Blast from the Past - Stamping and contrast pages

These are really old layouts. I came across them a few days ago while looking for something else. Since they were already scanned, I figured I'd post them for fun.

I did a lot of stamping in my early scrapping days.

I was a stamper before I was a scrapper, and I have quite a collection of stamps.

On the above page, I stamped a border, a background, and letters that I'd cut out.

For the layout below, I stamped my images on cardstock, cut them out and

glued them to the page. Definitely a time-consuming pain, but I still like

this page, even though it is definitely "dated."

The Easter layout below is still one of my favorites. It's simple, but it's a charming way to

use stamps to embellish the page. The left page background was created with stamps, which were also used on the journal box and tags. And yes, as you can see, I matted the focal point photo with decorative scissors, an indication of just how old these layouts are.

One other thing about each of the pages is that they use contrast in the backgrounds. The left sides of the layouts are a strong contrast with the right sides, but they still coordinate. It's a technique that I think can be effective, even though I haven't done any pages using contrast like this recently. I tend to think of this technique as "positive/negative." Using a solid color of cardstock for one side of the page but patterned paper for the other side gives variety as well as contrast. Using the patterned paper on the cardstock side to embellish is an easy way to tie the pages together so they coordinate. Of course, for these pages my patterned papers and matching embellishments were created by me, using stamps, instead of buying patterned papers and pre-made embellishments.

The Easter page was made with Stampin' Up stamps, the dinosaur layout was created with Close to my Heart stamps, and the fishing layout was done with mostly Darcie's stamps and possibly one or two Close to my Heart and/or Stampin' Up stamps.

Since these pages were made years ago, these are not stamps currently available (except perhaps the Darcie's). However, the basic ideas could easily be adapted to any page, if a simple layout is what you're looking for. It's certainly not trendy by today's standards.

Just for the record, I do adopt trends I like, but I don't really consider myself a trend follower. I frequently use older papers, embellishments, and whatever else suits me to make my layouts. My style also is more often "clean and classic" than product oriented (my term for the use of a lot of products on a page, which is very popular right now).