Amber here {Stolen Moments} and for this week’s Saturday Special, I thought we’d discuss how to get the most out of your templates. I LOVE templates, and use them ALL the time, so being able to use them over and over again {with a different result every time} is very advantageous to me.. Hopefully this will also be helpful to those of you on CT’s who sometimes get stuck with a template set you don’t really know what to do with.. come on – you know you’ve all been there.. As an example, here are two pages I did using the same template..

So, let’s go through this one step at a time..

1- This is the template I wanted to use – I liked the stacking of the papers and clustering of elements, however, the photo I wanted to use was tall and not wide….

2 – So I flipped the template and filled in the papers and photo.

3 – When I put the title where it was “supposed” to go, it just didn’t look right.. It got in the way of some of the element clusters, looked off-balance, and because the alphas I used where kind of hard to read, I thought it needed to be right side up..

4 – Switching the title placement worked wonders! But I also had another photo I wanted to use, so I put that in the place of the circle element cluster.. Remember, the different pieces of templates should be thought of as suggestions for composition – not a hard and fast rule written in stone of what should go where. I also got rid of the yellow paper strip, because I thought the horizontal line of the title took the place of that.. And just for fun, I moved one of the elements from the lower right corner of the photo closer to the bottom of the page to see how it looked for balance.

5 – I dressed things up a bit with a few more elements I knew I wanted to use, but it still looked really top heavy with all those other elements still left from the template. You’ll also notice I decided to put that yellow paper strip back in. {This is why digi is so awesome, and why I could never do paper scrapping – too indecisive}

6 – I replaced some of the elements with the foliage, and moved those from the upper right down to the lower right to help keep things balanced.. I did want something up top, though, so I opted for a “lighter-weight” element and used the string. I also replaced that element at the bottom of the page with something from the kit.

Finally – I flipped the journaling and replaced it with my own, decided against the sheriff star, and changed the color of the blue string to something a little less distracting. So now you can see how you can start with one template, and end up with something totally different that works for YOU!

And here’s my final using Happy Trails and Roped Alpha from our guest Faith True, as well as Scraps by Number: Just Call Me Sara by Stolen Moments..

Here are some awesome inspiration pages from our super cool CT. Check it out..

from Liz aka mommy22girls –

uses lower left temp

“I flipped the template and then rotated the photo, moved the stitches down, got rid of the journaling, moved the title, added a frame and additional elements.”

from quietangelsbob –

uses upper right temp

“I enlarged the size and shifted the boxes to the center and created a layout using School Boy by The Design Girl”

from Heidi aka scrappurple –

uses upper right temp

from Bonnie aka cursivesmile –

uses lower left temp

So show us what you’ve got.. If you use a ScrapMatters template, we’d love to see which one – simply use the shop image in your post, or if you use an off-site template, just show us your finished page.. Either way, let us know what you changed..

A few rules to remember…

-Post your pages in the “Saturday Special” gallery and link it back to the thread in the forum. You can receive an additional point for using new Scrap Matters products; please make a note of new products in your post.

-You have until the end of October to play along, then I’ll choose my favorite to receive an extra point.

-Remember no double dipping…your layout must be unique to this challenge.

-You don’t have to use Scrap Matters products, but we love it when you do!

Happy Scrapping!