Keeping it simple

I love all the gorgeous digital product that is out there. I find it SO hard to resist. And you know, $2 here, $3 there... less than a cup of coffee (or so the voice tells me!). Yet I prefer the minimalist pages I've created to the ones with lots of embellishment.
This leaves me somewhat in a state of turmoil!

I have a quite a few minimalist templates by [ksharonkdesigns]. Here's one page I created using one of her templates with hardly any embellishment, just some photos I was a bit proud of, a background paper and some leaf elements blended into the background.

 (credits here)

Many of the scrappers I admire most do pages that are far more minimalist than that! They also often have amazing photos. (I wonder what they do with their less-than-amazing photos. No one can take amazing photos ALL of the time, can they?!)

I recently stumbled upon a bunch of freebie, ultra simple templates on a blog by Julie Designs. I love the simple LOs. Here is an example:

But they are just photos on white backgrounds. You'd think that a person would not need a template to do that, yet I'm so inspired by the designs that I can't resist collecting them! And I do use them. Sometimes they sit in my stash for years. My 2010 POTD album is ultrasimple and I'm so happy how it's turning out. It is based on an older freebie template by [ksharonkdesigns] that sat in my stash for years...

I don't manage to get a photo I'm proud of every day, but it surprises me how well they scrub up when I pop them into this simple template.

I'll be printing these with blurb like I did for my 2009 POTD album. Can't wait!

So, to embellish or not to embellish... that is the question!

UPDATE: I just found a Margote's blog where she used those simple templates for her POTD. Love it! I think I may just have found my format for 2011 POTD!!