Review-Page Maps 2 and a printable Christmas Card

Page Maps 2 by Becky Fleck is a scrapbooking book full of ideas for mapping out scrapbook pages and cards. 

It starts with traditional layouts and shows a couple examples of the layouts done completely differently so you can see how adaptable they are, how easy they are to customize by changing the shapes a bit, changing the colors and the themes. The next chapter is my favorite, cards! I like cards a lot, but I tend to think in terms of one main image, background, frame. The scrapbook inspired card layouts help me think in terms of layers of elements to create a card that more dynamic, has more going on, without being too busy or too much.

Chapter 3 is over the top layouts, busy exciting scrapbook pages with room for journaling.

Chapter 4, Beyond the page, has a bunch of great ideas and layouts for round pages, for art created to hang in your house including a calendar idea that is just wonderful. Clipboards, clocks and other artistic pieces using your scrapbooking skills to create gifts that take a lot less time than making a full album. 

The last chapter, near and dear to my heart, is about digital scrapping. Layouts combined with the credits under the photos telling where the elements come from make it very inspiring for people who would rather have an undo button and the ability to get just the right color element. 

At the end of the book are perforated cards that have a hole in the corner so you can put them on a book ring and have mobility with these ideas. You can keep the sketched layouts on hand for a night of scrapping with friends or just on your work table without it taking up much space at all. The cards are glossy, with the sketch on one side and a full color photo of an example layout on the other side. (Amazon link is an affiliate link)

Using one of the layouts in this book, I created this Christmas card. It's 300 ppi, click on the images for the full sized version. In the book, the original layout was to fit a 3.5 x 8 inch card. Because I wanted to make mine digitally with a matching envelope, I changed the size to 3.5x7 inch. This is a mailable size, within USPS limits for letters. I always recommend sealing printables with an acrylic spray, but if it's going through the mail, it's a really good idea just in case it's anywhere moisture can cause ink bleed.