Realistic Shadows

 One of the first things I learned to make my pages look their best was the use of shadows. Not adding shadows makes things flat and boring, Nothing like paper scrapbooking. Lets face it who wants to look at flat, if we wanted to look at flat we would just use a regular photo album and smack the photo in there and call it good. Dimension, depth, that is what makes a scrapbook page (IMHO).

Here is a page with no shadows at all. One dimensional. Its an okay looking page.

When you select your shadow effect here is the basic BLACK shadow you get.

But if you change the color to a deep tone of whats behind it. Boom it pops and looks natural.

Here is a finished page with different colors of shadows depending on what is behind it.

To test this idea, take a pencil and place it over a white piece of paper, what color is the shadow. Now move that pencil to a colored piece of paper and see what color the shadow is, yep a darker shade of your paper color.
Next time you are making a layout pay attention to your shadows, they make all the difference in the world. It is a simple function but one I see overlooked on pages often. Playing with the size and distance will also change the look of each element on your page. If in your mind something needs to stand up higher on the page make sure your distance and size correlate to your imagination.