Today we are talking
about preface pages. If you need them and why they sometimes make sense. First
off, do you need them? No you don't. Well that was easy right? So let's move on
to the next topic ;-) Not so fast, just because you don't need them doesn't
mean we can't talk about them right?
I think sometimes such
an intro page can be helpful to define your book and the story you want to
tell. For example, out trip to Canada included Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec.
Since all major cities look a bit alike it makes sense to show someone who
didn't went with us on this trip which city we are visiting on the next pages.
I also often encounter a
way simpler problem. I have a few more pictures left that I really want to
incorporate but they don't fit into any of the pages I created. So I like to
take these few pictures and create a preface page with them.
In my case I got super
lucky. Thanks to an upcoming Canada Day, Cricut had some free Canada cuttings
which I used here:
I used "Ruby"
cardstock from Close To My Heart and cut the Canada Map in the upper left
corner of my sheet. Yes, with the Cricut you can place the object just were you
want it to go. I removed the cardstock from the sticky mat after the cutting
was done. It left behind the cut outs which I thought make another great page.
Similar to the technique
with the title letters that I explained in last week’s post, I carefully placed
the map part on white cardstock and hold it in place with some washi tape. Piece by piece I took
the cut outs from the sticky mat and placed them back into the frame.
This time I positioned
the map in the lower right corner of the cardstock. Ones all pieces were glued
down I removed the template. I cut about 1/4" on the right and bottom off
and adhered it to a second sheet of white cardstock. So I used the positive and
negative of this cutting to create the base for two of my preface pages.
I also cut three city
titles for my pages and I picked 3-5 pictures from each city to go along with
the rest. Here are the pictures uncut that I chose:
Cutting a title is easy, but I
wanted a shadow for each to have them stand out from the page. The font that I
picked didn't came with a shadow, but that's not a problem. I used the
following technique to make my own shadows for each title. First I cut the
words Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec three times. Each one from black and ruby
cardstock and one more time from a white/gold paper I had left. You can see all
three layers here on the first page before I adhered them together.
My plan was to layer the
titles first the black, then the white and then the red. Well with a red
background that title wouldn't show right? So I layered all three different.
You might say "But wait, they are all cut at the same size, so how do you
get a shadow effect then?". Correct, all three are cut the same size and
when I adhered them together I simply moved them a bit off to the side, showing
just a bit of the color underneath. I added a few detailed pictures here so you
can see more clearly what I did with the titles.
All that is left now is to cut
down my extra pictures and arrange them with the pages and titles. I cut the
pictures to about 3"x4" more or less. I think they turned out pretty
nice. What do you think? This is an easy way to structure you pages a bit and
add some photos that you really like but don't fit anywhere else ;-)
Instead of creating individual
preface pages, you can use this technique to create your intro page for the
whole story. Take some of your favorite shots of the event you are scraping and
combine them on your very first page. This way everyone looking through your
book gets a glimpse of what is inside.
Well, this was a long tutorial this week but I hope you enjoyed
it. See you next week....
