New Year - New Technique #1: Overlays

Since it's a new year and I've been scrapbooking quite a bit these last few months, I decided I wanted to do something different this year....a scrapbooking New Years Resolution of sorts.

My goal for this year is to try one new technique or product every month that I've never used before. I'm always trying to think of ways to do new things and change things up, but I never really branch out into new techniques or products, so this will be good for me to try some new things. But they have to be simple things, things that anyone can do that don't cost a lot. I'm not buying giant machinery or machines that make all kinds of things for me (I'm not against those machines, I just can't justify the cost.) And I'll share the results here - the good and the bad! Some of these new things may turn our great, and others maybe not so much. 

So the first new product I'm going to try is: 

Clear Overlays

I've actually wanted to try using clear overlays for a while now, as I've bought various journaling card sets that include these overlays with printed words or designs. I couldn't figure out how to use them, since they are clear and I couldn't adhere them to anything without the adhesive showing. And since I don't use pocket pages I couldn't just slide them into the pocket. So, I just never used them...until now.

The set of journaling cards that I'm using for our Washington DC album came with 2 different sizes of overlays - 4x6 and 2x3. They have great designs and phrases on them and I knew I wanted to use them but I didn't know how. It was time to get creative.

I decided to try using brads to secure them to a photo. I lined up the photo and the matte for the photo with the overlay, used my small hole punch in each corner, and put the brads through. And....I LOVED IT!

I was so happy with how it came out...I couldn't believe I hadn't done this before. This first one was kind of easy though, since it was a 4x6 size and I put it on an unusual photo - this might be harder to do with photos of people. So I tried one with people next, and with a smaller overlay that would not cover the entire photo. And this was the effect:

I really like the look of this and like how the frame draws you to the focus of the photo. So I kept going with a few more here and there on various layouts:

I really like how the overlays look and I especially like how the brads look on them. They add just enough without being too distracting or overpowering the photo. 

I was, however, struggling to figure out how to use one of the overlays. One of the 4x6 overlays is covered with small circles, and while I liked it and thought it could look nice, every photo I put behind it seemed to get lost under the pattern. So I decided to try this same technique but in reverse - with a photo on top of the overlay and the overlay becoming the background design. I just mocked this up and have not secured it to the page yet, but I think I like it enough to go ahead and add it.

These overlays turned out so much better than I thought they would and I was very happy with the look and how easy they were to work with. They are really very versatile and now that I have a way to secure them I will definitely be using more in the future.

Have you used overlays? How did you secure them? Would you use brads?