I’ve seen lots of gorgeous pages in the galleries recently in which scrappers have used a photo in place of a background paper.  Being a fan of any technique that puts photos front and center, I decided to give it a try.

Sometimes trying something new can be a bit intimidating and I went through several processes until I found one that worked for me.  Thought I’d share it here for others who may want to try.

First I identified a photo I wanted to use as my primary background photo.  We spent a few days this summer with friends an family on Jetty Island and my mom got this great shot that capture the sand, water and surrounding mountains.

Next I ‘hide’ the photo background so I could scrap my remaining photos. You can hide and layer by clicking on the eye icon to the left of it in the layers palette. To scrap the rest of my photos, I decided to use this template from Cindy Schneider’s Set 96.

I focused only on creating the cluster around the photos and deleted the templates background layers.

Unhiding my background photo by clicking on the eye icon again, I ended up with something that looks like this.

I resized and moved the photo cluster.  To easily move them all at once, I held down the control key and clicked on each layer in the layers palette.  Then I clicked the links icon (looks like a chain) at the bottom of the layers palette.  Once linked, layers will move and resize together.  See the Creating Your First Page tutorial for an introduction to moving and resizing. I ended up moving around a few elements and added my title.

As a last touch I used a mask from Sanded Photo Masks 2 to rough up the edges on the main photo. A tutorial on photo masks is available here.

Credits: Shore Thing by Misty Cato and Amanda Heimann, Sanded Photo Masks 2 by Misty Cato, Cindy’s Layered Templates Set 96