In today’s episode, let’s look at a way to really save time in your scrapbooking efforts, and that’s by “scraplifting” or using templates or sketches!

You don’t have to always reinvent the wheel with every page you make.  If you see a layout you like, use the basic layout on your own page!  Using your own colors, papers, embellishments and photos will make it your own!  (If you post your page in an online gallery it’s nice to credit who inspired you.)

Templates can really speed a page along, especially if you are digital scrapping.  Page maps/scrap maps are like a blueprint to follow to create a page.  Remember that you can get a totally different look simply by rotating or flipping a template or page map!  Sometimes the orientation of the original is not a good fit with your pictures or other elements of your page.  By rotating or flipping the design, it may better fit your needs.  So, go ahead and scraplift or get a head start using a template or a sketch someone else has put together!

Here’s an example of taking an idea, rotating it to the right 90 degrees, and then flipping it horizontally so that the title could be on the left and leave journaling on the right.  You can see the original design was slightly changed to meet the needs of the new page.  The patterned paper was removed and instead of completely coming up with a design from scratch, we have a new page that will be completely different!  It’s interesting to see that by rotating and flipping it, the two embellishment represented by the circles, have ended up in the same positions around the photo, the top left and bottom right!