Summer School 2018: Symmetry

Written by Erica Hernandez on July 5, 2018. Posted in Educational Series

One of our perennial favorites around here is our Summer School series. Understanding and internalizing different design concepts allows you to bring your ideas to life. With a little practice, these ideas will quickly become intuitive, leading your card designs to come together with minimal effort. Over the past week, we’ve shared videos and projects designed to help you understand these basic principles and incorporate them into your own crafting — we hope these lessons have brought a new dimension to your cardmaking!

Symmetry refers to positioning your elements mirrored across an imaginary line that divides your project into even segments. It’s a great method for achieving balance in your design and is a reliable means of laying out your card elements when you don’t have a lot of planning time to spare.

Today’s instructor is My Favorite Things Design Team member Barbara Anders. Click HERE or simply watch the video below to see how she has applied the principle of symmetry in creating her thank you card.

Now that you’ve had a chance to watch the video, you have a basic understanding of asymmetry as well. Similar in application to a symmetrical approach, you just need to have a good “feel” for how to offset your elements in a way that maintains balance. You’ll notice in Barbara’s second sample that she’s still positioned her three leaf elements centered within the white panel. Moving the panel to the right edge provides a counterbalance to the patterned stripe along the left. Notice too that she’s positioned her die-cut sentiment to have an even margin on the left side that her stamped sentiment strip does on the right — one more way to create balance in an asymmetrical design.

This week you’re the student, and instead of grades, we’ve got prizes! Using today’s lesson, create a project that exemplifies what you learned and upload it using the link below.

All entries must be submitted by noon EDT on July 12. Winners will be announced here on the blog on Friday, July 13.

As a Summer School student, you have three ways to win:

• To be eligible to win a $25 voucher: Complete today’s homework and upload an image via InLinkz on today’s post. Winners will be chosen randomly from each day’s InLinkz entries.
• To be eligible to win a $15 voucher: Subscribe to our YouTube channel and comment on today’s video. Winners will be chosen randomly from comments on the YouTube video.
• To be eligible to win the $100 Grand Prize: Graduate from Summer School: Session 1 by completing all five days of homework (via the InLinkz on each blog post). One random winner will be chosen for the week!

We’ve reached the end of week one of summer school and we have a fun graduation gift for you — once you’ve completed all five lessons, use the graphic below to boast of your accomplishments!

We can’t wait to see all of your beautiful creations!