Write. Click. Scrapbook.

Looking Forward: Documenting Goals (and Progress)

The new year brings new opportunity, a time to reset, restart, take stock, and look forward. For me, part of looking forward is setting goals. My word for this year is “lighten,” a word that both encompasses my goals and helps me stay focused on them.

Lighten: 1. to reduce in weight or quantity; 2. to lessen the load of or upon; 3. to make less burdensome or oppressive; alleviate; mitigate; 4. to make less wearisome; 5. to cheer or gladden

My goals include losing some weight by eating more whole (lighter) foods and exercising regularly, clearing out the clutter throughout my house, using up what I have, purging what I won’t use, and reducing the amount of stuff coming in. These goals apply to my scrapbooking as well: purging my supplies, assessing my unfinished projects, planning new projects for the year ahead, and being more deliberate with my purchases. One of the things of which I’m taking stock is my kit subscriptions. I have unused kits piling up and really need to scrutinize my plan going forward. Another area is general purchases of supplies. I often buy digital or physical sets of pocket page cards when I really like only a few of the cards, leaving the rest to pile up. I plan to use my digital skills when possible to create a similar look or design my own custom cards.

I’ve started an album to document my word, these goals and progress made, particularly my weight loss/fitness journey. I’m using a 6x8” album with mostly pocket pages and incorporating supplies from my stash of kits as well as creating custom cards. I created the following general color palette, at least for the start of the book.

Having a color palette or swatch helps in keeping the colors consistent when creating pocket cards that will be used in the same project.

Here’s a few cards I created in Photoshop that use my word and a Brush script font that I love (Bonjour). My definition card and 2016 card were inspired by the work of Christine Herrin. I’m a fan of her script lettering!

 

I know that to be successful at making progress on my goals, I can’t try to do everything at once. I’d get overwhelmed or frustrated and give up. My plan is to focus on a few things each month. To aid in planning and keep myself accountable (and admittedly, to have something to add to my album), I created a 3x4” calendar card with space to write my goals for the month.

For January, my goals to record on this card were to eat healthier by eating more whole foods, cutting out refined sugar, wheat, and diet soda, to drink more water, and to clean up the kitchen each evening. For February, I want to continue working on those goals and add the goals of incorporating exercise in my daily routine and finishing at least one unfinished scrapbook project.

How are you planning to document your goals and progress this year? Have any plans to DIY projects as part of your goals? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!

Happy Scrapping!

Happy New Year | Day 2

Hi! Valerie here with day number two of our week of layouts inspired by the word "year." I decided to focus on a layout about my son's most recent year. I included highlights of his year in a paragraph list format with a large, bold title. 

It's been a really long time since I have created a fully digital layout. I start each of my layouts by bringing my photos into a 12 x12 Photoshop document. From that document I decide on photo placement and size. Next I work on the title.Normally, I would choose fonts and cut my title out of cardstock with my Silhouette Cameo. As I was choosing the fonts, the layout started heading in the hybrid direction.  I had already printed out the photo strip, and I was going to print out the title and journaling onto a white sheet of 12 x 12 cardstock. But then, I continued to play with the title (font: Sullivan) in Photoshop by coloring it in and decided to just make it 100% digital. Why not? So I have my first fully digital page in at least two years.

Pin-inspired Day 3

Hello there and welcome to day 3, of our Pinterest inspired posts! I'm Jennifer, and I am going to wrap up our teams week of blogging with the pin I chose for inspiration:

 

 

As soon as I saw this pin, I was completely inspired by the colors (yellow and grey are my favorite) and the diagonal layout design! I created my layout using both color and design as inspiration:

I was so inspired by the design, that I created a free template to share with all of you!

You can download it here!

Lisa also created a layout to share, based on this pin. She was inspired by the grey & yellow color scheme. I just love her simple graphic design, and the mix of patterned papers she chose. I also just realized that her layout too, is about her adorable cat! Great minds scrap alike ;)

I hope you have enjoyed our posts this week! We hope you feel inspired to use the pins we provided, or go find your own on Pinterest to inspire your next scrapbook page! Just remember why you got on Pinterest in the first place ;)

Happy Scrapbooking!

Jennifer

Click. My favorite Click post

I have written a lot of Click. posts over the years as a WCS team member. I have enjoyed it very much! For this post I went back and looked to see if I have one I liked more than the others. Below you can find my favorite Click. post! It was first posted in October of 2012. Enjoy!

Earlier this week I listened to the latest episode of The digi show (a podcast that shares thoughts and inspiration on digital scrapbooking) and they talked a little about what to do when you are scrapbooking and don´t have photos to go with the story. It got me thinking about which circumstances this can happen and this is what I came up with:

1. If you are scrapbooking older memories for example from your childhood or a trip you took a long time ago.

2. When you just didn´t have the camera around to capture the moment.

3. If you have an assignment to scrapbook something specific, but don´t have a photo to go with it.

I realize that there are many more, but let´s just go with these for now!

In the podcast they talked about using Stock photos, which is basically photos that are licenced for everyone to use. There are online sites that have thousands of free photos, just Google search it. Ok, so Stock photos are not your photos, but can very much help out when you need something for your project. 

Celeste Smith tells me that she uses stock photos all the time in her digital scrapbooking. Here she has scrapped about her beloved TV shows. And when I saw this page, I remembered that I actually did this too in my Project Life album earlier this year!

I also have a layout that I made a few years ago where I journaled about infertility. But I didn´t have digital photos from when my daughter was a baby (and not as cute as this!) so I searched and used a stock photo. 

What do you think about that? I really have no problem with using others photos, but if you really do want to use your own photos you can easily build up your own portfolio of stock photos. What kinds of photos would you put in that folder? Well, go back and see what you have scrapbooked before. Perhaps you journal alot about your feelings, then pictures of nature often suits the page. Here is an example from my albums.

The title of this page is "If I was in charge..." and has nothing to do with that flower photo really. But I think it can be nice and natural to use nature photos on layouts about anything. 

Another tip to build up and use stock photos of your own, is to take photos of everyday kind of things. It can be things around the house or photos of a great pattern etc. So to start with just snap random photos in nature and stuff around your house to just have in your archives.

Ok, that was one way to solve the no-photo "problem". The exact opposite might be to just go with it and make a page without a photo. We did a whole gallery where No photos were requiredin the summer of 2011. 

Before I made my page for this gallery I had always envisioned a no-photo layout to be more artsy/artjournal-ish, but boy was I wrong! I loved every layout in that gallery and got a lot of inspiration from them!

You can also take a photo later. For this layout, I really would have wanted to take a photo of the Waterlily in the lake as my journling talks about how magical that nightswim was, alas I didn´t bring my camera. So, I made sure I picked a flower and took a photo of that when I got home. This is also something you might be able to do when you don´t find the right photo from your childhood perhaps. Maybe you have a photo of something else from that time? 

Ps. I created a set of photos on Flickr that is filled with my own stock photos. Because sharing is caring!

Click: Repairing photos

Hello! It's Jennifer Larson. I am sharing an almost photographic tragedy last summer and how I solved it using PSE.

I was camping at Itasca State Park. For most of our trip, I carried my point-and-shoot in my pocket. When I took it out of my pocket to get a shot with my friend, I must have accidentally switched the camera setting, disturbingly to shoot a SNOW scene. Here's what came out:

See how white it is? AGGHH! It's a good photo, though, and one that supports my story, so I set about repairing it. I tried lots of manual adjustments, but none worked well for me, probably due to my lack of expertise. Then, two adjustments did it. First, auto adjust:

For as much as we poo-poo auto adjust it tends to do a nice job, like in this case: It made everything a bit darker. Woot! Still, the outer edges were blown out. Then I got an idea: add a vignette:

Perfect! Now it looks like I made it artsy on purpose instead of accidentally adjusting the camera setting in my pocket while I was hiking. Here's my final page:

Thank for checking out my page! Hopefully, I gave you ideas for fixing photos you love that are not perfect but you still want to use on a page.

*Confession: I made this page last summer. When I tried to replicate my adjustments, of course I couldn't do it exactly the same as last summer. The vignette I used was either Pioneer Woman or CoffeShop Blog. I'm not sure how much I fiddled with it, but I obviously had more time to do it in the summer to get it perfect than I did right now. GAh. Still, photo reparied! Sally forth and fix those photos.

Learn a New Technique! Day Two: Lens Flare Technique

Hi everyone and welcome to Day 2 of our week devoted to learning new techniques!

I'm Amy Kingsford and today I have a fun photo technique to share with you that I learned recently and I'm looking forward to playing around with in my Autumn photos.  

I've always loved the look of lens flare, but am rarely able to capture this effect with the lens in my Nikon P520. So I've often turned to premade flare and actions to create this effect in my photos.

But did you know that there is a filter available in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements that will create lens flare for you?  

 

 

Let me introduce you to this tool if you are not already familiar and show you a simple trick that will give you more control over the size, color and opacity of the flares you create with this tool.

NOTE: For the best results, you may want to pair this effect with photos that are back lit or have a visible source of light.

1. First you'll open your photo in Photoshop, duplicate it and make any basic edits you wish to make.

2. Next you'll go to Filter--> Render--> Lens Flare.  Here you can control the position, brightness and the type of lens flare you want to recreate.

 

 

3. Play around with these settings until you are happy with the result you see in the preview and click ok.

4. Now you should see the lens flare effect applied to your photo, but you might also notice that the effect is now locked to your photo.  If you are happy with the effect then you are good to go, but if you want to be able to customize the effect a bit more go ahead and undo the effect.  

 

 

IMPORTANT: Even if you know from the start that you want to be able to customize your results, you'll still want to apply the effect directly to your photo and then undo it--read on to find out why.

5. Next create a new layer above your photo and fill it with black.

 

 

6. Now go to Filter and at the very top of the list of filters you should see the last filter you applied Lens Flare. Click on it to apply the exact same settings you just applied to your photo to your new fill layer.

 

 

 

7. Now apply the Screen blending mode to this layer and you should see the same result that you saw earlier when the effect was applied directly to your photo, only now you are able to customize your results.

8. Maybe you'd like your lens flare to be a different color, or perhaps more vibrant.  You can now adjust the Hue and Saturation of your lens flare.

 

 

9. Or maybe you'd like to tone down the effect by changing the opacity or by adding a bit more blur to your flare.  I changed my opacity to 65% and added a Gaussian Blur to my lens flare layer.

 

 

 

10. Or maybe you'd even like to reposition or remove part of your flare to better suit your photo. I ended up using a soft brush with my foreground color set to black to paint directly on my flare layer to remove parts of the flare that I felt were distracting.

And there are countless other changes you could make if you wanted to.

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Here are my final results. Though the changes may seem subtle, having the ability to tweak things here and there with your lens flare really can make a huge difference! 

 

 

I hope you have as much fun playing around with this effect as I have.  And don't forget to join Lisa tomorrow to learn another new technique!

 

Learn a New Technique! Day One: Text Tool

Hello!

Since we’re focusing on learning this month here at Write Click Scrabook, we’ve got an entire five days of new techniques for you to learn. Each day this week, come back to learn a new technique from Amy Kingsford, Lisa Borbely, Sue Althouse, and Jenny Larson.

Today you get me, Amy Sorensen, as your host, and I’m going to teach you a Photoshop technique.

One of my favorite approaches to a layout is to put something on top of a photo that has a lot of background. Especially the title or the journaling. Sometimes I use traditional supplies, but sometimes I add it digitally. Adding text in Photoshop is easy, but sometimes you need text with a slightly-opaque background, to set off the text from the image.

Here’s how to add a semi-transparent layer (like a piece of vellum) behind text. My instructions are for Photoshop CS6, but if you have a different version the steps will be fairly similar.

1. Open your photo and process it like you usually do, then crop it. (Cropping before you add text makes the proportions correct.)

2. Save a copy of your photo without the text. (I do this in case I want to use the photo somewhere else without the text.) Press CTRL+ALT+S to save as a copy.

3. Add your text and move/size/color it so it is exactly the way you want it. In this image, I’ve adjusted all the text:

4. Find the Rectangle Tool. It looks like this:

   Or, just press U and you’ll switch to the Rectangle Tool.

5. Draw a rectangle around your text. Don’t panic if it looks like this:

  because we’ll fix that in the next step!

6. In your Layers window (press F7 to pull it up if you don’t already have it open), make sure you are in the Rectangle layer, then adjust the Opacity.

Slide the slider back and forth and watch how it changes the shade of the rectangle.

7. If you want to add a border to your box, you use the tools that appear when you have the Rectangle Tool selected (mine are on the top left of my screen). They look like this:

Click on the button with the horizontal line to add a border, then click on the Stroke button to change the color. I wanted a fairly subtle line, so I chose 30% grey.

8. Once you’re happy with how the opaque rectangle looks, click on the Rectangle layer in your Layers window. Then click on Layer, Arrange, Send Backwards. This will make sure that all of your text is on top of the rectangle.

9. Flatten the layers (Layer, Flatten Image).

10. Save your file with a different name than you used in step 2. (I just added the word “text” to the file name.)

Here’s the layout I made with the photo:

 

One of the things I love about this hybrid approach is how quickly the layout comes together. As a super-slow scrapper, I appreciate anything that helps the process go more quickly!

Make sure to check back in tomorrow for a photo technique from Amy Kingsford. Happy scrapping!

 

How to Print 3x4 Photos on a 4x6 Print

Happy Friday! Carey here, and like many scrapbookers, I've been documenting our everyday lives using pocket pages in addition to 12x12 layouts. I'm also using both traditional and digital supplies. Although I mostly use 4x6 in. photos for my pocket pages, I like to include smaller photos as well. The most common size I use is 3x4 in., which fit perfectly into the smaller pockets. This size is also great for photos taken with my phone, since they often look better printed smaller due to their lower resolution. While some photo processors will now print small sizes such as 3x4 or instagram-friendly 4x4 or 3x3, these sizes generally are more expensive than traditional 4x6 prints. To take advantage of the lower cost, I print two 3x4 photos on one 4x6 print, using Photoshop Elements. Here's how:

 

Step One: Open a new file at 6 x 4 in., 300 dpi.

 

 

 Step Two: Open two photos and make any necessary edits. Crop each photo to 3 x 4 in., 300 dpi.

 

 

Step Three: Using the Move Tool, drag the first 3 x 4 file onto the 6 x 4 file and move until aligned with the left edge.

 

 

Step Four: Repeat Step Three using the second photo, but align with the right edge.

 

 

Step Five: Save your file as a .jpg. Now it's ready to print at home or your favorite photo processor.

 

 

Once your 6 x 4 file is printed, simply cut the smaller photos apart to use in your pocket page album, or on any project! The same steps will work for 2 x 3 in., 3 x 3 in., or any other small-sized photos - even mix and match sizes (such as one 3x4 with two 2x3 photos) to fit on a single standard 4 x 6 print. Here's a few examples: one pocket page and one 12x12 layout.

 

Using smaller photos is a great way to get more photos on one layout!

 

Happy scrapping!

Jumpstart Week | Technique

Welcome to day 4 of Jumpstart Week.  This week we are looking at the different ways that you can jumpstart your scrapbook page.  We looked at Photos, Colors, and Design so far.  Today we will look at techniques.

Trying a new technique is a great way to jumpstart a page.  There are so many different techniques that I want to try on my layouts!  For my “Beach Love” layout, I really wanted to try hand-stitching on my page.  After I put down some papers and my photos and got a general idea of where I want to stitch, I stitched the word “LOVE” and an arrow in the upper left hand corner.  I also stitched a star on the lower right corner to balance things out. 

You can even stitch on Project Life journal cards. I stitched the speech bubble onto a 3x4 journal card and adhered my photo inside it.

On this layout, I hand-stitched the sun rays using twine.

Another technique that I wanted to try on a page was emboss & resist with watercolors.  I did that on my layout about going to AT&T Park for baseball game.

Here’s a close-up of what the emboss and watercolor resist looks like.

If you’re interested in trying this technique, I have a video tutorial on my blog here.

For my page “Catch a Wave”, I wanted to simulate looking at things underwater through a porthole, so I created punched out circles on the bottom of the page and filled some of them with two layers of vellum and sequins and wood veneers in between.  I think this see-through effect is a fun look.

Another technique I love is filling cut-outs with patterned papers underneath.  For my layout below, I used my Silhouette machine to cut out the circles with hearts in them, and filled the hearts with coordinating patterned papers underneath.  Pretty fun!

Lisa O created this layout by using the punched out negative space paper strips as mats behind her photo.  She had punched out a bunch of butterflies and saved a few strips of the papers to use for the layout. So clever!

Jennie also wanted to use the negative space of a die cut on a page.  The mat with the hearts cut out really pop off the page!

Laura O wanted to try some Photoshop actions on her photo.  Laura says, “I used a photo action (Adrienne Looman Little Kisses).  For something like this I always duplicate the photo to apply the filter and keep the original.  I know that someday I might want to see how things really looked.  With this photo the effects of the filter were so fun and super saturated I was inspired to scrap it with this polaroid frame and colorful papers.”  Photoshop actions are a great digital technique to try!

Jennie wanted to incorporate letterpress into a 12x12 layout.  She used that technique to create this page “The Great Outdoors”.

Another technique that Jennie wanted to try was to use large photos cut up into several smaller slots on a Project Life layout.  That looks so cool!

Want to use up all your alphabets?  Why not use the leftovers to create some visual interest?  Jennie used it as part of her title + as an embellishment/page element.  So creative!

There are many techniques that I still want to try.  I keep a list of them in Evernote so that if when I have some time to experiment, I can go down the list and try something out.  Trying out new techniques is a great way to jumpstart a page!

 

Jumpstart Week | Design

Welcome to day 3 of “Jumpstart Week”!  Christine here to take you through a week of Jumpstarts!  We’ve covered layouts inspired by photos and colors.  Today we will discuss how page DESIGN can be a jumping off point to inspire your layout.

For me personally, I am inspired by geometric shapes, or simply shapes of items that relate to my layout.  For my layout about summer, I created a sunburst shape on my layout using paper strips, washi tape, and wood veneer arrows.

 

I live in Southern California and am always inspired by the ocean.  For my “Beach Love” layout, I found a map of California online and used it to do a trace & cut with my Silhouette digital cutter.  Using a map shape of a state or country is a great way to incorporate into travel layouts!

For this digital layout about my husband’s rock band, I wanted to create a feel of movement and music, so I created wavy shapes in Photoshop and used them as clipping masks for my digital papers.

Sometimes I just like to use a repeating shape on my layout for no good reason.  In this layout about a date night with my husband, I cut a bunch of square papers into triangles and adhered them across the whole page.

On this layout I simply cut a bunch of arrow strips and sewed them onto the page.

I think it’s safe to say that I love incorporating shapes onto my layouts as a design element!

Another way to design a layout is to use a repeating shape.  In Jennifer’s layout she used long strips of photo with numbers across her page to summarize their summer vacation.

For Jennie’s layout about her favorite photos of fall, she used a sketch and adapted it to her own liking.  She incorporated a lot of squares onto her layout and tilted the whole design on the page.

For Jennie’s layout “Mister Sunshine”, she was inspired by the sunburst cut file and used it to fill in the gaps with a rainbow of patterned paper.

This layout by Jennifer H was perfect for her photo of the train ride.  The sewn on paper strips look like train tracks!

A great way to jumpstart a page design is to use a sketch or digital template as a starting point.  Celeste used a digital template by Gennifer Bursett for her digital page.

Another page by Celeste using a digital template by Sara Gleason.

Another way to jumpstart the design of your page is to scraplift someone else’s layout.  Just be sure to credit them with the design if you post it to online galleries.  Celeste liked Debbie Hodge’s layout “Sleepover”.

She used it as inspiration of her own layout “Muppets”.

One of my favorite design principles is the grid layout.  I love looking at grid layouts!  Lisa O used our Write.Click.Scrapbook. sketch for April to inspire a new layout.  Here was the sketch.

And here’s Lisa’s layout.  The photos are from her Garden board on Pinterest. The layout is about all the dreams that her family has for their garden and inspiration they get from Pinterest.  The grid actually looks like a Pinterest board too!

And sometimes it's just plain fun to try a design that is out of your usual design element (pun intended).  Amy S tried an experiment in design, as she wanted to do some things that she doesn't usually do: use one small photo and leave lots of white space. She wanted to see if she could make a layout with this design approach still feel like a layout she made (instead of copying from someone else).  I'd say her experiment was a success!

Scrapbook pages can be inspired by page designs, shapes, sketches, templates, and even Pinterest!  Sometimes the design of the page is just the jumpstart that you need to get scrapbooking!