Leaving Los Angeles: A Clean & Simple Layout

Clean and simple is not my typical scrapbooking style. On the contrary! "More is more" describes my usual style better. That said, I feel very drawn to more minimalistic approaches at times, and want to learn to make that style work for me as well.



For this layout, I wanted to use a longish text from a novel, and I wanted to have it handwritten in the background, not necessarily fully visible for reading but as a pattern. Before that, I gessoed the background paper to tone down a strong pattern, and made another layer of patterns taking the gesso off with baby wipes through a stencil. That's the hippyish sunbeam pattern you can see here and there.





The handwritten text is my main decoration this time. I added just a little watercolour and clear Stickles, and very few embellishments. I'm quite happy with how it turned out!

I was inspired by the July challenge at Scrap Around the World, and their gorgeous colourful mood board you can see here! I was particularly inspired by the journey theme, the sunset, the pink and all the other bright colours.



I was also inspired by the colour challenge palette at Tando Creative and the monthly sketch from C'est Magnifique kits.





I'll have to say bye for now to put my little one to bed, but I'm thinking I'll be back tomorrow to add my inspiration text into this post, and a few words about it, in case someone'd like to read it!

Anyway, it's from one of the Weetzie Bat books by Francesca Lia Block. Before travelling to Los Angeles this spring I looked up stories that are set in that city, and the Weetzie Bat series came up in many recommendations. I'm not through with all the books yet, but in my opinion they do seem to capture the spirit and essence of L.A. really well!

Do you like to read books where the story takes place in your travel destination - or where you live?

Edit: Trouble with mobile uploading - the post went up without pictures first but that's fixed now!