored photos just the right amount of "va-voom" they need. The tiny splash of blue not only ties in the blue ribbon, it gives the eye a place to rest from the other, warmer colors.

I originally took this picture thinking the colors were what spoke to me, but when I looked at the photo later, I realized it was the segmentation that I really loved. The pie wedges are a fun, unusual way of presenting photos. This technique has the added benefit of giving you a way to crop out some ugly backgrounds while still leaving the best parts of the photos intact.

It doesn't have to be the whole layout that comes to you from a product package - it could just be one single element. The glossy red jello shapes on the Jello box were so eye-catching, I knew I had to drag out my Diamond Glaze and reproduce it somehow. I found this single picture in my photo box of two of my kids having cherry-topped cookies, and decided to make a glossy cherry of my own by applying Diamond Glaze to the top of a round red cardstock punch. The recipe is behind the journaling, and having the cookie peek out from behind it encourages the viewer to flip the journaling back to find out what more there is to see.

These were only three of the many, many product inspirations I found around me. I think they really helped to get me out of my creative box (pun intended), and get me to look both at my pictures and the products around me in a brand new light. I hope this lesson has done the same for you!

Homework

Take a spin through the grocery store, and bring your camera along. Whatever grabs your attention has something to offer you. Figure out what it is and use it! Create at least one layout that is somehow inspired by a product's packaging.

Supplemental Reading

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