Organizing Supplies

Haven’t managed to post this week as I’ve been busy organizing my digital supplies. Last weekend as I said in my last post there was a big sale at www.designerdigitals.com and as a result my bank account is $50 lighter and my supply selection is boosted by some great additions. My problem has been that as I’ve added more supplies to my collections its been harder to remember what I did or didn’t have and where it was saved. Which meant when I was scrapbooking I was wasting time looking for supplies. This became really evident when I tried the 30 minute challenge last week and I realized I had to do something to help my process. My files on my external hard drive are sorted fairly well but I couldn’t search them. Yes I had copied the summary picture into one folder but what if I wanted to remember where I had a orange flower with a button. I couldn’t I had to look through them all. So I decided to tag my supplies and use Photoshop Elements Organizer to do this. I don’t use it for my pictures which I sort by event and date. So why not use it for my supplies. So I’ve spent most of my scrapbooking time this week going through my supplies and tagging each item. As some items have more one than one tag this is taking a while but even now I have found it beneficially and I haven’t even finished. It was great today when I decided I wanted to be creative rather than continue cataloging to be able to search for elements I needed or wanted without having to go through each folder looking for them! Certainly made the whole process much faster!
Photoshop Elements Organizer is really easy to use. I found it very simple to get things started and get multiple tags allocated to each item. I didn’t even read the instructions I just got started and it seemed to work. I even managed to work out how to rename a “folder” or “pile” I had created and then even to merge two. So if your using Photoshop Elements and your not using the organizer I can highly recommend the ease of using this program. Remember I’m using this for only my digital supplies and not my pictures. Anthony has warned me off using organizers for pictures and I haven’t really felt the need. But even 50% through the digital supplies I know this was the right decision to get it done. My word of warning is to make sure you backup your catalog so incase of disaster you can restore it. I haven’t yet done this but need to – as I don’t want to have to start again.

Enough words – here’s the layout I created this evening using one of the new templates I purchased last weekend.

Supplies -

Technorati Tags: photoshop,PSE,organising supplies

30 minute challenge – or speed scrapbooking

Today at designer digitals.com they have an all day chat going on with free digital downloads every hour so I have been watching and learning as I can. At 9 o’clock this morning there was a 30 minute challenge. They gave you some digital elements a set of rules :-

• your title must be the full width/height of the page
• use only one photo and it can’t exceed 3 inches on longest side
• include a border around your page
• use at least one of the freebies
• use the color red somewhere on the page

and then off you went. As a newbie this was a challenge and a half. I haven’t been digitally scrapping for that long so it takes me time to get things to happen as I want them. The other problem was remember quickly what you have on hand! In addition I had to run Eleanor to dance within the same 30 minutes!!! But I did it and I’m fairly happy with the outcome.

Don’t ask me what supplies I used and where from other than the freebie file. No really I found the title in my directory under journaling – not sure where I got it from. The stitches are from a set I got from little dreamer designs – I got two sets from there and the heart is from the same sets. No journaling – no time. I did learn though that I can now create in Photoshop elements fast if I need to!! Anthony thinks its terrible as it too much about the graphic design and not the picture. Well I guess he’s right – you don’t even know its a back to school picture. I was working so fast that I didn’t have time to create my own title and the rules said one small picture which meant lots of space.

Moving on - If you haven’t checked our www.designerdigitals.com this weekend is the one to do it as this weekend the products are all 30% off – they only do this once a quarter. At the moment my cart is full to the tune of $50 and as the weekend goes I thing it will go up. I better do some pruning as I don’t think I can spend that much.

Dance Scrapbooking – Back to the glue and paint

As I said in my last post Thursday was the first day of class for the latest May Flaum class at Big Picture Scrapbooking. Its all about using the products you have on hand – not a problem I have a room full to play with! The first exercise was to start with some neutral cardstock and lots of pictures allowing the pictures to do most of the work. Well I have plenty of dance pictures in the pile to do so picked out a set of these to play with  – managed to get 7 pictures on the layout in a way I was happy with them.
May is encouraging us to look at our supplies and see what we have a mountain of and to work on using them up. Now I have many mountains but chipboard letters and shapes are something I always seem to be buying with out regard to the ones I already have at home. So chipboard letters were singled out for this layout. She also wants to use products we may have purchased and not used a lot, if at all. That’s my collection of stickles – my friend Vicki is the queen of stickles but I always forget I have them and can’t be bothered waiting for them to dry. Chipboard letters + glimmer mist + paint + stickles give me the letters for my main title “dancer” – now not totally happy with it but 5 chipboard letters down and a decision made to give the stickles to my DD and the layout is complete in less than an hour.Not to mention the 6 other chipboard letters which I’ve had for over 5 years I’m sure.

Now I just have to be patient for those stickles to dry before I can move on to the next layout.

Also read some great news this morning on the Big Picture Scrapbooking website – Nic Howard has a new class coming up and it starts on my Birthday. Its all about color and using color in your layouts. I don’t really care what its about. Its Nic Howard and in the last two classes I’ve done with her I have learned so much that I’d sign-up regardless. It’s called Colour! Or is it Color? – well I’m certainly confused about that having learned to spell it colour as I grew up but now moved to color since moving to Texas. Anyways check out the course outline here – Colour! Or is it Color? If you decide to do it PaperClipping has a 10% discount

Technorati Tags: dance,scrapbooking,big picture scrapbooking,Nic Howard,paperclipping

here . If you haven’t listened to the PaperClipping podcasts I highly recommend doing that. They have two -  one which is more the traditional scrapbooking and the other is which is about digital scrapbooking. I find they are great things to listened to when I’m doing housework.

The Search is Over

Since I started playing with digital scrapbooking my issue has been printing the layouts at a cost which doesn’t kill me. Thanks to Alie Edwards I have found my solution. Recently I have been printing my layouts at CostCo but the machine automatically cuts the pages and I was loosing parts of the layout which were close to the edge.  This was so annoying to me. I like the distressed ink look around the edge but they would trim one edge of the four so the border no longer looked even. It could be several mm’s which really makes your layout off balance if you look at it in detail.

Fast forward to Wednesday and  Ali’s blog post. She is celebrating the re-launch of her blog and website by hosting a giveaway. One the prizes was from Persnickety Prints. This is what it said

per·snick·e·ty: Adjective a : fussy about small details b : requiring great precision

PersnicketyPrints.com is the leader in digital scrapbook printing. Their certified professional lab techs and quality control team set them apart from the rest. The best part about PP? Customer Service. They understand the time that is put into creating your layouts, and they will print your images the way you intended them to be. Check out their bleed comparison here.

• 12×12 full bleed prints on archival fuji photo paper is always $1.99.
• 8×8′s are 99¢.
• Flat rate shipping for US + Canada is $5. International $10.
• 100% Guaranteed

I was like I wonder if this is true. I checked out the website and the facebook page and it looked like a lot of happy people so with the added bonus of a 10% coupon on Ali’s blog I thought I’d try it to see if it as true. At lunchtime on Wednesday I loaded seven layouts and paid a total of $17.54 including shipping. This would of cost me $21.98 at CostCo so I was even saving money. (Even without the discount each layout would work out less than CostCo by a quarter. My savings would be even more if I send a batch of layouts as the shipping is flat rate). I couldn’t wait to get them in my hands and see if it was true.

Fast forward again to today. They arrived in the mail at 4pm this afternoon – so 2 days later from Utah. Great fast turn round. And its TRUE they don’t cut off the edges of my pages. Even the test one which I had printed at CostCo twice trying to get it done right came back perfect. It was important what Anthony thought about them – when you have serious amateur photographer as a husband any prints are also required to be given his seal of approval. And YES again Persnickety Prints passed the test for the quality of the paper and the reproduction of the colors. These guys are good! So if you do any digital scrapbooking I highly recommend you try them out while Ali Edwards has her coupon code (valid until 12th September) you won’t be disappointed. I know they will be getting my business from now on. They win on:-

1. price
2. no cutting off the edges of layouts
3. speed of turn round
4. price again – yes scrapbooking is an expensive hobby if your not careful - so this is important to me.
5. customer service – did I mention this before. I don’t think I have. Since Wednesday they have responded to my posts on their facebook page and emails I have sent to them in no time. Gold star rating for that. I always appreciate businesses responding to me in a timely manner.
   

So just to make sure you get it – GO and Visit Persnickety Prints if your persnickety about the printing of your layouts. You won’t regret this decision.

Off to work on some paper layouts for the new May Flaum Class I’m doing at Big Picture Scrapbooking. It will be fun to make a mess again.