I made a few of these last night and a few today. I feel like I’ve hit my groove with it. Having those blog entries I wrote right after I got back were really helpful. All of the papers, etc are from the Design House Digital Blog Hop.

…and nothing else because it’s my bedtime and I forgot to write today’s post until now.

Because I’m strongly considering doing December Daily, a scrapbook project where you scrap each day in December (or, alternately, each day until Christmas). I even went as far as to buy a Christmas-themed digi kit (Sarah Smutz’s Jolly), brainstorm the things I want to take photos of (lights, tree trimming, wrapping presents, Christmas Eve service), and made six templates. Like I said, I must be crazy.

I found Heather Guenther’s pages in the gallery over on Design House Digital, a site I’m really enjoying checking out lately. You can find her blog here.

So Much Fun

I liked how this layout uses a bunch of different fonts to convay  whimsy. I’m often afraid of combining fonts, especially this close together, because I think there’s some sort of rule that you can’t have different styles on the same page. I also like her use of several small, squared photos and the large amount of white space. And those little birds, so cute!

Eureka Today

Looking at this page and not reading the words, you’d think it was recording a happy, lighthearted day. Unfortunately, Heather suffers from strong, often dibilitating pain, something that I can image would be hard to scrap about. But, this page is highlighting one of the happier moments in her journey to treat the pain: the day she started to find out its cause. This page shows me that, even in hard times, we have things we can scrap about – little, positive moments we do not want to forget. (And, design-wise, I like the use of the thought bubble to highlight the photo.)

The Simple Life

This page is the definition of sweetness. A short quote, a single photo in black and white, sometimes that’s all it takes. Her delicate touch with embellishments adds to the sweet feeling and is not at all distracting. Again, love her lack of fear in combining different fonts.

Korean BBQ

Again, with the grid. I just can’t help it. This page makes me want to go try a new food and capture all of it using my camera, even if I don’t particularly like my food. I love food – I really have got to learn to be brave and whip out my camera at restaurants more (ok, not going to do this at a place like Citronelle, don’t worry!).

Materials She Used:

1) All Design House Digital Products: Deena Rutter – Design 365 Layered Templates Vol. 5, Jen Allyson – Design 365 April Kit, Design 365 February Kit, Audrey Neal – Dotty Dates, Neutral Stock Paper (kraft blended over dark brown to get a darker brown kraft paper), Chemistry Paper, Whirly Birdie Font

2) Design House Digital Products: Karla Dudley – Just Thinking Full Kit

3) All Design House Digital Products: Deena Rutter – Design 365 Layered Templates Vol. 9, Karen Funk – Simplicity Complete Collection

4) Design House Digital Products: Karen Funk – Basic Word Strips Complete Collection, Robyn Meierotto – In Stitches Layered Template 4, I Love Boys Paper Pack

My friend, Marlyn, asked in a comment on a previous post how I would recommend she go about getting started in digita l scrapbooking. Thing is, I’m pretty new at this, myself. It was only in August or so that I really started looking at digital stuff again after a multi-year break. Part of my personality is this tendancy to jump full-forward into something new, spending all of my time reading, watching tutorials, getting inspriation, etc.

So, maybe this post should really be called “How Angela Started Digital Scrapbooking” or, better yet, “How Angela Should Have Started Digital Scrapbooking.” After lots of thought, I got it down to seven steps:

1. Gather your materials and software.
2. Get organized.
3. Learn the basics of working with your chosen software.
4. Learn how the basics of working with layers.
5. Make your first page.
6. Print (or not)
7. Keep learning (and findig inspiration).

All the details are after the jump.

Continue reading →

Otherwise known as the stuff that you add to pages that you collected during your adventures. It’s not the sort of stuff you hold onto because it has value but because it reminds you of your trip.

For the first time, I worked hard to collect everything from ticket stubs to maps to brochures throughout our trip to Europe with the specific goal of adding it, somehow, to my pages. I used the little bag some postcards we purchased came in to store items I picked up in France. By the time we got to Italy, both of the pockets in my journal were also packed with papers and I had to move on to Matt’s blue folder we’d used for hard copies of itineraries, plane tickets, and city maps. I’ll admit, it was a bit of a pain, but even looking back on my French items while in Italy made me look back and fondly remember our adventures there.

There’s the brochure from the castle where I took far more photos of the surroundings than the castle itself.

There’s the ticket envelope and ticket stubs from our Dordogne boat trip.

The postcard from the cave paintings.

The pass that got us into 20 different churches in Venice for one flat price.

The ticket stub from the theater in Orange that was so filled with wind I only made it through seven of the over twenty audio guide passages before hiding out in the hallway behind the seats.

And the brochure from the Frari Chapel, where the only part of the audio guide from Rick Steve’s that I remember is “I left my heart at the Frari Chapel…” (I believe that was at number 2 or 3.)

I put off scanning for awhile. We only have one USB cable that is shared between the scanner and our 3-in-1 (but horrible at scanning) printer. And I knew it would take awhile and the printer wouldn’t recognize some items as items (due to lots of white space). The scanning took a good three hours but, again it was worth it.

It’s all sitting in a gallon-sized Ziplock under my desk, awaiting the possibility of being added non-digitally to my eventual pages from that trip. But, for now, it’ll just serve as another reminder of our trip.

I won’t sugar-coat it: Pinterest is addicting. It sucks you in with its pretty photos of outifts and kid’s birthday parties and tasty food. And then there’s the scrapbooking pins. Oh, the scrapbooking pins! A source of many wasted hours of clicking has lead me to pin 43 pages – and that’s only taken me two weeks. As such, I’ve got a lot of Pinterest-based inspiration to blog. Let’s get started.

The theme for the week: grids. Most pages are built on an unseen grid, but here are two which don’t hide this fact.

Zoe Pearn (blog here)

I didn’t realize this was a hybrid page until I clicked to follow the link from Pinterest to the blog post where this was posted. She made a digi page then added in real, paper elements like the paper butterflies and the bunting. I liked this page because 1) it used the grid as a showcase for photos, papers, embellishments, and journaling; 2) it has a really fun background paper outside the grid; and 3) it uses a list to explain the photos. Also, despite the fact there are six different types of embellishments, you don’t notice or get distracted because they’re broken up by the grid. This page goes on the must-scraplift pile for me!

(Products used: Staycation by Jenn Barrette which you can buy here and some other items from another not-mentioned embellishment set)

AnyaL (Two Peas profile here)

Anya made this page for her friend who had visited the US (Washington DC, specifically). I liked how she used the grid to show off 16 different photos, while still leaving room for journaling. She also picked photos with the same color scheme as the rest of the page, something I always struggle to do! Her page makes me want to make more pages with a good amount of photos, instead of sticking to either photo-overload or photo-minimal pages all the time. Also: must take more photos of myself visting places versus just photos of those places. You can see how much her friend enjoyed the trip from the big smile on her face in each photo.

(Anya didn’t provide details of what products she used, unfortunately.)

Non-Scrap Inspriation: Antioxidants

While not looking for scrapbooking ideas, I came across this infographic sort of thing on the benefits of antioxidants from who knows where (the pin links to itself). It uses the same grid idea – describing each food item in a box to the right of it. Also, it’s oragnized by color which really appeals to me. I may use this for a page about thanksgiving diner or a meal with multiple courses eaten at a restaurant.

The great “cheat” in digital scrapbooking is the concept of using a layered template. They provide not only guidance on how to build/design a page, but actual elements in a PhotoShop file that you can, essentially, just replace with your own elements, photos, words, etc. Just plug and play, so to speak. Pages in minutes, instead of hours. Oh, and there are tons that are free and even the paid ones are only two or three dollars.

While I’ve tried to use them before, I just couldn’t understand how they were supposed to work. Something about “masking” which diddn’t make much sense at all. Thankfully, there’s a tutorial online for just about everything, including how to use the templates. I found a great one on Ali Edwards’s website, where she even provides a free template for you to play around with.

Thing is, I don’t use PhotoShop or PhotoShop Elements, the two most common software packages used and, by extension, the two programs with the largest number of tutorials. I use GIMP, a free program which, while similar to the other two, does things a little bit differently. I tried and tried to CNTRL-G my way into getting my photo to “mask” onto the layer below it but, yeah, that command does something else entirely in GIMP (though I’m not sure what – I just Undid my way out of that mess).

Eventually, I found not really a tutorial but a quick and dirty list of how to do the same thing in GIMP via Google. The original page I found is here but I thought I’d do my own tutorial of sorts. Not nearly as fancy as the one Ali’s got on her site but it still gets the point across.

One note: To replace the journaling text already in the template – well, I couldn’t figure that part out so I just deleted it and inserted my own text box. GIMP doesn’t seem to like these text paths put into place by PS (or, doesn’t even see them as text paths, just another image).

1. Open the template .psd file along with the photos and any elements you wish to put on the page.

2. Use the select tool to select the photo (or portion of a photo) you want to put on the template.

3. Use CTRL-C (or Edit > Copy) to copy the selection then Edit > Paste as > New Layer to paste the photo into a new layer. [You can also just do Open as Layer but, somehow, that terrifies me.]

4. Left-click on the layer with your photo in it. Move, scale, etc the photo so the portion you want to “appear” is within the boundaries of the other layer.