Coluzzle Color Blocking

Simple, fast, efficient, and awesome. Those are a few of the buzzwords in scrapbooking today. We want to use tools we have on hand and make fantastic pages. We want to speed up the pace a bit and still have a coordinated look to our albums. Do you know you can get 12 photos on a 12x12 page? You can do it using the simple Coluzzle cutting templates and swivel knife that you may already own! We all know how FAST these sturdy cutting tools are. Now let's look at how to get MORE creative power for that page using them! Let's color block with Coluzzle style templates. And yes, you can use other similar acrylic templates in the same manner.

Step One: Mark your Templates
The templates are made of sturdy plastic/acrylic and have open grooves in them. The swivel knife cuts the photo or paper through these grooves and saves you the step of measuring and marking for your color blocking.

Mark the numbers 1 thru 8 on your plastic Coluzzle templates starting with number 1 as the smallest and innermost groove. I use a fine Sharpie permanent marker to mark mine. Most templates have between 4 and 8 grooves.

Note: I am using the square template and the primitive heart template for the layout in figure 1. But I went ahead and marked all my Coluzzle templates at the same time with this system. Always start with the smallest groove being number 1.

Step Two: What Size Shape do You Want to Work With?
As you can see, each groove of the Coluzzle creates a different sized shape when cut. You can see where this variety of sizing would be very versatile in color blocking a page!

And surprisingly, all of the number 1's (smallest shapes) in the Coluzzle shaped templates are fairly close in size to each other. Below is an example of how all the Coluzzle templates that I own look in the number 1 size. What does this mean for our page planning and color blocking purposes? It means we can mix and match shapes on a page if they are the same size number. MORE versatility!!!

In the layout above, I used the primitive heart as an alternate shape. I wanted to add the family love theme to the page and at the same time break up the monotony of having only small squares on either side of the central photo. I could have added any small accent, sticker, die cut, or any pre-made page addition that was the same basic size as the numbered shape for that color block spot. I could also substitute a title for any color block or combination of blocks.

Step Three: Plan Your Page Format.
Using your Coluzzle shapes to plan a color block a layout can be done with any sized album page. You are not limited to a large page or a small page. Here are two examples of the same basic design. One is 8.5x11 and the other is 12x12. Both make optimal use of lots of photos per page and are simple to cut using the templates. Again, using the swivel knife and template relieves you of the standard three step color-blocking hassle. You no longer need to measure, mark, and freehand cut. With the clear acrylic templates and the swivel knife, you simply plan how many of each size photo you need and cut them.

You can keep track of the various color blocking formats much like page sketches. Here are a few Coluzzle layout plans that my friend Shelly Hawk did recently. She keeps her format ideas together with her Coluzzle template for easy page inspiration.

Step Four: Cut Photos and Create a Page.
The great thing about color blocking is that no two pages look alike. Different themes, photos, papers, and accents make each page unique even if the same format was used! Combining all the sizes and shapes available on your templates will give you endless possibilities! Sketch out the Coluzzle layout formats that look especially good together. Use them over and over. And did you know that if you rotate a color-blocking format just a quarter turn to the right, the new page will look completely different!

Look at this series of Cardinal baseball pages that Shelly did using her templates to block a page set in the team colors. Fantastic!

Any technique that gets more photos into my completed album and still allows me to pick and choose according to my layout needs is a winner. The clarity of an acrylic template combined with the speed of swivel knife cutting mean this classic tool can be a big hit in my book! I love the versatility and symmetry of color blocking. Add the ability to fit oodles of photos on one page, and I am sold on this new color blocking technique using a tool I already own. :) I hope you will try it today!

NOTE: My sincere thanks to my dear friend Shelly Hawk for allowing me to use her photo images and format concept for color blocking with Coluzzles in this article.