Design Elements – My Style Journey

This is the final post in my style journey series.  I have already meandered through The Basics and Page Arrangement.  Now we'll talk about Design Elements.  Although there are nearly endless embellishments to use (and I own a hefty smattering of them), I noticed two elements in particular that frequently appear on my pages.

CORNER ROUNDING

(This layout was inspired by the "Happy Parents" layout below!)

While I do have a love of straight lines, I tend not to love hard corners much.  I use my corner rounders a lot.  I think it helps to make my leading lines more fluid and continuous than choppy and abrupt.  I especially like rounding two of the four corners to create a little more design interest.

It really is a simple thing: nothing fancy in the slightest, yet still effective to me.  I’ve been eyeing the Cropadile two-in-one Corner Chomper and can’t wait to have it.  I use both my ¼ inch and my half inch corner rounders with regular frequency, so it will be nice to have one tool that cuts both sizes.

CLEAN AND FLAT

No lumpy bumpy layouts for me: no bulky flowers, no metal or charms and rare chipboard.  I don’t mind distressing edges but not whole pages.  My style is definitely not shabby-chic, vintage, grunge or steam punk.  (While I love the look of steam punk, it’s just not how I design.)  My go-to embellishments are cardstock die cuts (or punches), buttons and pearls/dewdrops.  I’m starting to get into stamps and a little bit of ribbon.

While flipping through my albums, I found I disliked the pages with stickers and pre-designed borders the most.  I prefer to "frame" my layouts, more than "border" them.

Guess that means I can give away my deco scissors (except the scalloped ones!) and put all my stickers in to the next LSS garage sale!  Some stickers are okay, if they are large focal ones or dimensional but no longer will I buy the ones that came in a pack or a large sheet just because I thought was getting more stickers for my money.

SUMMARY:
To recap, my own personal style is:

• Big Titles
• Lots of Cardstock
• No particular colour preference
• Good use of negative space, preferably via photo clusters
• Straight-lines paired with corner rounding
• Clean and flat

There.  Now that I have examined my own work, I know what I should and should not buy.

DO BUY:

• cardstock,
• die cuts/punches/stamps
• buttons
• pearls/dewdrops/rhinestones
• corner rounders

 DON'T BUY:

• Patterned paper stacks
• Anything just because I like the colour
• Brads/Eyelets
• Stickers
• Ribbon (I have enough for the amount I use!)

I hope this personal guide can help you review your own style and cut your frivolous shopping in half too!