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.

Changing Digital Papers Color

Sometimes when scrapbooking you don’t have the correct colored paper. Now the beauty of digital scrapbooking is that it doesn’t matter you just change the color (can I just say here I don’t think I’m going to give up traditional scrapbooking totally but this digital stuff is getting a little addictive making and I’m loving I can do it anywhere!).

The patterned papers I chose to use are these ;-

I wanted to change the blue to match the blues more in my pictures and didn’t want the green wanted a brown. Doing this is easy in PSE 8.0. Firstly I took the papers and included them in my layout with the pictures. I then used the eyedropper tool and sampled the color of the jacket Philip was wearing. Then I clicked on the layer with the paper I wanted to change and selected Enhance>Adjust Color>Hue Saturation. A pop-up window  appears and the check the colorize box and if by magic the paper changes color. You can change it a little more if you want using the sliders.

Using this method I also changed the color of the hearts from green to the brown – so simple, so cool and fast! Means when you buy a digital element you can use it many times in many colors and thus get lots of uses out of it.
The other special thing I did on this layout was the cut out of Philip. So easy to do with the magic wand tool and so much easier than cutting out with scissors! Can you tell I’m becoming more and more into this digital scrapbooking. That being said I’m starting my next Big Picture Scrapbooking class this next week with May Flaum – “Adventures in Scrapbooking – using your stash” - its about using up your stash. So I think I’ll have my glue and scissors out again although I’m not sure I’ll use much of my stash up as I’ve got so much of it. I really need to get into my scrapbook room to clear-up ready but haven’t made it there yet. Maybe tomorrow.

Supplies used in addition to papers -

plus - Flergs_SBAportauprince_Heart1