Simple Scraps Saturday

Back when I first started scrapping, I thought that templates were lame.  Now, I have come to embrace them and use them when I'm feeling a little mojo-less.  I like the fact that you can totally make them your own if you are feeling up to it.

The Lily Pad has a bunch of great template designers who stock the shop with lots of fun stuff.  One TLP designer I really like right now is Amy Martin.  She leaves a lot of white space and freedom to do a lot with her templates.  She just recently put out a call for people to use her template and possibly get their layout published.  I was not selected, but it was lots of fun to play around with the template anyway.  Here are two different layouts I did with the same template.

I used the same template and even some of the same elements, but ended up with two totally different feelings on the layouts.  I love that you can turn them, flip them, even shrink them down or expand them if you want.  So many different things you can do to give yourself a new perspective.

What about you?  Do you use templates?  If so, do you change them much or stick with what was pretty close to the original?