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.

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.

Southport Times

When we first got married we lived in a small village called Burscough which is between Liverpool and Preston and inland from Southport in the North West of England. With our first child on the way I wanted to take pre-natal classes and signed up with the National Child Birth Trust. As a young couple we had made few friends in the area prior to this and these classes have resulted in making life long friends. Each time we visit England we try and get to visit them, it doesn’t always work as we have limited time and many people to see. (We missed seeing a couple of sets of friends this year due to vacations and time constraints. Its really hard when you have family and friends to fit in and its also your vacation.)
On this occasion we were able to spend a day in the Southport area and see three families in one visit. We all met with the birth of our first born child – Jake, Eleanor, Isabella and Nathan. Thirteen years later (with 11 of them spend overseas for us) we can return for a visit and the kids just act as if they saw us yesterday and even us adults manage to continue where we left off, although we do discuss the differences in education and things like that. Sue was a great host and provided a excellent base for our visit. Its great to have someone willing to open their house to that many people. Thanks Sue!

Supplies – Katie Pertiet Photo Clusters no.31, Vinnie_Pearce_Kraft_Paper_single, Jen Wilson grungedges_set1, iKari designs Alpha Bits Stamped Chocolate.

Another layout from England……

Well that’s not exactly true as the pictures are from Portmeirion in Wales but they are from our trip to the UK. Portmeirion is a strange place. It was designed and built by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis between 1925 and 1975 in the style of an Italian village and is now owned by a charitable trust. Many know it due to the pottery that was designed by the daughter of the Sir Clough Williams-Ellis. My Mum used to love this pottery and the last time I visited I was able to selected some pieces to add to her collection from the seconds shop. This time we spend a few hours just exploring the grounds. We had left the kids with the grandparents for a few days and it was nice just to have sometime to ourselves. If your ever in the area I highly recommend a visit, but get there early as it gets busy!

Digital supplies - KPertiet_PhotoClustersNo31, KPertiet_GraphicFlowerClusters-3, Kpertiet_Edges_7, KPertiet_StitchedJournalStripsNo2-1 (Designerdigitals.com); Kraft Paper - VPearce_Kraft_paper01 (Two Peas).

London Trip

On our recent trip to England the main reason for the trip was to visit the American Embassy to present ourselves for our renewal interview for our “visa”. We have a special visa which allows us to live in the USA due to hubbies job but it is only valid for a number of years and it was finally time for us to renew it. The kids didn’t have to attend so we flew from London to Manchester on our arrival in England and then a few hours later we caught  a train back to London. Having just flown all through the night from Texas by the time we arrived back in London we had been travelling for over 24 hours – yuck is all I can say. Then the next morning we had to be at the embassy for 9am the next morning so we couldn’t even get to sleep in and catch-up. Luckily our interview was simple and fast so we got to spend sometime wandering around London (even those in a sleep deprived state) and having lunch with my sister before we got back on the train and headed back to Manchester. By the time we finally made it to Manchester we were both dead on our feet but happy to know that our visa had been approved and we could return to Texas and continue with life. I don’t know what we would have done if there had been a problem – thankfully it didn’t happen and for that I thank God.

Digital supplies –Papers and digital elements  JM Designs – Travel the World; Template – Biograffiti.com – creative juice no. 21(freebie). Shadows – scrapmatters.com Jennifer Barrette designs “Get Real – Realistic Drop Shadows”.

Back from England

 

Haven’t posted for a while as I’ve been in England for two weeks. I had fun but glad to be back in my own bed with my own things. Its nice not to have to cook and clean for two weeks but I miss my own space and was ready to get back to the routine. Visiting England is about the grandparents and I take the kids each summer but this year we also had to renew our visas which allow us to live in the USA and we’re grateful that this was achieved in the end with ease and we can stay for five years without having to renew.
While I was in England I had the opportunity to meet up with a school friend who I hadn’t seen in 26 years so I thought I’d record this with a digital page – digital because I’ve discovered one of the great advantages of digital is that it can be done at 4.30am without waking others who may be sleeping and as I always have trouble with the jetlag this is a great advantage to me!

The layout I have created is also for a challenge for the online crop which is running at pretty paper, true stores (and scrapbooking classes with cupcakes) blog. It was a color challenge to scrap with red, aqua and white. I then decided to use the latest template from Katie Pertiet at www.digitaldesigns.com template inspiration.

Supplies – Katie Pertiet Clock Buttons and template; Jen Wilson – worn foam stamps, paper flower – Reminisce kit from sweet shoppe designs and red paper and text swirls from Jessica Sprague.com InAWord04.

Photoshop Friday Series

At JessicaSprague.com there is a series of photoshop short tutorials called Photoshop Friday. So far I’ve bought two of these when they have been on special so they have cost me a $1 – yes that is not a typo. Now they are short and sweet but they come with a mini-kit and template to make the layout as part of the class so for a dollar they are a sweet deal. I’ve learned that like at Kohl's when shopping for digital supplies you only buy when things are on sale. Most of the digital websites have at least one day a week when things are on special and you just need to sign-up for their newsletter to know when.
Anyway yesterday I took Philip and his friend to the pool for some fun in the water at LMRA and when I opened the latest tutorial I had purchased to work through I realised the pictures were perfect for the layout. I was very proud of myself as I also actually did some photo editing before I made the layout to make the water bluer and put some ‘extra’ water behind philip. The highlights also needed some work!

Before

After
 

How cool is that! The reason I added the extra water behind him was so the picture would fit better in the template. In the end I didn’t need it that much as I realised I could just angle the picture – durrrr…….
Here’s the final layout. What I learned to do was using the text on curve tool – now in photoshop elements you have to use a text path purchased from someone else but I’m lucky if I want to do this Anthony has an earlier version of the full photoshop I can make the curves in. That will be for another day – for the moment I’m happy with what I did and what I’ve learned. Creating my own curves is for another day.


 

All supplies from JessicaSprague.com – Photoshop Friday Series No.10

Snapshots of you - Dad

In January 2007 my Dad had a massive stroke and since them has spent his time confined to a wheel chair watching the world go by. I haven’t seen him since the last trip we made to England but I prepare myself for another step backwards in terms of what communication there is. Last time I visited he certainly recognised me but this time I’m not so sure it will happen from what my sisters report! Thanks to my mother-in-law I get to speak to him about once a month as she calls on her cell phone from the nursing home. I don’t know what he makes of this but I tell him I love him and we miss him and I pray that he at least understands the words.

I have been struggling with what to take with me for my next visit. The last few times I’ve taken T-shirts but really how many does he need. I send DVD’s for him and his visitors to watch for his Birthday and Christmas. So I wanted to do something different. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you’ll know I’ve started playing with digital scrapbooking so I decided to make a layout for him which I will put in a frame for his wall. The pictures are all of him over the years. Some of my favorites from the pictures my sister Juliet got scanned by a company so we could have digital copied of them.

Supplies – Template No 19 Cathy Z, Notebook Edge Frames and KPertiet_Edges all from designerdigitals.com; Carina Gardner Distressed Urban from designhousedigital.com and jbarrette_shadowstyles from scrapmatters.com

Blending Layers in Photoshop Elements

So today I decided I wanted to learn something new about photoshop elements and create a new digital layout. I had purchased the “How’d they do that?” – course called the perfect blend from ww.designerdigitals.com it was well worth the money. It comes with a digital paper, a digital brush and all printable step-by-step instructions. The only negative is that I’m using elements 8.0 and I don’t think its been updated for the changes so something’s were in a slightly different place than the instructions but it was easy enough to find them and continue to work. Once I had worked through the instructions I decided the best way to make sure I understood what I had learned was to try on my own to create a layout. This is the result.



Supplies –
plus the Portauprince set I purchased for Haiti from Songbird Avenue.com

Technique rich layouts

Once in a while I feel like creating a page which is more in depth in terms of the techniques I use on it or the mediums I use. Last night I decided I wanted to play with my paints and glimmer mist. (One of the reasons I could never go totally digital is my love of getting messy sometimes when I’m scrapping – digital just isn’t so much fun!). So I decided I would make my own background paper. Originally I was doing it for a different set of pictures but I was moving things around on my desk and managed to knock a pile off and when I was sorting the stuff out I found an envelope of pictures from our trip in 2008 which I had never scrapped. I was flipping through them and this one spoke to me and I realized I wanted to do an ‘artzy’ page with it. Not really recording a memory which is 99% of my scrapbooking but using the image to remind me to dream about possibilities. Doing a layout like this also means I have more freedom to play with the messy stuff! Here’s what I created.

The background cardstock started life as a piece of CTMH textured white cardstock. I took two masks and using tattered angels glimmer mist in tattered leather color I sprayed the paper. Once it was dry I then took some new CTMH stamps called Live inspired and used the corner stamp in this set with Tim Holtz distress ink to stamp around the edge at all different angels. The picture is then matted in twilight paper by CTMH – the lighter color is the reverse side of the twilight textured cardstock. The “dream” was a piece of pre-cut chipboard i picked up at Michaels – I sprayed with a blue glimmer mist and a copper one. The saying “Live inspired, dream with possibility” was a saying on the stamp set and I stamped it first off but it was too small so I recreated it in word and printed on an overhead. The compass, arrow and other words are CTMH rub-ons.

When finally complete I’m really happy with the look I created. May even get a frame for this one and put it on the wall rather than hiding it away in a scrapbook album. For those interested this picture is of Ecole Beach in Oregon. It was a grey and dismal day but Anthony still managed to get this picture.

Today I also made a quick digital page using the challenge template on designerdigitals.com. I used digital brushes to create my own digital background paper in a similar way with the traditional layout. Fun to see how you can recreate techniques digitally. Other supplies are :-

Winged Words Brushes and Stamps - Katie Pertiet
LivEdesigns - Afternoon Stroll
SBA-portauprince

Another take on the same sketch

 

To show how versatile sketches are I decided to make another layout on the same sketch I did for the last post. I turned the sketch by 45 degrees so I could include landscape pictures.

 

Added a grunge board swirl which I colored with glimmer mist to give some dimension to the right side of the layout as I didn’t have any journaling I wanted to add. With this sketch you could include a 7 by 5 picture in addition of the large area of patterned paper as well. That would give even more options!

And just for fun another quick digital layout I did for camp scrap yesterday – digital template was provided by Allie Edwards and papers etc came from a freebie at designer digital by Katie Pertiet

Fun layout for Saturday morning…..

Started the morning moving some pictures off my point and shoot and re-cataloging them so they were stored ready to print. I try and do this on a regular basis just incase the card gets corrupt or something. I know so many people who have lost pictures with lost cameras or corrupt card. So if you have done it recently get it done this holiday weekend!

Once I was had finished the family were still sleeping so I decided to play with PSE 8 again and try another layout. I recently had downloaded a free template from www.designerdigitals.com for a template challenge – the template was by Pattie Knox and had space for lots of pictures. Having just sorted my “snaps” I knew I had lots of guinea pig pictures and it would be a fun template to use with these.The kit I used with the template was LivEdesigns_AfternoonStroll-PPack from www.jessicasprague.com.

I don’t very often scrapbook using my pictures who would when they have a semi-professional husband. My pictures can’t compete with his but I’m still really happy with the results. I couldn’t get PSE8 to remove the guinea pig red eye. I’m guessing guinea pig eyes are different and I maybe need a different tool. I now have to create a second page for Galaxy our other guinea pig – I think I’ll try and flip the template so I have mirror image layout to go in the album.

Talking about albums – I gave up on chronological scrapbooking several years ago after reading the Stacey Julian book. Now I have themed albums. So Eleanor has a dance album and Philip a sports album. We have trip albums, everyday Eleanor and everyday Philip albums (these include school layouts) – then my favorite album is our special people album and this is where these layouts will go. Joining the page on Boris the hamster. If your still chronologically scrapbooking I highly recommend moving away from this – the freedom it has given me is great. I can just scrapbook what  I feel like – like this morning. The pictures of Slash just appealed to me at 9am on a Saturday morning. If I was a chronological scrapbook I’d have to wait until I got to that point.

Here are links to the two books by Stacey Julian which got me to change, highly recommend them both although I can’t believe how much copies are going for as they are out of print! If your in Fort Worth and want to read them you can contact me and loan them if your promise to return!

Blue Bird - My first digital layout without a template

Well Eleanor has gone off to see the new movie Eclipse, without me at the last minute so I’m trying to prop my eyes open till she gets home. Decided to try my hand at some more digital scrapbooking and set myself the challenge of cutting an image out of a photo and using it one a page. Its only taken me 2 hours but I’m done. The magic extractor tool in PSE 8.0 is really cool! Made it really easy to do when I worked out it was the right tool to use! I know I’ve already traditionally scrapped these layouts but I wasn’t expecting to like the resulting layout so much – don’t you like the blue bird in the corner! Wasn’t planning a second blog post today but was so excited to have done this I had to share!

Technorati Tags: digital,scrapbooking

Quote from Ballet Brushes n Stamps by Jesse Edwards
Dance Sticker - ArtWHSE_DanceRubons-n-Brushes - Danelle Johnson and DesignerDigitals.com
Lace - Copyright©2009 Digital Fingers by Louise Williams Choco Mint
Bird - porta prince set

Especially for Father’s Day

Using the template challenge on Designer Digitals for this week I created this digital layout about my Dad. The papers I used are from previous color challenges on designer digitals by Katie Pertiet (KPertiet_ColorChallenge61310) and I added a digital brush to give a frame around the edge which is also her’s – although this one I purchased. Can I just say I love this site for digital supplies and ideas.

Digital Layout

I will never totally move to digital layouts (well only if they stop making scrapbook supplies and given the amount of supplies I have stashed it would take a long while for me to run out) but since taking the Cathy Z class Me:The Abridged version I have been dabbling with it and asked for Photoshop Elements for Mothers Day so I could use some functionality I didn’t have in the photoshop version we had. This weekend we finally managed to get round to replacing the disk drive in the computer so we could load the software. (Its rather hard to load software when the disk drive is out of order!). I have lots to learn with digital scrapbooking and especially now I have a new program to play with and I really believe the only way to do this is to work with it and create layouts. So I thought I would do some of the recent everyday pictures I want to record. Digital scrapbooking allows you to change your paper color to match the pictures so the two papers I used in this layout weren’t the color they are now. The cardstock was originally a lighter denim blue or indian cornblue in CTMH colors. Its from http://www.freedigitalscrapbooking.com and I messed around with the color in the blue range until I was happy with it. I say messed around as yet I’m not totally confident in how to do this and which tool does it the best. The patterned paper is from the chocmint digital kit from Louise Williams at www.digitalscrapshop.com and it was also a free download. There is so much available free on the internet in terms of digital scrapbooking supplies. I finally added the frames which I had purchased from Katie Pertiet at www.designerdigitals.com I love this store and have purchased a lot from there – but wait for a sale as they have them regularly! I was able to use the same frame for the main page and the focal picture. It was also easy to make the color of the title match the frame on the focal picture which helps pull it all together. I finally added a digital brad from the chocmint kit. Once I get it printed at Costco I may actually added a real button or something to turn it into a hybrid layout but we’ll see!
Costco print 12 inch scrapbook pages for just under $3 which when you compare to the cost of paper and embellishment isn’t bad. Its archival quality photo paper which is used. I prefer the glossy finish to the matt but that’s a personal choice.
The other fun thing I was able to do was to have the same picture in the two small picture slots but to show a different part of the original picture.
I should also note that the layout uses one of Cathy Z’s templates which is available for sale on www.designerdigitals.com I love her templates as they are so easy to use. This could be due to the fact that I’ve used them doing her big picture scrapbooking classes but I find that the way she sets them up with the layers really makes the creation of the page so easy.