Scrapbooking - Garden Layout (1)

I have been using traditional and digital techniques for scrapbooking.  Pictured is a garden layout I did.  Now in technicality all of it is digital in that the background, images and journaling is all digital.  However this layout uses traditional scapbooking methods.  The digital images were printed out then cut and matted as desired.  I used pop dots to raise the one image and used a die cut from an image as an accent.  The other images were cut out using traditional scrapbooking technique.  This is a very easy way to combine digital and traditional scrapbooking methods.  I like the layout so I hope you do too.

Garden Gnome
©2006-2011

Scherenschnitte (German Paper Cutting)

Mother and Child

I do a lot of arts and crafts in a wide range of materials.  A few years ago I was looking for that extra special something to use for a scrapbook I was working on.  I came across scherenschnitte which translates from German into English as cutting with scissors.  What I found so appealing was the intricacy of the designs.  In many ways they are a type of silhouette that may or may not be cut from the traditional black paper used in silhouettes.  Some as the design (pictured) I chose were symmetrical for the border but asemmetrical for the inner portion while others were entirely symmetrical.  By default the paper snowflakes everyone learns to make in elementary school is a form of scherenschnitte.  The snowflake is symmetrical and cut with scissors. 

The design I chose was one of mother and child.  It was on the intricate side of designs.  I used a variety of materials to create the end result.

Materials:

1 sheet ivory card stock
1 sheet navy blue card stock
Fiskar's rotary cutter
Fiskar's narrow point craft scissors
manicure scissors
craft knife
craft cutting board
pattern
printer
two sided scrapbooking tack tape

Free scherenschnitte and silhouette patterns can be found online and many more are available for purchase.  If looking for a free pattern use the term free silhouette clip art along with a specific term like mother and child to narrow down what you are looking for.  I found a pattern I liked and downloaded it.  I resized the pattern to leave a ¾- inch border when placed on an 8½ - inch by 11 - inch sheet of cardstock.  I then rotated the image 180º CW so the pattern was reversed.  I set the printer to draft mode so it would print in a very pale grey and printed the image on the ivory card stock.  I was then ready to do my paper cutting.

The printed side with the pattern is the back side of the work.  For the entire cutting process the piece is worked from the back.  Once you start cutting it is extremely important to go slow and use considerable patience as a misplaced cut will ruin the design.  This would especially annoying if the piece was almost finished.  Be warned that this is not a project that can be finished in one day either.  The grey portion printed on the back side is the portion you want to keep.  The unprinted portions are what you will be cutting away.  The first step is to cut away any border portion before the design starts using a rotary cutter or straight edge and craft knife.  The piece will be too delicate to cut this portion away after the design has been cut.  For best results when cutting use the craft knife to cut cleanly from an inner corner of a shape to the outer portion.  It the piece being cut away is large start with the craft knife for clean inner cuts and use the narrow point craft scissors to cut away the larger portion.  This works nice for large background pieces (eg. the background space around mother and child in my pattern).  Work slowly to prevent any miswanted cuts.  Once all of the non-printed sections have been cut away, the remaining grey on the back is the reverse of the right side.  Flip the piece over and mount as desired on another piece of cardstock.  Use two sided scrapbooking tack tape to secure the piece to the cardstock.  Place the finished piece in a picture frame or in a page protector if using for scrapbooking.

Garden Gnome
©2006-2010

Selectively Colourizing Clip Art

Free clip art can be a wonderful resource for anyone needing images for online use or scrapbooking. These are images that are free for your non-profit usage. The easiest way to find such images is to do a simple Google search for 'free clip art'. Once you find the image you would like to use, right click on the image and download it. The following instructions are for using Photoshop®.

Black & White

In some cases the clip art is presented as simply being a black and white image in either gif or jpeg/jpg format. What is important when choosing an image that you would like to colourize is to look for strong outlines. The strong outline is what will help with the later colourization by forming clear boundaries for each colour.

The format will depend on how you proceed with the colourization. If the file is .gif, open the file then click select all to duplicate. Click create new in the same size as the original image. Use the move tool to drag the original selected image to the new image. This creates an unlocked layer you can now work on. Close the original image in case you would like to use the black and white version in the future. You are now ready to colourize your image.

Colourized

Think of selective colourization as a digital paint-by-number. You will be using two tools - the eyedropper to choose a colour and the magic wand to choose where you want that colour. Set your pallet to swatch that will show a range of various colours in neat, little squares. Clicking on any of these squares with the eyedropper will change the foreground to that colour. Once you have the colour you want, click magic wand to highlight what area you want to change. You will see the dancing ants indicating the area is selected. Go to edit/fill then click on colour. The last colour you used will show in the new pallet window. Double click your foreground colour where your new colour will appear in the top half of the small colour preview window with the old colour on the bottom. Click ok. You selection will now be filled with the colour of your choice.

Notice that each time you make a selection the strong outlines will contain where you want the selective colourization. Continue on in this manner changing colours using the eyedropper, clicking on fill then colour and double clicking your new foreground colour for the fill until you have selectively coloured your image the way you would like. Once you are happy with the results, click save or save for web depending on the intended use and name your file. You now have a great colourized piece of clip art.

Garden Gnome
©2006-2010

Scrapbooking - Cooking Layout

Scrapbooking and family history just go hand in hand. Back in 2005 I started experimenting with digital scrapbooking as a way to extend my scrapbooking experience as well as document our life through both pictures and journaling. A contributing factor was not being able to find the right sticker or background mixed with wanting something unique. If you have been following this blog you will know that I love Photoshop® as my main graphic editing software but the following 2 page layout was created with Microsoft Word® for Mac. The layout is a combination of digital and paper scrapbooking using elements of each. It is part of 6 pages highlighting our culinary favourites from 2005.

Page 1

The first thing I did was determine the main colour theme as being an almost sky blue. What doesn't show well in either picture is the actual background. On this two page layout the background and title is printed on brilliant white cardstock. The background for this two page layout is multiple lines of canning in a light sky blue. I used the same colour to make the title a script font and highlighted that to use Word Art. Once I had the desired effect, I printed out two sheets, one with the title and one without.

Next I selected the photos I wanted to use and size then printed off all of my pictures on matte photo paper using iPhoto. At thirteen pictures I knew the layout would be rather graphic intensive so kept the images small. Once I had the two sheets of pictures printed I had to cut them out using my Fiskars® large flatbed rotary cutter. This really is a must have for anyone doing paper scrapbooking! Next I used scalloped decorative scissors to round the edges of the photos for the first page. I really like the look of rounded corners and I know there are punches for that but part of scrapbooking is using what you have on hand sometimes.

Journalling is very important in scrapbooking because it ads that personal touch. I wrote the recipe in a dark blue font in Word and printed it off on plain medium blue card stock. Then I cut it into a rectangle and positioned it using 2 sided tape on an angle to give movement to the page. Using movement is a big part of scrapbooking but basically it just means adding interest. With the journalling in place I snipped off the over hanging portions with the rotary cutter. The pictures were then positioned around the journalling and secured with 2 sided tape.

Page 2

The pictures on this page were left with sharp corners. The journalling used the same font and font colour to write a bit more personal touch to canning then printed on white card stock. I used a fancy corner punch to make a design in the upper corner the used a piece of scrap paper to form a stencil to colour in a mirror image of the punch in the lower corner with a gel pen. To give the journalling a bit more of an impact and tie it in with page 1 I used the same blue card stock cut into a square then used it as a partial matting.

Next I arranged the pictures then secured them to the page using 2 sided tape. Next I wanted something a little extra so chose a couple of stickers from my vast supply of stickers. These were stickers from Creative Memories®. Now, I do have a love/hate relationship with stickers. First you are really restricted to available stickers and second you can never just find the right sticker. At the same time, you end up with a lot of stickers you will never use. But there's a work-around by using a Xyron Create a Sticker gadgets of which I have the smaller X and the larger 500. Just about anything can be turned into a sticker using either.

Microsoft Word® also has a feature where you can import photos. You can resize and position alignment them as well as some basic photo adjustments. Simply import your image into the Word document then go to Edit > Edit Picture. I was surprised at some of the effects so this is a nice feature of Word without having to invest a lot of dollars.

Scrapbooking remains to be a mixture of both paper and digital imaging for me although I am moving ever more to strictly digital. Digital scrapbooking expands your creativity. Basically any image can be used, adjusted or tweaked so you really are limited only by your imagination. You can add shadows for depth, rotate images for movement and the best part everything is done on the computer without any wastage. When you are finally finished you can print out the end result on brilliant white card stock. So a scrapbooking layout that would have taken several sheets of paper, cutting, trimming, stickers and other embellishments is now reduced to one sheet produced on the computer. In scrapbooking terms you are saving a lot of money! With experience you can get some very beautiful and very realistic results. At the same time digital keep your layouts flat so you don't have to worry about other layouts being damaged by raised elements on another. However, you will be missing some of the texture and textile feel of fully paper scrapped layouts. Combining the two techniques gives you the best of both worlds!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2009

Easy Embossing for Srapbooking, Crafts and More

The holiday season is drawing near so I thought I would share an easy and low cost way of doing embossing. Embossing is an elegant way of accenting scrapbooking pages or elements, creating custom picture frames and so much more. The main problem with embossing is if you check the craft stores you can spend a lot of money on embossing equipment. If you don't do a lot of embossing there is absolutely no need to spend a lot. Let me show you how.

Materials

For this project you will need a sheet of cardstock that will make two greeting cards. The method I'm using does work better for lighter colours although I have had success with dark colours as well using a stronger light source. You will need a stencil of choice. For best results choose one that is not too delicate. One of the cheapest places to find stencils is a dollar store. If you can't find a stencil you like then find a picture online and create a stencil by printing on a sheet of acetate then cut out the pattern. You will also need painters or scotch tape and a ball point stick pen with the lid. Optional materials are make-up applicators and acid free artist's chalk.

Cutting

A paper cutter is one of those things every crafter needs. It comes in handy for so many things. I have a Fiskars® flatbed rotary cutter with three cutting blades and a scoring blade. The scale makes it easy to cut the paper to the right size. In this case I cut the 8.5" x 11" sheet of cardstock in half as pictured forming two 8.5" x 5.5" pieces. To score I took one of the smaller rectangles then placed it against the guide with the 8.5" side facing me then used the scoring blade to form the score.

Taped

When you score the paper there will be an indent. Tape your stencil onto a light source like a window using the painter's or scotch tape. Place the cardstock you just cut over the stencil with the indent facing you and centre align as desired. In this case I decided to use a solar border along the edge of the card. At this point you are working on the inside of the card or inside of whatever you are embossing. Before starting to emboss be sure the good side that you want is facing away from you. Leave one bottom corner loose so you can lift up a bit to see how the embossing is going.

Take the ball point pen with the lid on and carefully use the end to trace the stencil. Pay attention to the lines as you want to make a good indent. Use a bit of pressure but a lot of pressure is not needed. Go over the stencil markings a couple of times to get a good indent. Carefully lift up the lower corner and you will see what embossing will look like. Check for any missing parts and go over the stencil again if necessary. Remember the back of the work is facing you. Once you are happy with the embossing, remove the cardstock from the light source.

Finished

The embossed finish can be left as is for a subtle yet elegant look. This is a really pretty effect for greeting cards and scrapbooking embellishments. Use it along edgings or around frames. What I like doing is using a sponge make-up applicator to highlight the embossing using chalking. Chalking is a very subtle effect that highlights the embossed surfaces by adding a hint of colour while deepening the shadows. To apply the chalk rub a sponge applicator over the chalk then use a tight circular motion to rub over the embossing. Continue applying chalk in this fashion until you get the desired effect.

Pictured is the finished card with embossing and calking in a pale blue. Versing can be added inside prior to embossing or you can hand write it in after embossing. Similarly the front of the card can be detailed more if desired. Just be sure when you are embossing to work with the inside facing you.

Garden Gnome
©2006-2008

Personalized Greeting Cards

Personalized greeting cards, invitations or thank-you cards are so much nicer than store bought. You can customize the colours, layout, fonts and details. You can print the number you need instead of being tied into buying cards in packaged lots. Homemade greeting cards are considerably less expensive than store bought. There are several sites online for greeting card verses as well or personalize your cards further with your own message.

Due to severe weather conditions the baby shower I was hosting mid-March for our soon to be second grandbaby was cancelled at the last minute. March was such a fickle month and with the due date so close we had to wait to reschedule until after the baby was born. So I wanted a very special, custom made invitation for the welcome the baby shower. I decided to use Photoshop to create a personalized digital layout of the card using scrapbooking techniques then once printed use a corner punch to make the front a bit fancier.

Here's what I did in Photoshop CS2 (it should work similar in Paint Shop Pro):
Note: I worked on a quarter of an 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper size on the computer then put the components together so there are several steps involved.

This method makes use of layers. Each I did something on the card I worked on a new layer. Leaving the file as a .psd will allow you to modify as needed. When ready to print merge the layers into a new "save as" file in .jpg format.

Digital Card Front

Shown here is the card front without the baby's name and date of birth that I put in below the picture. Knowing the baby was a girl made my choice of colours easy.

1. create a new transparent file size 4.25 inches x 5.5 inches
2. open the image file you want to use on the front of the card
3. drag the image onto the newly created transparent
4. use Edit/Free Transform to get the resize boxes; click, hold and drag to get the image to the desired size; position as desired
5. add a new layer then text above the image; use colour picker to pick a colour from the picture for the text
   
6. repeat if adding a layer of text below the image
7. if desired add layer effects to the text (I used drop shadow and outside glow for this effect
8. save this file as a front.psd and a duplicate as a .jpg; when assembling the card you will be using the .jpg format.
   

Inside Front

Some greeting cards will have a verse or message on the inside front of the card but others won't. I chose to use this space to add a message in reference to the cancelled baby shower. For privacy I have omitted the baby's name for posting on this blog on the inside front as well as all the details on the inside back but this will give you a good idea.

1. create a new 4.25 inch by 5.5 inch transparent file
2. create a new layer
   
3. using the same font colour type in your text in the size and font design you want
4. highlight the font
5. go back to colour, click and choose custom then Pantone and go a shade or two darker
6. adjust the text as desired
7. create a new layer
8. fill that layer with white
9. drag the layer down between the first and second layers
10. create a new layer
    
11. drag that layer between the second and third layers
12. choose a paint brush of your choice (I used ivy)
13. dab the paint brush over the layer
14. adjust the opacity to give a subtle effect (I used opacity 32%) - you now have a background
15. create a new layer
    
16. add embellishment (I used the custom shape tool to add a bow)
17. add layer style if desired (I used beveling and drop shadow)
18. merge the visible layers
19. save as both a .psd file (editable) and a .jpg file (not editable)
    

Inside Back

The inside back is made using identical steps as the inside front except you will be adding the details. This is where you would add the verse or message you want to convey. I've left off the details for this entry but this will give you a good idea of what I included on the inside back. Keep the font colour and style the same. An easy way to keep things consistent is to duplicate the inside front .psd file. On the duplicate with the text tool highlighted, click anywhere on the text. Delete this text then add the detail text you would like. Add any graphics by opening the desired graphic then clicking and dragging. Save as both a .psd and.jpg file.

When the inside back is complete you will have three .psd files and three .jpg files. The .psd files are kept for editing purposes so that the images can be changed as needed for future cards. Think of them as templates. The .jpg files have been flattened so the layers can no longer be edited. These are the files you will be working with to assemble the card.

Generic Inside Layout

This is where the fun of assembling your card starts. Your card will be printed on two sides. The front picture will be print on one side, two to a sheet so you will end up with two cards per 8.5" x 11" sheet of ultra white card stock. Then you flip that printed side over and feed back through the printer to print the inside. When printed the cards, in this case two cards per sheet will be ready for cutting using a paper cutter and any extra textural embellishments.

I purposely made the inside layout pictured different from the card for illustration purposes.

1. create a new image size 8.5" x 11"
2. open your outside front
3. click on the outside front image then with the move tool, drag onto the upper right of the new image
4. repeat, dragging onto the lower left of the new image

You have now created the front of two cards. Save the image as a .jpg This will be the file you print first.

1. create a new image size 8.5" x 11"
2. open your inside front and back files
3. click on the inside front .jpg then using the move tool drag a copy to the top left
4. repeat dragging a copy to the bottom left
5. click on the inside back .jpg and use the move tool to drag a copy to the top right then bottom right.

You have now created the inside of the two cards. It will be resemble the generic image above. Save the image as a .jpg You are now ready to print your card. Print the front on inexpensive paper with printer set to proof to conserve ink, then feed the paper back in to print the inside of the card on the reverse side. Make any adjustments necessary for printing. When you are satisfied with the way the cards print, change the print mode to quality print and proceed with printing on the final desired paper.

Tools Needed

The paper I recommend for printing cards is Image Plus+ Card Stock. This is 110 lb weight and a bright white that makes colours pop. It is also acid free so cards can be later put into scrapbooks. But don't limit yourself to just card stock. While card stock is the most economical there are so many great papers out there giving you endless possibilities for cardmaking.

A rotary cutting system is a must for scrapbooking and card making. I highly recommend Fiskars^® 12" Home/Office Rotary Paper Trimmer. It comes with three cutting blades and a scoring blade. A scoring blade gives a nice, clean fold for making cards. The trimmer is designed to give clean, straight cuts. The grid markings help to ensure you cut the size you want.

Finally any scrapper will tell you punches are one of their most used tools. A punch can be used to create shaped cutouts. The cutouts can be used as punchies to decorate other layouts. A piece of scrap paper can be punched and used as a stencil as well so punches are quite handy. I used a 3 in 1 Corner Punch (Lace) for this project.

To score the card, lay the finished inside facing upwards, long side oriented with the long side of the trimmer. Score along the middle at 4.25 inches. This will allow the card to fold cleanly towards the inside. To cut the card, turn the inside facing upwards so the short side is facing the long side of the trimmer. Adjust to cut at the 5.5 inch mark. You now have two cards measuring 4.25" x 5.5" ready to fold and embellish with paper punching or any desired embellishment you want.

Corner Detail & Envelope

I used the punch on the two outer corners of the card. When closed the colour of the inside of the card peaks through. This is just a nice, subtle way of adding detail and making the card look expensive when in fact it wasn't.

Once the card is made you need an envelope. Here you have the choice of making your own or buying them. I used white invitation envelopes (45727) sized 4⅜" x 5¾" from Staples. There are coloured invitation envelopes in the same size available. The envelopes can be customized as well by adding a liner, using the printer for digital embellishments or using scrapbooking techniques. So have fun with the envelopes as well.

Garden Gnome
© 2007

I've had Adobe® Photoshop® on my computer for quite sometime but up until a few months ago had only used it for resizing images. Talk about not using a program to it's potential. It all started because I wanted to make a custom made blinkie. Then working with the program I quickly saw this had a lot more potential for scrapbooking than the two programs I had. I like that I can customize as I want through my eyes and how the image makes me feel, not to someone else's standard. Over the past few months I've learned a lot about Photoshop® especially through a lot of online tutorials. I would like to make a special mention for Obsidian Dawn. I'm enjoying her brushes and tutorials immensely.

Since our first grandbaby was born in late December, the pictures and video clips have been going back and forth. What I started was a digital scrapbook of her first year but I knew I wanted full control of how it came out. She along with each set of grandparents and her parents will have a printed and CD copy. I plan to make CD copies for anyone who asks. But I want the scrapbook to look like a traditional paper scrapbook when printed. This is where Photoshop® really will be an asset. The main rule for printing these types of pages is to use a high quality, brilliant white photo paper. I find for scrapbooking that matt works nicely when printing a full layout. This will cost a bit more than regular paper but the detail and colours are crisper. The amount you will save in not having to buy embellishments like ribbon, vellum, brads, stickers and ect. will more than cover the cost for the paper.

I made the image for this post using Photoshop®, layers and different brushes in about 10 minutes. I started with layers right off the bat while learning how to do simple animations. Then I started playing with layers using digital photographs I take. Once I got the hang of working with layers, I found there were so many things I could do. I use layers for most of the images on my blogs now. So if you have Photoshop® and haven't explored the possibilities, check out some of the online resources in the links section. You will be amazed at what this program is capable of doing!

Have a great day,

Garden Gnome
© 2007

Photo Enhancement

There are many reasons for enhancing your photos. I have been learning how to better use the features in Adobe Photoshop CS Version 8.0. This is a lovely program with a lot of function that I was basically using to simply resize images. Instead of taking the time to learn more about what this program could do, I simply bought a couple of scrapbooking programs when I decided to start into digital scrapbooking. This was not the frugal way to do things when I already had a program that could do all these things and so much more. For my genealogy images, I simply uploaded them to the program without any type of enhancement. Well, suffice to say I am now learning the different features thanks to a couple of very nice Yahoo groups and a lot of tutorials.

On Tap

I've been playing with animation, filters, and layers. So today I tried out a couple of ways to make picture frames. This is the result of my first attempt.

This is a photo taken at a restaurant we enjoy. I always have my camera with me when away from home and within easy reach at home. I take a lot of pictures! Digital just makes it so easy. My current digital camera is a Canon PowerShot A450, 6.0 mega pixel and 4x optical zoom. Holding the zoom control it will go up to 16x but the graininess increases. This only seems to be noticeable on certain photographs though. Back to the photo, I liked the looks of the copper beer tap so snapped a photo of it.

I did something wrong on this tutorial but am not sure what. The only thing I can figure is I merged to many layers. That's easy to do since I'm rather new at using layers. My end result was an 8" x 10" supposed to be frame with no way to remove the background leaving only the frame so I decided to improvise. I opened the photo, did a cut and past, then centred it onto the frame image, added my name then merged the layers. I thought the results weren't too bad and that the colour of the resulting frame accents the photo is rather a fluke too. The frame consists of layers with filters creating texture and beveling.

Ice on Water

Well onto the second tutorial. I used a picture taken by me a couple of days ago. We live on the water so I take a lot of water shots. This one was so much easier to follow. I added my name to the photo and merged the layers. Then I duplicated that layer and added a gaussian blur filter, layer set to multiply and adjusted the opacity. After merging the layers, I created a new layer, dragged that to the bottom and created the first matt by changing the canvas size by .2. The next layer was created the same way with canvas size at .5 and the third at .8. Each matt was filled using a colour picked from the picture using the eye dropper tool then filled with the paintbucket tool. Overall I like the effect. I think it gives a more formal look that will work nicely for enhancing my genealogy photos.

Ice on Water with Filters

This is the same picture as above but slightly cropped with no frame and more filters added. I thought it would be neat to try and get that true sparkly look of the ice. The sun was very bright when this picture was taken so I started playing to try and capture that feeling.

I added the name, merged the layers then did the gaussian adjustment. Now, the gaussian adjustment was another tutorial that works with layers. Depending on how it is used, it deepens the colours and just softly softens the edges a bit. It seems to work better on some photos than others. Once the gaussian adjustment I used a texture filter set to patchwork. That looked rather interesting but it still did not have the sparkle I wanted. An artistic filter set to plastic wrap seemed to fit best and this was the end result. I can't wait to use this in scrapbooking!

Golden Glow

This was something I was just playing around with after working with frames. The picture was taken during sunset the same day the water picture above was taken. The sky was absolutely gorgeous!

I discovered that the marquee gave other shapes than rectangular so decided to test it out. After several attempts and realizing that once it's make if you use the move tool, it moves leaving a transparent background. So I hit copy then new and then paste. Well that looked pretty good but I thought some type of frame would be nice except I didn't know how to do that so I beveled that layer instead. Then I added my name and merged. I liked the effects and think this will be perfect for both scrapbooking and genealogy.

Hopefully this gives you a few ideas of what is possible as far as photo enhancement. I am definitely in the learning stages. It is amazing some of the effects you can get. I encourage you to try some of these techniques. There are a lot of resources to help you learn them. The possibilities are endless and I can't wait to use them in my scrapbooking and genealogy projects!

Enjoy!

Garden Gnome
© 2007

My Scrapbooking Primer

Every step of the journey
is the journey...

Srapbooking is a wonderful hobby, perfect accompaniment to genealogy and family history, and an ideal way to preserve memories. It can be as expensive or inexpensive as you choose.

A scapbook can really be in any format but I like to tell a story so that means a beginning, middle and end. Most of my scrapbooks focus on our family's highlights for the year in chronological order but others are themed for one particular event. The pages should have movement and journalling. I also try to include handwritten journalling because of my family history interests.

Title Page

I make a title page for all my scrapbooks. To me, it just gives the starting point and focus for the album. The title page pictured is from a scrapbook I did of our trip to Las Vegas in May of 2003. I chose the colours for this title page because they remind me of Las Vegas. It seemed fitting to have the famous Welcome to Las Vegas sign as part of the title page. It is a digital image as are a lot of my more recent images. It is not clear in this picture but movement is provided not only by the title but the letters are peel and stick glittered felt. Las Vegas is all about glitter so I thought they matched the theme nicely. They give both movement and depth. I used a gold metallic paper for the matting and larger stars in keeping with the glitz theme. The smaller stars were actual metallic glitter.

End Page

Much like a book, I think a scrapbook needs an ending page as a way to give the viewer a glipse to the next album. These can be elabourate or rather simple as this end page is. This is the end page for our first year together. I was expecting our first baby so chose blue and pink mutted matts for the simple saying. The saying was printed on plain white card stock then hand embossed using a paint stencil. The saying and matts were mounted on purchased designer stationary.

Now my method for embossing is, shall I say, different and I use any stencil I can find, not those geared to scrapbooking. The stencil I used for this particular layout was purchased at a dollar store. Once I printed the journalling, I centered it backwards onto the stencil. Then holding it to the window, I used the non-writing end of a ball point pen to rub into the stencil markings. When turned over, the result was a pleasing and inexpensive embossing, a method I still use today.

Movement

The pages should have some type of movement whether real using embellishments and layering or perceived using shadowing or font gradients. Even if a layout is digital, use shadows and/or embellishments to add depth and movement.

This was a rather difficult layout because I wanted to include a lot of pictures and journalling that included a recipe. So I printed all the digital images then worked on getting movement. One of the easiest ways to get movement is to layer elements which I did in this layout. Then I added more movement by angling the images and journalling. The title gave a bit more movement using gradient coloured font. What is barely apparent in the image is the background paper is custom designed by me. I printed one sheet with custom background and title while the other had just the background.


Journaling

Journaling is a very important component. It brings your pictures to life. It brings back the memories! Purists will tell you that journaling should always be handwritten but I disagree. While handwritten journaling is always incorporated into my albums, I also rely heavily on computer generated journaling.

This layout was created using MS Word Art on a rather mutted blue card stock. The digital images were printed then cut and I rounded the corners. I wanted something different for the journaling though.

We honeymooned in Niagra Falls, Ontario and spend a couple of weekends a year there ever since. So the legend of the Maid of the Mist seemed to just fit this layout. I chose vellum because it give a misty, hint of the Falls look. I printed the legend in blue type onto vellum then trimmed the vellum with a jagged rotary cutter. To give the page movement I chalked the cut edge of the vellum.

Pockets

A scrapbook album should be about more than just pictures. I always try to include extras like travel pamphlets, airline tickets or other momentos. This layout was from our trip to Lake Mead in 2003 while we were in Las Vegas, Nevada. The journaling was done using MS Word then cut out to use in the layout. I included details like the cost of dinner and weather conditions that day. Pockets are a perfect way to hold extras like travel pamphlets so I used one for this layout. The strip at the top of the pocket is textured with sand from our trip. The tag gives the interesting details of Lake Mead.

Well you have seen a few of my layouts, some totally traditional and some incorportating computerized elements. I think most of my layouts involve computerization at some level. I have branched into digital scrapbooking but even then sometimes embellishments sneek in. I find myself relying more and more on digital scrapbooking simply because my images are digital and the possiblities are practically endless! I am now including with every album the digitalized images and for some albums digital videos and/or sound.

Digital

Some only do digital scrapbooking but my style is a combination. This layout with the exception of the blue diamond and grey square is completely digital including the background paper. I am doing more digital layouts though. I love using custom made background paper and it's so easy to do! The first page was made using only MS Word. The second page was made using HP Scrapbooking Assistant.

The nice thing about digital scrapbooking is the no muss factor. Design your background, title and journaling. Simple click and drag your images to the document or layout. Add any embellishments for more depth then print. At any step of the way you can make any adjustments without it costing you a penny!

My Set-up:
Hardware: Mac Duo Core (Mac OSX/Windows XP) and iBook G4, HP C3180 All-in-One, Epsom Photo 890
Software: I use the following programs for scapbooking: iPhoto, Adobe Photoshop CS V 8.00, Adobe ImageReady CS, HP Creative Scrapbook Assistant (Mac or PC), Creating Keepsakes Scrapbook Design (PC), Microsoft Word for Mac, Preview, and Comic Life.
Miscellaneous: oodles of gel pens, stamps, stickers, paper, cardstock, Sizzix® Die Cutter, fancy scissors and lots of punches.

Money Saving Tips:
✫ Start small and don't try to buy everything at once. Trust me I have stickers I bought just because they struck my fancy at the time and I will likely never use them because very few of my layouts ever use stickers! And forget about those fancy scissors that you will use only once or twice.
✫ Always buy only what you really want and then buy it on sale.
✫ Shop the dollar stores! Just be sure to look for "acid free" elements.
✫ Create your own elements.
✫ Go digital especially for images. A digital camera will pay for itseld likely in processing costs the first year. Digital background are not only unique but cheaper than purchased background paper.

Garden Gnome
© 2006