If you are stumped and looking for inspiration, scrapbook layout galleries are a perfect place to check for new ideas. Whether you are an experienced scrapbooker or just starting out, galleries offer thousands of layouts in hundreds of themes.
LoveToKnow Scrapbooking Layout Galleries
At LoveToKnow Scrapbooking, we've created several galleries with projects for you to use as inspiration when designing your own pages.
Other Scrapbook Layout Galleries
- Scrapbook.com has over one million layouts in their gallery. The layouts are organized by visitor rating, colors, styles, techniques, and themes. The layouts created with paper are separated from the digital layouts to make it easier to find the appropriate one for your type of project.
- Paper Wishes includes hundreds of inspirational photos in their Scrapbooking Ideas Gallery, and many of them are of page layouts. Fortunately, you can sort just for those pages, but you might get even more layout ideas from some of their card projects as well.
- Creating Keepsakes, which was one of the first scrapbooking magazines on the market, also has a gallery that spotlights both readers and professional contributor's works. While not as large as some of the others, Creating Keepsakes' gallery remains a popular choice for followers of the magazine.
How Online Galleries Work
Most layouts posted to website galleries are designed by everyday scrapbookers instead of professionals. Typically, if the layout is published in a print magazine, contractual requirements prevent the designer from showcasing the same layout in public online galleries until after the magazine hits stores. If you encounter a layout posting that states "removed for publication" this is what it means. Once you have gotten ideas from the gallery and created your own wonderful layouts, consider posting them to an online gallery so others can enjoy too.
The Art of Scraplifting
To make the most of your online gallery search experience, it is often best to have an idea of what you are looking for. For example, if you have a specific color of paper and embellishments you want to use or a set of photos from a birthday party, it is much easier to find a layout or two that you like enough to get inspiration from. Taking ideas from another person's layout and incorporating them into your own layouts is known in the scrapbooking world as "scraplifting".
This can be as small as using the same font for the title or as extensive as the same paper, embellishments, and photo placement. As the saying goes, "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery". If you plan to submit your layout for contests or publications, however, be sure not to copy extensively. Most contests and publication submission guidelines require the layout to be your creation in its entirety, including the design. This rule does not prevent you from submitting work if you happened to get design tips from layouts in online galleries, as long as the overall design and work is your own.
