Life in Pictures Deconstructed No.14
Deep Dives into Page Design + Wednesday Half Price Offers
Join us on another trip down memory lane. Revisiting stories that we have been telling, deconstructing some of those page designs plus popping some of our older products on sale for this week’s flash sales.
STORYBOOK VIBES BY LYNN
One of the joys of mixed media designing AND creating is finding vintage gems of illustration and photos to use on our pages.
There’s something very special about these remnants of an earlier, more innocent age. And the charm of these images add a lot to a mixed media page. They can evoke a strong sense of nostalgia, transporting us back to those simpler times. To me they convey a sense of peace and of timelessness.
I love how the vintage storybook image above echoes and reinforces the photo of my daughter, making it even clearer that she is the focus of the page.
And the vintage dress up photo on the page below does the same for the photo of my sister and I in our costumes.
Rachel and I frequently include them in our collections. The examples above are from “Hear My Voice: Imagining”. You can also find your own examples to incorporate into your creations by trawling thrift shops and either photographing/scanning and blending them into your digital page - or cutting and pasting onto a hybrid page.
When I play with the vintage images from our collections, I pay attention to whether the theme and feeling of the old photo or illustration meshes with the theme of my page, and to the direction of gaze of the person (or animal!) in the vintage image.
Here’s another couple of examples (this time from “Hear My Voice: Embracing”)
TIPS FOR HONOURING THE STORIES FOR THE BOYS AND MEN IN OUR LIVES, BY RACHEL
If you’re not finding the right supplies from the boy kits already in your stash I seek out “go to’s” from my main everyday stash when telling stories of the men and boys in my life. You probably already have most of these types of items tucked into your existing stash too.
A good mixed media background honestly is your main jumping off point. It does a lot of the heavy lifting for you by suggesting a starting point. It’s like a foundation for a good strong composition that you can build on.
Seek out natural resting points for a photo (or your other focal point if not using one).
Look for areas of interest where lines may intersect
Look for areas where there is light and shade or for an area that has some interesting paint work or stamping that can be a little mount for your photo or main focal point.
Such as how Gaelle has intentionally placed her photo and main design elements offset to the side in this page.
She has chosen to use the lighter and brighter area to create within - and this alone highlights the photo. She’s used a painted block and the faded stripes to the left to anchor the design, providing an opportunity to create a diagonal flow that rests and ends against the opposite side of the canvas.
Messy threads and stitching can add movement, texture, and contrast and can hint at the rough and tumble (if appropriate).
They can also be used to connect areas together or just serve as an interesting design element.
I love this example from Kari where the messy threads are actually laying on top of the photo itself.
Little paint marks, scratches, stamps and stars again are also great for texture, contrast and visual interest.
Stamps can also serve as hidden metaphors - seek out little found words within the text that resonate and highlight them, or numbers that are significant in some way.
Here, Gaelle has found ‘act both’ within the text and highlighted them with a doodly mark for a reason only personal to her. I love how she has used faded text in the bottom right hand corner to ever so carefully fill a little of the negative space but she’s done this in such a subtle way so that it still leaves lots of breathing room and the space still feels negative and quite empty.
Notice also how she embraces pink tones in her boy page - love that! I often do that myself, especially if the page is being created from the context of motherhood/a note to one self vs the page being created for the person featured in the photo.
Nature always finds its way in too. A pop of green, especially from stamped foliage, dried, or torn leaves brings everything back down to earth and adds that organic lived in feel. Somehow, it softens and grounds the page without making it feel “pretty.”
In Jan’s case, it really also brings out the greens from her photo and makes everything feel really earthy and the colour is repeated around the page.
Finishing touches can be differentiating textures
Seek out items such as paper bits like tickets, labels and torn bits and scraps.
I personally love adding a shiny brad, glossy element or metal trinket or other random miscellaneous find or charm for a bit of dimension and quirk.
You would be surprised, by just how quickly a page can be built by using just a frame, stamps, paper bits, paints a solid ready made paper to aid in your design and miscellaneous trinkets or finds.
Here’s a final piece of inspiration from my own gallery pulling many of these ideas together. And in memory of my dad, whose no longer with us - we celebrated Fathers Day in the UK last weekend.
WEDNESDAY SPECIALS
If you fancy something a little new to you today, our Something Old Something New Sale is in full swing at the LilyPad and has some great combo’s that include many of my must haves noted here along with those emotional vintage gems and illustrations that Lynn referenced above and more.
You might like to take a peek at the featured products for today and see what speaks to you and helps you with your own creative process.
Discounts of at least 50% off can be found - save extra on bundled collections ;)
Find templates, elements, and collections for today only, 18 June 2025.
(For those who only shop at Oscraps, we also have our ‘Weekly Oscraps Wonderful Deals’ ← there, with a smaller selection of specials.)
IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THE LILYPAD SHOP
Our shop is soon migrating (11.30am EST) to a new and exciting shopping experience, you may experience a little downtime and slowness. Our Something Old Something New Sale will be extended this week through 5pm on Thursday 19th of June in case of any hiccups.
Visit our forum update to keep up to date with developments and news about the new shop!
We’d love to connect with you, please leave us a comment about today’s post or just pop in to say hi and let us know how you are! If you’re in a rush just hit that little like button, it’s nice to know you were here, it’s like a little digital high five for us.
Thank you for reading and as always, thank you for being here :-)
Rachel & Lynn