Hey, crafty friend! Can you feel it?! The more crisp morning air, the smell of pumpkin spice, the taste of hot apple cider? Autumn is my favorite season and so I was thrilled to be asked to create some projects with Spellbinder's Autumn Archives collection. 

While I created these with the same supplies to create both scrapbook pages, I created different shapes of embellishment clusters following the rule of thirds. 

What is the rule of thirds? It is a fundamental composition guideline used in visual arts like photography, painting and design. Simply divide an image into nine equal parts using two equally spaced horizontal and two equally spaced vertical lines.  The four points where these lines intersect are considered "hotspots" where the eye naturally gravitates, making them ideal for placing key elements of your composition. It can also help you in designing shapes of embellishment clusters based on those hotspots and segmented sections. 

For these two layouts, I used the diagonal composition (either direction) and a circular composition of embellishments around my photos. 

You can also design in a straight line (up or down in any of the segments), as well as a C shape. 

So let's start with the Documented Layout.

While I designed in a straight diagonal line, I chose to add die cut circles to the layout to make the linear embellishment cluster feel more natural. The circles also provided a place to design the ephemera, chipboard stickers and die cuts around. 

That circle shape also highlights the buttons on my nephew's outfit. I also chose the plaid patterned paper to cut circles from to highlight the gingham pattern of his shirt. 

And while this collection is all about autumn, You can totally create a masculine layout about documenting a moment using the non-autumn specific embellishments and papers, such as the typewriter, camera, buttons and the faux bois patterned paper. And of course I'm still firmly in the camp of "flowers can be masculine." I'm not into the dichotomous masculine and feminine notions--anyone can love flowers or cars! 

For the second layout I offset the circle to the right side and placed the photo and various sized mattes of cardstock and patterned paper to the bottom right of the largest matte. 

The bulk of the embellishments create a C shape embellishment line, but I added just a few small embellishments on the top left of the cluster. 

This layout is focused on the autumnal theme, with pumpkin ephemera, sunflowers in a traditional yellow, autumn leaves and the title Pumpkin Season spelled out with the Chipboard Alphabet Stickers and one of the regular chipboard stickers. 

I hope that you enjoyed this look at designing layouts based off the rule of thirds and that it helps you to create more balanced scrapbook pages! Until next time, happy crafting!

Adrienne

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Below are products that I used for this project.