Thoughts on "Grounding" Your Photos

I thought I better add the "your photos" phrase to my title so no one confuses it with grounding my kiddos :) It was once again my turn to design for Thinking*Through*Design, and this time the thought is on grounding your layouts.  Essentially what that means is giving things weight so it doesn't seem like they're floating on a page.

I have come a long way in grounding photos since I first began scrapping.  Case in point, I'm going to be brave and post one of the first layouts I ever did. The pictures are floating all over the page and nothing is giving the page structure. It's all cardstock and stickers. Apparently I had no idea what patterned paper was... Oh, and I just noticed the top right picture is Ian looking off the page; that's a no-no in design, too.



Fast forward four years and thanks to designing most of my layouts off of a sketch or scraplifting a layout I like, I've subconsciously learned the importance and how-to of grounding.  But because I usually do base my layouts off something, I challenged myself with this design to see if I could ground a layout without basing it off of anything in particular.


I've done a couple layouts lately involving paper (all of it Fancy Pants line) where I thought, "When will I use that?"  It's taught me that apparently the right pictures will come along to use with the paper.  These are of Ian and Grandpa Dan just hanging out in our living room.  I usually base my color scheme off my photos. I thought the subdued color of the background went with with Dan's shirt, and using blue was an automatic.  There is a line of pink running through the plaid in Dan's shirt, which is where the dark pink paper and accents come in to play. Plus, the pink really adds some pop to the otherwise subdued colors.

When grounding this, I knew I wanted there to be an intersection of lines at the photos (hence the red vertical and horizontal punched strip).  Using large die cuts, in this case a heart I cut out, is a great way to anchor something to the page.  I tried a ton of different things in the top, right corner, and eventually settled on the banner. I was trying to avoid using a banner because it's my go-to thing lately for empty space at the top, but it was the best fit. Perhaps there's a reason its my go-to thing..