Simply Cardstock

Using just cardstock can be an effective background for your layouts, as it allows you to place emphasis on your photos, you can highlight the subject in your photo by choosing colours similiar to what they are wearing or make the background standout by choosing colours that match the background.

The simplicity of cardstock used as the dominant colour and as the secondary and accent colours can make your layout stylish and fresh looking.

Another reason to just use coloured cardstock for your layouts is that sometimes its just to difficult to find a patterned paper that matches your photos. Scraploot carries a wide variety of bazzil cardstock for you to choose from see here

Finally it allows your to play around with your embellishments and these too can be emphasised.

Boys will be boys
The redish bazzil cardstock places an emphasis on my son, other goodies include 7 gypsies 97% complete stickers and words here

Our connection
Here I have chosen to use white and aqua cardstock and not the purple, as purple is one of my least favourite colours, even though there is only a smidgen of aqua in the photo I thought it worked well and gave the feeling of calmness to the layout. The heading is a combo of American Craft thickers see here and I got to use my favourite ribbon from Carolees creations the turquoise floral flourish here , finally the flowers are from green tara here

1st bath

Here I have used two shades of aqua cardstock as my background and then mounted my photo on the flesh coloured card to emphasis my son, again I have used the floral flourish ribbon from Carolees creations as well as American craft glitter thickers here and 7 gypsies 97% stickers see link above.

Waterfun

Here I have placed equal emphasis on both my son and the wall by using similiar coloured cardstock, as both things are needed to tell the story. Again I have used American craft thickers and 7 Gypsies 97% word stickers, there are so many different themes of these you will be able to find a set that suits you.

Daddy

My final layout Daddy is a very stylish layout. Using dark brown cardstock as your background colour always grounds your layout and allows you to use lighter and brighter colours in the foreground .The variety of colours and styles of American craft thickers also allows you to easily match them to your cardstock.

I hope I have given you a different perspective on choosing cardstock for your layouts, happy creating.

Kim