An Intro to My Eclectic Vintage Clean & Simple Style - Week #34

Hello! I'm so excited to be here on the Layout-A-Week blog as part of the design team.

I've been married to my husband Mike for 22 years, and we have a beautiful 12 year old daughter who has autism and several auto-immune disorders. I've worked in the scrapbook industry for about 16 years, including as an instructor, blogger, magazine editor, and product demonstrator. Many of LAOW's readers may know me from my websites Scrapbook Update or Craft Critique, or my time as founding co-host of Paperclipping Roundtable.

Even after all of that time working in the industry, I'll admit answering the question "what's your style" is a tough one for me. My style is a bit of a contradiction.

I've been a fan of a clean and simple design style since way back in the days of Simple Scrapbooks magazine - such a fan in fact that I was one of the winners of the only major contest the magazine ever ran, Coolest Albums.

That was in 2004. Even though I was doing clean and simple...notice the background paper I chose, a tiny vintage floral print. Despite that being in the days before vintage was super trendy, I was already drawn to it.

And then full-on vintage - with it's heavily embellished collage inspired pages - hit the scrapbook industry and I had a dilemma. I loved the look of the vintage products, but not the way I was being shown to use them. An important element of creativity (but one that a lot of people struggle with) is having the vision to create what you want, not how you think you should. After some trial and error, I have settled into a style that uses the beautiful products that I love, but showcases them in a mostly clean and simple manner, like in the Instagram layout below from my trip earlier this year to San Francisco.

But despite most of the elements being vintage, you'll notice that a few of the elements (like that chevron paper) are very graphic. Because, frankly, my style is very eclectic despite my love of vintage, and this layout summarizes that nicely.

When I do pocket scrapbooking, often the more graphic part of that eclectic can dominate, such as in this layout from my Frankfurt travel album.

There's a few vintage stye elements - a stamp or two, and some patterned paper - but overall the layout's elements are more graphic. I'm not sure what it is about doing pocket scrapbooking that makes me frequently shift over to the graphic side, but it happens fairly often.

Thanks so much for taking a walk through the evolution of my style with me. I'm really looking forward to sharing more here at Layout-A-Week, and to seeing the work of the rest of the team!