Quirky Kits Ideas Blog: Trends & Techniques - photo grid & mini tag collages

For this months' Trends & Techniques post I've lent more to the 'technique' side of things and had a go at a couple different techniques you could try out.
First I wanted to tackle multi photo layouts. When I look back through my albums the vast majority of them are single photos and I guess it's because it's so much easier to include just one or two photos on a layout, right? Well I wanted to think of a simple way to include multiple photos on one page and focused on the technique of using a 'grid' pattern. On my layout I used photos of various sizes but there's no reason you couldn't apply this to photos of the same size. It's a simple case of taking a strip of paper or cardstock as your background and fixing down your photos in a 'grid'. It takes the guessing out of where to place photos and I think I like the way it combines the multiple photos into one block so you can treat it like you would making a one photo layout.

Here's the way I started out my layout with the photos on a strip of paper placing them in a grid leaving equal amounts of space between each one:

From then on I went back to building up the layout. I wanted to build up a fun 'messy' background so I started off with pouring white ink on the background and brushing some of it around. The background paper I'm using is the Glitz one from the main kit 'Pocket Full of Posies'.

Once it was dry I glued it to a piece of cardstock to give it extra stability.
Next I used some of the leaves from the main kit a flower from the Lite kit and some of the gold thread from the main kit. Placing them around the layout it what will be the corners when I'm done building up the middle section.

I fixed them in place with stitching to work with the 'messy' background.

Next I added patterned paper. Most of everything I used were paper scraps as at this stage of using my kits most of it is cut up into now. It's easier to work with the off cut bits and pieces sometimes and it takes the guess work out of building up your layout, just stick them on and if you end up not liking some part just cover it over with something else. :)

I wanted to add some embellishment details using one of the pegs from the main kit so I added a strip of patterned paper down the edge of the layout fixed down using 3D foam pads to give room for the peg to sit underneath the paper edge.

I'm going to use the peg to fix embellishments to the layout, first I've added the paper flower and a leaf.

As a final extra layer I added one the woodgrain patterned bag to help pick out the white in the background and the photos and I moved the green paper around a little to accommodate it.

As the last paper layer I added the strip of paper with my photos on.

Another technique I wanted to have a go at was building up some mini collages in the mini tags from the main kit. These are another way you can use up paper scraps from your kits too.