A More Unified Look

Hi, everyone.

Today was another wonderful installment of Paula's OWH Design Bootcamp. This month's topic was about creating a more cohesive relationship between a card's elements or, in other words, the principle of unity.

Original Card

Paula challenged us old-timers to go back to a past card and think about how we would rework the design to create more unified look. I have to admit this was rather painful. At the time that I made the card at the right, I thought it was a pretty good little card. After all, I had created an adorable free-handed ghost -- with brads for eyes, nonetheless, and a clever computer-generated sentiment. What's not to like?

Well, as it turns out, there's quite a bit not to like, starting with three "focal points" spread around the card: ghost, pumpkins, and sentiment.

 The Reworked Layout

In the revised layout, I'm going with:

• a much better defined focal point,
• bigger elements,
• a strip of paper that pops the sentiment,
• a physical connection among the ghost, sentiment, and pumpkins, and
• a few (odd in number) brads under the sentiment to give it a little extra emphasis.

One thing I did get right in the original was creating a contrast by placing the ghost on dark color paper. Seems like a good thing to keep in the revision.

Parting Thoughts

The original card had a few Stickles -- an OWH no-no. This may have been a card made for nephews, although I made the mistake of using Stickles on some of my OWH first generation cards. :(

Thanks, Paula and Sandy, for another fabulous Bootcamp session. I've really learned so much this year. Hope it shows in the revised sketch!

Thanks for stoppin' and happy scrappin'!