Welcome to the third post in a series of SugarBabe Sundays where we examine the digital scrapbooking elements that we struggle with and ask the Shoppe’s creative team for ideas. In October we looked at four ways feathers can be used on a layout. November saw us focusing on doodles and hand-drawn elements. When I asked what you wanted to see in an upcoming Sugar Babe Sunday, the next topic became pretty clear.

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“Another great topic,” wrote Kellie, “would be title work. Technically, it’s not an element, but it’s something I know a lot of us struggle with.”

Community member ScrapTherapy wrote, “I also second a post on the title work! I often don’t know what to do and hesitate with the great title already included in the kit or doing one with the alphas and how to do it great eventually playing with word arts too…”

And Lidia agreed: “Oh yes, title work would be a great topic! I often struggle with that.”

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Your wish is my command! Once again, I reached out to our team of SugarBabes and asked them to share their layouts with titles created in a variety of different ways. I learned a great deal about the different approaches they take to building these gorgeous, standout headlines for their layouts, and I’ll pass along these techniques. But first, a short disclaimer.

This post does not cover how to come up with a title for your page. Instead, we’re focusing on the ways in which you can make your title look gorgeous on your layout once you decide what you want the words to be.

If you need help coming up with a title, song lyrics, quotes, and puns are all fun options. An internet search can be your best friend when you’re stuck for a clever title idea. Try Pinterest as well! There’s a ton of posters, word art, memes, quotes, and graphics you can find quickly and easily with a search there; use the keyword “quote” along with the topic of your scrapbook layout. And don’t forget to check out our Thursday Treats posts here on the Sweet Shoppe blog. Oftentimes we include quotes, title ideas, or silly puns you can use for your next layout at the very end of the post.

So, now that you know what you want your title to say, let’s take a look at the different ways you can build it on your scrapbook page!

Our SugarBabes create their titles in six different ways. They:

1. use the title from a template,
2. use a pre-made journaling card as a title,
3. use pre-made word art,
4. use one or more pre-made alphabets,
5. use a font,
6. or mix, match, and combine word art, alphabets, fonts and/or elements.

Let’s take a closer look.

1. Use the title from a template.

Many templates come with gorgeous, pre-designed titles that are ready for you to customize. Simply clip one or more papers to the title or apply a layer style and you’ve got a quick, easy, standout title.

In these examples, you can see how (clockwise from upper left) Kjersti Sudweeks, Krista Pearl, Rebecca (MamaBee), and Tammy Espino used the same template from Cindy Schneider’s Family Matters pack but customized the title by clipping different papers and applying different styles so they each look unique.

Titles can also be repurposed when you copy them from their original template and use them in another layout as I did in this example:

Templates are available for more than full layouts. In the Shoppe, you’ll find templates for titles, word art, and journaling cards such as shown in these layouts:

2. Use a pre-made journaling card.

Sugar Babe Kim said, ” I sometimes use a journal card with a great saying as my title. I sometimes struggle to incorporate cards in my pages, so this is one way I do it.” Here are some examples of layouts that make use of journaling cards in place of titles:

3. Use pre-made word art.

Sugar Babe Jak says, “because I’m pretty hopeless at thinking of a title for many of my pages, I often use the word art that comes with a kit.”

Sugar Babe Kiana shared, “This is how I approach titles: First if there is an actual “title” in the kit/product I’ll look to that to see if it conveys my overall message or theme of the layout I’m creating. For example in this layout I recently did, I knew I loved Kristin’s title words festive. I simply used both of them from the kit and layered them in a fun way. Then her wordart feeling festive I cut out the word feeling and used that to create my own feeling festive title.”

Here are more examples of layouts that make use of word art as titles:

4. Use one or more pre-made alphabets.

Sugar Babe Loni admitted, “I don’t do a lot of title work… but when I do, I love to just stack and cluster alphas.”

Sugar Babe Cassie shared, “I like to mix super chunky alphas with the beaded or tab/tag type smaller alphas for balance. I used to always have my titles/alphas completely straight but lately I like them to be tilted and imperfect now. That’s more realistic to a ‘real’ page in my opinion.”

How about some gorgeous examples of titles built from alphas from one of our designers – the talented template maven Cindy Schneider:

And here’s some gorgeous alpha-built title examples from the crazy talented Rubia Padilha of Studio Basic Designs:

And here’s more alpha loveliness from the Sugar Babes:

Dalis has a suggestion for scrappers who struggle to align their alpha stickers: After dropping them on the page, “use the align feature in Photoshop and then tilt one to the left, I skip the next and tilt to the right the following, skip the next one and repeat.  The other thing I do is that I put one letter up, one down, one in the middle, and play with that.”

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Whew! We’ve covered four of the six ways our Sugar Babes build titles on their scrapbook pages:

1. use the title from a template,
2. use a pre-made journaling card as a title,
3. use pre-made word art,
4. and use one or more pre-made alphabets.

The fifth and sixth ways – by using a font or by mixing, matching, and combining word art, alphabets, fonts and/or elements – will be covered in our next Sugar Babe Sunday post. So mark your calendars for January 30th and come back for more delicious title goodness – and until then, keep making memories worth recording!

EDITOR’S NOTE: Part 2 of this series on Title Work was posted on February 20th, and can be found here.