If you are looking for easy to design or quick to design ideas, squares are a lifesaver!
Ninety-eight percent of this layout is created with squares. The only non-square pieces are the two strips on the left page and the banner strips on the right page. You want to talk about easy design? This page was a breeze thanks to squares.
If you like using squares check out my 6 x 6" Paper Pads class and the 6 x 6" Paper Pads 2 companion bundle. There are several designs focused on using squares.
The best thing about designing with squares is that they fit together perfectly. They are easy to align, they are easy to mix and match with different sizes of squares, and they are easy to balance. Trying to design with rectangle photos can be a little more complicated and sometimes finding the perfect balance and fit is troublesome.
On the left page...
I used two 5" squares as the background for two 2" square photos, my journaling, and my title.
Squares are always a great background idea if you are stuck in a designing rut. Try playing around with different sizes of squares like 1", 2", 3"...all the way up to 12".
Below the patterned paper squares I used a grouping of 2-1/2" square photos to fill in the same amount of space as the paper squares. It's so easy to divide squares into equal pieces to include more if you want to!
Other square options I could have used instead of the 2-1/2" photos to fill in the same amount of space are:
• two 5" square photos
• thirty-two 1-1/4" square photos
You could also use 2-1/2" or 1-1/4" squares of patterned paper in place of the 5" squares.
On the right page...
I used four 5" squares of patterned paper as a background. They are lined up and matched to the squares on the left page to create a cohesive look across both pages of the layout.
On top of the squares I have four 4" photos. The patterned paper squares are acting as a large mat to help frame and highlight those photos.
Other square options I could have used instead of 4" square photos are:
• one 8 x 8" photo (this would be great for highlighting a favorite photo, and beautiful landscape, or using school portraits)
• sixteen 2 x 2" photos
You could also trade just one 4" square photo for four 2" square photos and keep the rest of the photos the same.
If you haven't played around with squares yet, I highly recommend you do! My favorites are 4 x 4" photos, mainly because they can (most of the time) be easily cropped down from a 4 x 6" print.
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