From the Manual

• Is the thing you are adding a distraction? If so, don’t add it.
• To determine if something is distracting, see where your eyes naturally levitate.
• Is the photo book you are creating for yourself or someone else? Do your best to match the style of the recipient.
• Keep the book as unified and simplified as possible. 

From the Transcript

I love to scrapbook. I love to make things pretty. I love to apply my style to my home and the things I own. The question is, should that love transfer to the pages my photo book? Let’s take a look.

Just like you, I have my favorite kits, embellishment and papers. For example, I adore this background paper created by Syndee Rogers. Not only do I love it, but I think it would nicely coordinate with many of the nature photos in the pages of my photo book. Here’s one of my pages with the background paper added. Look this over. What do you think? Don’t you love that paper??!! But let me ask you this. When looking at my page, where do you find your eyes going? For me, my eyes keep jumping right here to this beautiful place in the paper. It’s a distraction.

When embellishing the pages of your book, take the time to consider if what you are adding is a distraction. If it is, then don’t use it. So, does that mean that you cannot use anything on your pages? No, I’m not saying that at all. In fact, here I’ve traded in the paper for a word art that has very low opacity and a non-distracting butterfly. So, now where are your eyes going? Mine are traveling through the photos and taking in the details of them instead of something else.

This brings me to another very important question you need to ask yourself before adding any extras to your photo book pages. That question is, is the photo book you are creating for yourself or someone else? I’ll be honest, if this book was for me and my tastes, I would have it printed with just like this. I love that butterfly! But my book is not for me. It’s for my son-in-law. He’s not so much into the same things as I am. So, for that reason, I’m going to drop the butterfly. The low opacity word art still works to embellish this page and help tell the story, but it’s not distracting my eye or going against the style of my books recipient.

And, one more thing. Several videos in this class have made mention to the importance of unity. That’s because themed photo books like mine are intended to focus on one single event in the life of a loved one. For that reason, work to maintain unity in your book if you add papers and embellishments. For example, if you make the background of one page a very light blue, then change all the rest of the pages to also have a very light blue background. Consistency is the key. So that’s how to preserve unity and simplicity within the pages of your photo book.