What’s in a Name?

Ever struggle coming up with the perfect title for your layout? Sometimes a title comes to me even before I’ve started the layout, but more often than not, I wrack my brain trying to come up with something relative to the layout, but at the same time clever and fun. After all, I don’t want to look through my scrapbooks and see that I titled every birthday layout either “{Age} Birthday” or “Birthday {Year}.” Here are nine fun ideas (in no particular order) for choosing a title, with real-life illustrations from my digital scrapbooks to prove I’m not making this up, lol.

(Note: I had to dig through some of my older layouts to find the right illustrations — I’ve linked you up to my galleries for credits, but please be aware that some of the products listed may no longer be available, and many of the designs are not by me, but are from some of my favorite designers.)

9 IDEAS FOR CREATING A TITLE FOR YOUR DIGITAL SCRAPBOOK LAYOUT

1. Play on words — This is probably one of my favorite methods, for two reasons — you create a clever title AND make someone laugh if they notice it. Puns are perfect for creating clever and catchy titles. My sister scrapped the first example, a layout of my little boy, and it makes me giggle every time I see it.

Credits: Lullaby Girl and Tickled Pink Alpha by SuzyQ Scraps

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2. Book title — Book titles are fun, ’cause they can be taken at face value, or they can give layers of meaning to your layout. Now, my first example is a bit obvious, since the layout is actually about a book my son loves, and I used the title of the book for the layout. But think of the possibilities with titles like “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” “Little Women,” “Running with the Demon,” “Return of the King,” etc. Take a few minutes and write down a list of some of your favorite books … then keep that list handy when you’re looking for a title.

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3. Slogans — Companies don’t spend oodles of moolah on marketing for nothing — take advantage of their catchy slogans.

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4. Quotes — QT Susan did a fabulous post on using quotes on your layouts the other day — think of a way you can manipulate the quote to use part of it as your title.

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5. Song title or lyrics — Basically the same idea as using a quote … but lyrics offer the added benefit of arousing a particular emotion or memory associated with the song.

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6. Word art — A fun piece of word art, either from the kit you’re scrapping with or a separate kit or element pack, is a quick choice for a title.

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7. Onomatopoeia — Just a fancy word for describing words that sound like themselves, like vroom, woof, boing … but these fun words are great choices for titles.

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8. Cliches — Although forbidden in my English classes as a high school student, cliches were a must when tackling song-writing in my guitar classes. If artists get away with using them in song lyrics, who’s to say you can’t use them on your layout? We’re not in English class anymore, lol. Anything goes!

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9. Foreign phrases — You never know when a foreign phrase might just say it all.

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What are some ways you’ve come up with clever titles for your layouts? Link us up to a layout illustrating your suggestion … or if you use one of the methods above, I’d love to see what you create!