Hello, Erin again with another look at Pocket Scrapping.

One of the things I love the most about pocket style scrapping is the ability to really showcase a lot of photos without necessarily overwhelming the viewer.  The grid format just really lends itself to that perfectly and I take advantage of it often because I love to display my photos.

But sometimes I have one picture in my series of photos that I really want to showcase.  I want it to stand out from the others for one reason or another. I struggled for a long time in figuring out ways to highlight that one photo without detracting from the other pictures in my photo stories, because they are important too.

If you look around in galleries you can see that there are actually many ways to do this, but it is important to me to find a way to accomplish this that meshes with my general scrapping style.

Today I am going to share with you just a few of my favorite methods that I have discovered for highlighting one focal photo in my pocket layouts.

1. Go for a Two-Pager and MAKE IT BIG!

Now if you know me then you know I LOVE big photos.  When I have a photo that I just feel is awesome, or that I feel really captures the essence of the story I am trying to tell, I will usually leave it full sized and give it its own page.  In most cases I pair it with the title and allow my big photo and title to serve as an introduction to the pocket spread that follows.  I really like this method because it is fast and easy, but also caters to my love of photography and storytelling.

In this example you can see that the big photo is very different from the photos I used in the pocket spread.  I felt it really captured the anticipation my daughter felt leading up to her first riding experiences.  I wanted to make this layout into a two-page spread and really soak in her joy and excitement. Here is the full spread

2. Spread a larger photo over more than one photo space

This is something I really like doing when I don’t want to make a double page spread, but I do want one photo to be bigger than the others.  Again, I generally do this when I really like the way a certain photo turned out.

In this layout I wanted to highlight the photo of my two children looking happy together because they actually were enjoying playing with each other, which as you might guess is not a given thing.  I made it larger and stretched it across three spaces that were lined up just right for the photo.  The additional photos I left normal sized and on a single photo space. They still add to the story, but don’t have as much emotional impact for me.

3. Use your elements to highlight or draw emphasis to the photo

There are also plenty of times where I have a photo that I feel is really the heart of my story, but the photo itself is less than stellar.  I don’t necessarily want to make that photo bigger, but I do want this photo to be noticed.  In these cases I tend to use my elements to draw attention to the photo.  That can be done by using a frame (either from your elements or one that you add digitally to the photo) or through the use of elements and clusters.  I often place my clusters strategically near the photos or other bits such as journaling (see above layouts, he he) I want the eyes first drawn to.

The photo of my son and daughter playing in the sand for this layout is a bit busier than I usually like, but I still wanted to use it.  When I first put the layout together the photo got lost in the busyness of the layout.  I added a stroke to the photo to create a frame which helped it to stand out from the background and then crafted a cluster that contrasted in color to help draw the eye to the image.  It is still a busy layout for me, but I feel that it reflects the activity of the story.

So these are my three favorite ways to add emphasis to a special photo in a pocket layout.  If you have never tried them before I encourage you to give it a go.  If you have your own favorite methods then please do share in the comments below.  I am always eager to try new things!