Write. Click. Scrapbook.

Printing Out Elements for Hybrid Scrapbooking

Hello again! Did you get a chance to try out the template and techniques from Wednesday? If so please upload to the flickr group so we can see! If you got stumped along the way and have any questions just ask away in the comments.

Today we'll look at other ways to use your computer to create hybrid projects. One of the simplest ways is by printing files out onto cardstock or other papers, similar to using overlays as described yesterday. I'll divide today's techniques up into two kinds: using files that are commonly called printables, and using standard digital scrapbooking files.

 

Printables usually come in two files types, either as Word documents (.doc) or as Adobe PDf files. These are files that you can open up in Word or with Adobe Reader (respectively) and print directly onto paper, cardstock or transparencies. You can find an example in this post from Marnie from September. She included two freebie PDF downloads. You can print those out and cut them up to use on your pages, in minibooks or other projects.

The internet abounds with these kind of printable files. Many are free downloads created by generous designers. But you can also purchase PDF files from digital scrapbooking sites and sites like Etsy. One of the most common kind you find in scrapbooking is printable journaling blocks. Here are some free 12 days of Christmas tags from ormulu. You can also find a whole host of journaling tags and labels here on Creativity prompt.

Here are a couple pages made by Monika which use the same printable journaling block. This was a download created by Cathy Zielske back in the day.

The original download no longer exists, but Cathy kindly allowed Monika to recreate the template. You can download them by clicking on the following links. Download Cztemplate_monikawright_8.5x11 Download Cztemplate_monikawright_12x12 Thank you CathyZ!

One of the great things about using digital proucts is that they can be used over and over again! There is a limitation with PDF files though. You can't make changes to them like resizing or changing the colour. With standard scrapbooking digital elements however, you have more control over how they can be used. Many digital kits include patterned papers and embellishments. The files usually come in a .png format, which is a format that is used by Photoshop and other photo editing software.

To resize an element you can use the same process I described for resizing photos in my tutorial on Tuesday: Edit>Transform>Scale in Photoshop, or Image>Resize>Scale in Elements.

For example on this page I re-sized the postage stamp frame to use for my journaling.

You can also see that I mixed in some digital word art with the regular font. Those words in script came from a digital sticker set by Karla Dudley.

You can print other kinds of digital elements too.

 Supplies:

Sophistication Journaling Tags by Sara Schmutz  Daisy Jane Paper Bits by Carina Gardner Kraft Cardstock

On the page above I resized some labels so they would fit in my circle punch and arranged them all in a letter sized document in Photoshop. Then I printed out the sheet. You can see a tutorial explaining this here.

Lisa printed out a variety of things for this page.

The 11, Oh Snap and house tags are all digital elements that she printed out.

"But what, Francine", you're probably asking, "should I print all this stuff out on?" Well it really depends on you. I generally use cardstock or photo paper. I recently discovered that I prefer the look of digital elements printed onto mat photo paper, because they looks more like real paper products. I generally use cardstock only for printing things like journaling or overlays. When I do a photo/patterned paper grouping like the My Family page on Wednesday, I use glossy photo paper, the highest quality I can afford. Try different papers to see what works best for your pages!

You can also print out the patterned papers from digital kits and use them just like regular scrapbook paper: with your punches or die cutting machines for example

All the papers on this layout are ones I printed out from this kit and this kit.

This close up shows the heart and circle that I punched out, as well as the bird that I stamped and then cut out.

One last one for the road.

The bunting, labels, notebook paper and photo corner are all printed out digital elements.

I know this is a lot to take in. It does all seem overwhelming at first, so if you have any questions about how I did anything please do leave them in the comments!

Tomorrow I'll round out the week with a look at all the other things you can use digital kits and printables for.

Until then,

and the giveaway goes to . . .

Yummy yummy yum. Thank you for all the recipes. We cannot wait to try them all out!

Thank you, too, to Jill and Jillibean Soup for making our crafting so much more fun! Your products are delightful and practical and hit the spot every time.

Our lucky number this week belongs to

Ashley, congratulations! Please email us at writeclickscrapbook at gmail dot com!

Stay tuned for more hybrid tastiness from Francine!

give.away.day. featuring JILLIBEAN SOUP

October is definitely the time for soup. Cheddar soup, potato soup, chicken tortilla soup, and best of all,

for today's

we wanted to serve up something special. And we felt that a generous serving of Pasta Fagioli would do just that. And Jillibean was kind enough to add in a side of Corrugated Reds, Sugar Picks, Baker's Twine and more, for your additional dining, oops, scrapping, experience.

 

Hungry for it? Then you should hop on over to the official Jillibean Soup Site. There you can meet Jill, learn where the name came from, and drool over all their lovely products. Then, take a minute (or ten) and check out their blog to see all that their talented designers have done (be sure to look for our favorite Jillibean designers, Aly and Paula!).

Once you have been sufficiently inspired, click back and leave us a comment telling us your favorite (actual) soup. If you have a recipe, please feel free to link it or share it. We can't imagine anything more lovely for a chilly autumn day (or a chilly spring-y one in Australia!).

Comments will remain open until 8:00 pm PST and one lucky number will be slected at random and posted tomorrow. Please remember to check back as it is your responsibility to claim your lucky number by midnight Saturday!

Completing a Hybrid Page and Using Overlays

Good Wednesday morning! Did anyone try out using templates following my video? if you have any questions make sure to leave them in the comments and I will answer as quickly as possible. Today I want to show you how to complete a hybrid layout - at least one of the ways that I do it. I'll be using this template which I made.

 

 

 

 

 

You can click on the following link to download it for yourself. Download Francine Clouden Freebie Template

This is my finished page:

The photo, paper strips and patterned paper were all created in Photoshop using the clipping method from yesterday's tutorial.

The papers I used came from this free kit by Karen Funk at Design House Digital.

I turned off the background layer (to turn off a layer click on the little eye icon to the left of the layer) and then printed onto letter size photo paper. Here is my print out all cut out

I added it to my background (kraft of course!), then added the title, embellishments, journaling and stitching.

A close up shot.

If you use the template to make a page don't forget to upload it to the flickr group!

Here are some other ideas for using the template:

1. Instead of turning off the background layer, you can add another piece of patterned paper or cardstock and print everything out.

2. You can just as easily make your final page 12"x12" if you don't scrap letter sized.

So that's it! Here another example of a page I have made using this method.

On this one I printed the journaling out directly onto the cardstock as the template I used also had layers for journaling. Remember that trick with turning layers off? That's how I was able to make this page. I turned all the layers off except for the journaling which I then printed out onto the cardstock. Then I turned off the journaling layers to print the photo, papers and embellishment onto photo paper.

Another way that you can print directly onto cardstock is by using overlays. Overlays are like the digital version of transparencies. Usually they are meant to be used on photos, but you can do what Paula did in the layout below.

She printed one of the overlays from this set at Designer Digitals directly onto her cardstock, then embellished it with stickers.

Lisa also did the same thing on this page, using an overlay by Ali Edwards

 And finally a similar type of page from me.

Template and patterned paper by Karla Dudley

If you want to give overlays a try you can find some in a free download here by Karen Grunberg

With tomorrow being giveaway day, I think I have given you enough material to work through! On Friday we'll look at another way of using digital elements: printing them out to cut out to use on a paper page.

Until then,

Using Layered Templates for Hybrid Scrapbooking

  Welcome back! Ready  to get started?  When I first started hybrid (and restarted digital) scrapbooking earlier this year it was by using layered templates. Basically a layered template is the digi version of a sketch in paper scrapbooking. Consider it a map of sorts to use to make your page. The layout and design is there for you, you just need to add your papers, photos and embellishments! You can find templates with a complete page design, or one that is just for laying out your photos.

This page by Paula uses a photo template by Katie Pertiet from Designer Digitals.

Once Paula had the photos arranged in the template, she printed out the file and then cut around them to use on her page.

I used a similar process on this page except that I used a 12x12 page template by Nisa Fiin available at Jessica Sprague.

I used only the photo, label and paper layers, and then printed that out for my paper page. I also kept the little @ tag, but repositioned it.

But just how do you use these templates? The way I do it is by using a method called "clipping masks". I'll show you the steps, using a basic little template that I made for the tutorial. The template has two 4x6 shapes, similar to what you'll find in standard layered templates. Click the following link to download the template.  Download Francine Clouden Test Template

 
In Photoshop: Open the template and your photo, and with the move tool, click on the photo file and drag it onto the template file. (First make sure that you are in Standard Screen mode and can see all the open files)

In Elements you will see all your open files in a tray at the bottom of the screen. Make sure that you have the template file showing in the main working area, then simply drag the photo file from the tray at the bottom onto the template file.

You can now close the photo file. We want to clip the photo to the grey rectangle, so first drag the photo layer down in the layers palette so that it is above the layer with the grey rectangle. The layer palette can be found in the lower right of the screen.

Then place your cursor so that it is between the photo and rectangle layers and press the ALT key on your keyboard. Keep pressing it and you will see your cursor change into two overlapping circles. At this point click with your mouse and your photo will clip to the rectangle.

You can see that your photo is linked to the rectangle layer in the layer palette

Your entire photo is still there, but as it is clipped to the rectangle you can only see a portion of it. Use your move tool and try moving it around, you can see that different portions of it show up in the rectangle area. This is the power of clipping masks. Now we can move around the photo to get the placement we need. We can also resize it so see more or less of the original photo.

To do this in Photoshop make sure the photo layer is selected and go to Edit>Transform>Scale

In Elements go to Image>Resize>Scale

You'll see a frame come up around the photo. While holding your shift key down, Click on one of the corners of this frame, and drag the mouse to make the photo smaller. Holding down shift is very important because it keeps the proportions of the photo!

Play with this until you're happy with the size and position, then hit enter to make it stick.

Now try using this same process to add patterned paper to the yellow rectangle! The paper I am using comes from this free Halloween kit at Design House Digital. 

 

I've prepared a video of the steps shown above in Photoshop. Hopefully it will help explain the steps more clearly.

  

Once you've tried it out and feel more confident, why not play with a real template? You can find a free download from Cathy Zielske here. She also shares a video showing how she used the template.

 Ali Edwards also has a number of freebies and videos on her site. One of my favourites of hers is this one.

Tomorrow I'll show you how to complete a hybrid page and talk more about templates and overlays.

Until then,

What is Hybrid Scrapbooking?

Hello everyone! I'm back again, this time to share a week of hybrid scrapbooking with you. If you've ever wanted to try out hybrid, hopefully something I share this week will be the spark you need to get started! But first, just what is hybrid scrapbooking?

Dictionary.com defines hybrid as:

anything derived from heterogeneous sources, or composed of elements of different or incongruous kinds: a hybrid of the academic and business worlds.

OR

anything of mixed ancestry

When we talk about hybrid scrapbooking we usually mean a mix of traditional paper and digital scrapbooking techniques. Usually it's the digital part that scares people off, but all that really means is that you are using your computer to produce some part of your page or project.

So here's the thing:

Have you ever printed off a journaling or title block to add to your page?

Page by Rebecca

Then you were hybrid scrapbooking.

Have you ever put a frame or a other element onto a digital photo before printing it out?

 

 Page by me - brush by Karla Dudley

Then you were hybrid scrapbooking.

How about adding some word art to a page by printing it onto your cardstock?

Page by Rebecca

Page by me 0 word art made at Wordle

Then you were hybrid scrapbooking.

See? You probably already do this! Most of us use our computers everyday (and not just for reading blogs) and have probably done at least one thing on a scrapbook page that can qualify as hybrid.

Of course, hybrid scrapbooking can get more involved than that, and if you would like to do more, this week I'll show you how to use other computer techniques on your pages.

You will need to do a bit of preparation first though.

1. Make sure that you have the latest version of Adobe Reader installed. It's a free download that you can find here. This will allow you to open and use PDF files.

2. If you don't already have a photo editing program like Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, download and install the trial version of Elements that you can find here.The trial version is available for use for 30 days, counting from the day that you first launch the software.

3. Make sure your printer has ink!

Any questions? Please leave them in the comments!

Tomorrow I will share a few tutorials of some basic techniques that are very useful for hybrid scrapbooking.

Until then,

Get Out the Map

Vacation week - photo books

Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

 

Thanks for stopping by on the last day of vacation week at Write.Click.Scrapbook! Dana commented yesterday about how she had too many pictures to fit in a mini-album. I've often had that problem myself. What do you do when you want to use more photos? My favorite solution is to create a photo book. Granted, I'm an equal opportunities scrapbooker - I do both paper and digital scrapbooking, but even if you are not a digital scrapbooker, you shouldn't rule out the idea of photo books. Most photobooks are very easily created by dragging and dropping photos into pre-made templates. Of course if you are a digital scrapbooker you can create you own layouts and use those to fill your photobook.

 

Francine shared a photo book that she made about her last trip back home to Barbados.

She was starting to feel confident about her photography skills and wanted to make sure to capture lots of photos around the island.

She loved the idea of making them into a  photo book so that she would have a printed record, plus a way to easily go back to the tropics during the grey winter months.

I feel warmer already! Francine made this 20 page book with 10"x10" page at Inkubook.

I spent a weekend in Prauge this summer and whipped up the following album in a few days using a set of templates by Anna Aspnes. I kept the papers and embellishments the same throughout the album for consistency (and ease of creation). I had it printed at Shutterfly. Shutterfly has many different templates and options for photobooks.

 

Click here to view this photo book.

There are so many different sites that offer photo books. In addition to Shutterfly and Inkubook, you can use: Snapfish, Blurb, Mixbook, Winkflash and Picabook to name a few! If you are interested in learning more about photo books, Marnie devoted a whole week to photo book creation earlier this year - you can check out the first installment of that week here.

I hope you enjoyed this week - thanks so much for all your comments. Now go, scrap those vacation memories! And don't forget - get yourself in photo sometime!

Vacation week - mini albums

A vacation is having nothing to do and all day to do it in. ~Robert Orben

What do you do when you too many photos to fit on one page (or even a two-page spread)? One option is to create a vacation mini-album. My family and I went to Ireland on an unplanned trip to visit my uncle who was sick and I documented it in an album I called "10 days in Ireland". I kept the design simple - just one photo or two for each day and added my journaling on tape strips. I used patterned paper from one manufacturer - easy coordination! The base for my album was a chipboard album from Maya Road.

I used very simple embellishments - a punched circle with a number or word tag on it. This mini is a little heavier on the journaling because I had a lot to say. It was a bittersweet trip and it felt good to have it documented.

Monika used an 8x8 mini album to document a family vacation in Aruba. The base of the album is 8x8 but she incorporated a few extra photos on smaller pages:

Monika printed the extra photos, and backed them with cardstock. She then used her hole punch so that she could insert the extra photos into the mini. She added journaling on the back -- it tells the story of trying to get a decent photo of Mommy with her girls. I think they came out great!

Monika finished off the album by journaling the story of the trip including the highlights. She used her boarding passes and receipts as a background in addition to an Aruban coin.

Did you notice that both Monika and I included photos of messages we had written in the sand? Must be the sign of a scrapbooker! Come back tomorrow for my final installment of vacation week.

and the giveaway goes to . . .

Ah! Love. Without adding them up, we are going to say it was a tie between chaser/chased. The best part was how many of you resisted at first and now, 12, 17, or 34 years later you are happy and going strong! Love that.

Nikki did stop by (Hi Nikki!) and left her story in the comments. In case you missed it, here it is.

We both were volunteering for an organization called "Lost & Found", it's a place where kids and adults come together that have had a parent or spouse die. They can go to just talk and be with people that have experienced the same loss in their own family. I worked with the adults that had spouses die and Dan worked with the kids that had a parent or both die.
So one evening after a weekend "workshop" he CHASED me down and asked me if I'd like to get coffee. Well, he was an attorney and I had said that I would never date 1. an attorney 2. a doctor or 3. a car salesman; well you see how far that got me, I married an attorney!! (But now he's in the SB business... he says I've forever changed him... lets hope in a good way!) Any-who... I did think he was pretty cute and I had heard from another lady that volunteered with us that he was the nicest, sweetest man ever. Hmmm.... well why not, it's just one cup of coffee, right! Well about 6 hours later we said goodnight to each other outside a coffee shop! I walked away and thought "Wow, so that's what my husband will look like!" Then we were engaged 6 months later and married 3 months after that. When you know its right then why wait! We've been together for 7 years now and he really is my very best friend and my husband!!

Thank you, Nikki, for stopping by! We really appreciate both your sponsoring our giveaway and for taking the time to share your story with us. And thank you, too, for creating such fun products. That Bucky Beaver is about the cutest thing ever!

And now, the lucky number:

Congratulations to Cathy. Please shoot us an email at writeclickscrapbook at gmail dot com with your mailing address! Lucky lucky you!

Stay tuned for more Paula, vacations, and inspiration!