Crop Corner

Last night, while I was flipping through some old scrapbooks, my husband, who was looking over my shoulder, remarked that I’ve gotten much better over time.

It is amazing to look back at some early scrapbooking pages and realize just how much my style has evolved. I still am trying to improve - but am happy that my improvements are noticable.

I’ve always been the type to take a long time to finish art projects. In fact, I can remember as a kid in gradeschool, that I was always one of the last to finish projects in art class. I seem to lack that just jump in and do it approach. I tend to analyze, obsess over spacing, and attempt to find just the right color combinations that work together with the photos.

The downside of all this is I don’t really think the extra time and effort necessarily mean that the final product is better. Lately I’ve been really examining layouts I like online, in magazines, and in books. I’ve been trying to distill what I can learn from them to hopefully, progress more directly to a creative process that is going to give me the results I want.

Love the products we featured in our Show & Tell column? Check out these pages for some great ways to use them. Layered patterns from the Paisley and Petals collection from SEI show off the richly colored designs that reverse to solids. Blocks of distressed patterned paper from the We R Memory Keepers Diner Collection frame a focal point and show off the spunky collection. Lightweight and flexible, Credit Card accessories from Heidi Swapp anchor a photo and journaling block with style. Transparency Letters from Chatterbox let patterned paper strips peek through and clearly make a statement as initials for each of the boys.

Polly found a few 12" strips of patterned paper left to accompany her 12" photo. The rickrack "waves" enhanced the theme, and Polly carried the color scheme throughout her journaling, changing certain words from black to hues found in the papers. The fun summer colors inspired Polly to make this luggage tag for her daughter's backpack. She took her die-cutting tool to some scraps and turned them into a yummy ice cream cone. ADDITIONAL SOURCES American Typewriter (tag) off the Internet. Die-cutting tool, die cut: Sizzix. Punches: EK Success.

I was in Florida at Natural Bridge State Park, when I spotted a beautiful black butterfly with blue highlights resting atop a flowering weed. I approached it hurriedly and tried to set up as close as I could to take the shot. The heat was awful. Just as I was almost ready, the little bug departed to another flower several feet away. This scene repeated itself over and over, so many times that I became exhausted. At some point, I just shot as fast as I could and stopped trying to catch a good angle, etc. With my tongue hanging out, I dragged my camera and tripod back to my car.

ScrapJazz just published a
wonderful tutorial on how to make a handmade book with a Japanese stab binding.

I would love to try out this technique. I took an introductory calligraphy class when I was in college, and some of the more advanced students/classes had absolutely amazing hand made books.

This layout belongs to Lauren. She simply used the Waves QC and her chosen kit. In my example, we'll take it a step further, rotate some layers and move things around. To begin, open all your QC Waves contents into your program. I'll be using Photoshop, however the direction can easily be translated into the program of choice. As you can see, this is exactly like Lauren's layout. Click on the white curved border. Change the angle to 90 and then click on the check mark. Now ctrl-click on the remainder of the wave borders. Click on the arrow in your tool palette, now click on the outside edge to bring up your transform options. Change the "W" to -100, then change the angle to 90. Click on the arrow when you are done. You should have something like this.

Scrapbook pages are works of art in their own right, but differ greatly from advertisements or other works by graphic designers in that in creating a scrapbook page we are preserving treasures memories for generations to come. Most of us have been faced with albums, boxes, piles of yellowing family photographs - often with no annotation explaining the who's and why's. In my opinion, no scrapbook page is complete without words - at the very least a title, and a date, but hopefully with journaling as well.

Open a New File: File New Blank File. Set size to 3x3 inches. Set resolution to 300dpi. In the menu bar, choose View and Grid and select Snap to Grid. When it is highlighted with the dancing dashes, select Shape 2 in the Layers Palette and then hit the Delete key. Dont forget to turn off Magic Wand tool by clicking outside your document area. Save your tag. Use the color picker to change colors on your tag, as desired, or use the punch-out technique and use digital patterned paper to fill the tag. Or, try a favorite font to make a monogram tag. When your tag is how you like it, choose Layers and Merge Visible and save. Try making square or other shaped tags! Have fun being creative with your tags! Digital Papers for these tags from the Funky Papers Collection by Cynthia Derousseau downloaded from Scrapbook-bytes.com.

This tutorial will show you how to make plaid papers in PSP. The screen shots are from PSP X but the same rules apply to 8 & 9. You will need to start by creating your pattern. Think of it like a small swatch of material. Open a new document 2 in x 2 in, 300 resolution and transparent back ground. Now its time to build your plaid. It is important to remember that the width of the lines in your swatch will be smaller in your final paper so dont make them too small unless you want the color to be very subtle. Also, you need to consider if you will want a background color, or if you are going to have your lines fill 100% of the space, in which case you will need to be more precise with your stripe sizes.

Layouts uploaded to the gallery at Scrapbook-Bytes must be under 125kb in jpg format. Below are two methods for resizing your layouts. Navigate to the folder you wish to save the layout in. Check the file to ensure the layout is under 125kb. For heavily embellished layouts and layouts 12x12, you may need to reduce the Options> Quality level slider further but avoid going under 80. If necessary you can resize a 12x12 duplicate layout to 8x8 after flattening and before saving. Choose Medium Web View from the Picture Size drop down menu. Ignore the File size indicator as it will change with the next step.