Donna is under the spotlight this week with a gorgeous strongly coloured photograph that had to guide each of the dt's colour choices. Though each layout turned out differently, a strong sense of donna's style can be identified in each one.
Donna by Caz:
From the minute I saw Donna’s gorgeous photo I knew I was going to enjoy making this page and what better product to use to highlight this sweet photo of her daughter than Crate Paper’s Sweet Branch Collection.
On checking out some of Donna’s latest work I noticed a few things that have been popping up in each of her layouts. One of these is the white space that she leaves around the edges of her layouts, with the photos and embellishments centralised. Donna uses lots of hand-cut shapes from the patterned papers she uses which I have emulated here with the Crate die-cuts and they are often curled or lifted to give some dimension to the page. She sometimes incorporates a little journaling spot amongst these and nearly always handwrites on her pages. Her titles are not always an obvious part of the layout so I have used the small ‘kindred spirits’ rub-on as a title on this page. And lastly she often includes a little group of matching buttons/brads or bling in a cluster.
I really enjoyed scrapping like Donna, not only because of the beautiful picture she gave us to work with but maybe because I see some similarities to my own ‘style’.
Donna by Suz:
I have long been an admirer of Donna and her inimitable style, in fact i like to think i had a hand in her early 'discovery'! Like all of us though Donna's style has changed and developed and she has certainly honed her skills and certain elements on her pages to create an easily recognisable but unique look.
One of these elements are her titles. I love that she will often make you work to read - and even find - her title. They don't necessarily read from left to right or even appear in the right order so sometimes you have to turn the words around in your head until they make sense, which they invariably do.
In general Donna doesn't journal a lot on her layouts, she will let the photo do the hard work. And her photography skills are such that her photos do tell a thousand words, and more.
She has mastered white space in a way that few can, and her layouts almost always convey a sense of peace, a serenity, and a cohesion of colour and design, often creating within an implied central square if not a literal one.
Her love of SEI products is well known and though i did manage to slip in a few epoxy flowers, another love of hers (particularly for background cardstock) is BasicGrey which features highly in this layout.
Finally, she will often use unpredictable colour combinations with high contrast (often black and white) photos to stunning effect.
Donna by Donna:
When scrapping her own photo, Donna couldn't let the girls down and use something other than SEI products! If there's one thing that denotes Donna's unique style, it's her preference for SEI's versatile range of papers, chipboard, buttons and stickers. Also, in sticking with her usual 'thing', Donna has kept the layout fairly simple with plenty of negative space.
She has included a few little 'treasures' here and there, including one of her favourite Tinkering Ink products (Finery) and an oversized BasicGrey 'Cherish' sticker as part of her title. The simple title 'Cherish Each Other' is another typical aspect of Donna's work.
Her layouts usually feature a single photo with all things directing the eye back to the photo - Donna lets the photo do most of the 'talking', but just in case the story isn't perfectly clear, she's added a little journalling to give the photo some context.
the last word: Donna on Caz and Suz:
What can I say!! Suz you definitely 'get' me. And yes, you did play an enormous part not only in my 'discovery', but also in my development as a scrapper. Thanks Suz! Love it. Love it. Love it!
And to Caz! Wow. You're a clever little spy aren't you!? lol. You're perfectly spot on as far as I'm concerned. Think maybe you know me better than I know myself, even! Thanks heaps, Caz. It is gorgeous. Really gorgeous.
