A Swirl Heart for Your Romantic photos!

First I just wanted to say how excited I am to be joining the team of artists here at “Ideas for Scrapbookers.” This is a wonderful opportunity to share inspiration, information and collaborate with all of you who are as enthusiastic about scrapbooking as I am!

Since February is the month we bring our focus on relationships and give attention to those special people in our lives, I created a template you can use to scrap those “Valentine” moments that are just a few days away. This template is simply a heart shape incorporated into a swirl I drew broadly across a piece of cardstock. If you are adventurous you can even try drawing one of your own! Here is the template.



I put together two examples of how the template could be used. The first is fairly simple with a single photo using the heart swirl and a simple band of patterned paper on a solid background. This layout uses only a couple of parts from the template.




On a layout like this you can have fun embellishing your highlighted photo with any number of items. There is plenty of space for flowers, flourishes, die cut butterflies, etc. I love to add flourishes to my layouts so I chose a fancy flourish to adorn both the top and bottom of my layout. I added a flower I made from coffee filter paper which I painted with water based ink. You can purchase water based ink in small bottles, generally referred to as “re-inkers” for stamp pads. My flower is painted with the color “Pretty in Pink” from Stampin Up. Another great product for coloring coffee filter flowers is Glimmer Mist.

The second example uses all the template pieces. My layout incorporates 4 photos, one inside the heart and 3 filling the template band that runs through the center of the layout.



I didn’t draw specific divisions in the wavy band of the template because you could have an equally enjoyable layout using more photos, or even less. The photos you have available should dictate how you divide up this wavy line. To bring emphasis to the heart, I choose to use a full color photo inside the heart and black and white photos in the wavy band. I used patterned paper for the template pieces running along the bottom of the layout. When I had all my pieces cut and laid out I decided that my black and white photos didn’t have enough contrast with my pink background paper, so my wavy line was getting a little lost. To bring attention back to the wavy shape, I took my template piece and traced my wavy line on my striped paper. I then added the stripe at the top of the wavy line shape. This re-emphasized the template shape and was a nice repetition of the pretty stripe paper. I distressed my patterned paper template pieces to give the layouts sections further definition. To finish the layout I added a handmade flourish at the top and repeated my flourish look by journaling in curvy shapes in the open space beneath the heart. I created the flourish by dotting iridescent Candy Pink and Watermelon 3D paint on clear craft plastic. When the flourish dried I simply cut it out. You can place clear craft plastic on top of any flourish picture to use as a guide to place your dots. This is a fun and inexpensive way to create flourishes and they can be any color you want! Hope you all take some memorable romantic photos to scrap!

Reader's Pages

Hi everyone, happy Saturday! Today I am sharing two pages by a dear friend of mine, Lesley!! She has a beautiful style and I am so honored that she used my templates!! You can see more of her amazing work here: SlyWalker's Gallery

This first page is using my Wreath Template you can find here. I love how she put the title around the sides and used such cute photos in the center. What a beautiful page! (first is the template image)




This second page is using my Flower (four petal) Template. It is neat how she used the decorative die cuts for the sides in yellow! What a fabulous touch! Such beautiful photos as well!




Thanks Lesley for letting me share your pages!!

Would you like to be featured on my blog? Simply use one of the templates and send me an email at scrappingpam73@yahoo.com and I will feature you projects!!
Have a wonderful Saturday!

Valentine's Day Box by Helen!

Valentine’s Day is almost here and I wanted to show you how to make some cute paper boxes. They are perfect to put that yummy chocolate in.


You will need
· patterned paper
· Hole puncher
· Scissors
· Bone folder
· Ribbon
· Fast drying glue
· Ink (optional)

Start with printing out this template and cut it out.



Trace the template to the back of your paper and cut out



Use the bone folder to fold all the dotted lines. Put fast drying glue along the outside of the tab.



Adhere the tab to the inside of the opposite heart. This is what you will have now



Take the two sides and slid into each other. Left is only to take the ribbon through the punched holes and make a bow. Decorate the front of the box if you want to.



This is how it looks from the top



Easy huh! When you have made your first one, you will have this down and it won’t take you more than 10 min.

(TO LEARN MORE ABOUT HELEN CLICK HERE)

Introducing Our Featured Artist for Feb. 5

Can you believe it's already February?? And it's Friday too, so you know what time it is! This week, I am EXCITED and honored to share a featured artist I have know at scrapbook.com for a while. She is really talented and she inspires me!! Her post today is going to knock you socks off and get you ready for Valentine's Day (I still can't believe it's almost V-day)! So... here is our fabulous featured artist, Helen Croft and below is information about her!

Helen Croft:

I live in Okinawa, Japan together with my Marine husband, our two awesome kids and two crazy cats. I started scrapbooking 2005 and I have finished over 30 scrapbooks. I am privileged to be a stay-at-home- mom with plenty of time for my hobby/addiction. When I don’t scrap or blog, I spend time hanging out with my family and enjoy this subtropical island with all it’s gorgeous beaches. My blogs: www.scrap-a-little.com
www.scrap-a-little-sketches.com

And you can visit her beautiful gallery here.

I will share her post shortly and I promise you are going to be inspired!!

Contest Winner + NEW Contest!

Well, it's Feb. 4th and time to announce the winner of the "shape your photos contest."

It was a hard vote for the contributors with so many fabulous pages to look at!! They went over over those posted at sb.com and those entries emailed. So huge congrats to ...

1st place goes to Mustangkayla! Here is the link: Every Year

2nd place goes to TesaB! Here is the link: Fun in the Snow

___________________________________________________________________


Now onto our next contest! I am really excited about this one! You will be scraplifting a page by one of the contributors! The entries are due March 15th.

There will be two amazing prizes!! First place will win the paper pack from the brand new Homespun Chic collection from GCD Studios AND five embellishments to go with it.

You can see the entire paper here: Homespun Chic Paper and the Embellishments here (they will send you five of these): Homespun Chic Embellishments .

Second place will win a $15 dollar gift certificate to scrapbook.com!!

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ ALL THE DETAILS OF THE CONTEST

Good luck and we can't wait to see your pages!!!!

Template Versatility

Templates are wonderful things. The layout determination (for me the hardest part of my entire page) is already complete, and therefore the only decisions left are what pictures, papers, and embellishments to use. If you are like me, you want every page to look individual, but the mind set that goes along with that, would mean that each template has limited use. I wanted to dispel that thought and show that each template can be used multiple times and still have each page look fresh and totally individual.

Both of these layouts are using Pam's template "curvy template #3. In both layouts I used 4 blocks & the circle for photos.

My first layout "Buoys will be Buoys" is a layout about my Son's first fishing trip with his Dad. When I first saw Pam's layout, it sort of reminded me vaguely of a fish silhouette and my initial thought would that it would be perfect for these photos. I used the template horizontally (as it shows on the blog) and used a white background. I kept the left side open as the page has a longer title. I used one block for journaling and the other blocks used colors in the same shades found in my photos...greens, blues, and yellows. A few chipboard accents, a rounded corner, and a scalloped border, and the page was complete.



The second layout "Grand Dad", I took a different approach. First I used the template vertically instead of horizontally. Instead of using papers that mimic directly the colors in my photos, I wanted to use choices that would make the photos pop. So I choose black & white photos, and page colors of red, black, and white. Since my title was shorter I used a journaling block as the title background, and used the top of the page for an overlay. I also used some ribbon.




You could also get a different look by using the circle for a title or journaling, instead of a photo, as I used it. Or you could put the photos in the top or bottom 4 blocks, instead of the middle. You can see how totally different these two layouts turned out with exactly the same template to start with. So when using templates, from this site or any site, try using the same one several times to see how different your pages can turn out. That way instead of having say 50 templates to choose from, your possibilities become endless.

Organizing Your Digital Stash

Wow, here we are at February 1st already! New Year's resolutions have been made (and are hopefully being followed) and tomorrow many of us in the States and Canada will be watching to see if the ground hog sees his shadow. A silly tradition we use to help predict just how much more winter we need to tolerate until Spring starts to warm us up! Hopefully you are still keeping up with your resolutions. This is just about the time that our enthusiasm starts to fade. Many of us listed "get organized" as part of our goals. This seems like the perfect time to take a fresh look at that goal ~ right between resolutions being set and gearing up for a good Spring cleaning!

Here are some tips to help you keep your digital scrapbooking files organized. First let me say that just as everyone has a creative style, I think too that we each have on organizational style. So what works for one, may not work for everyone. Feel free to modify these tips to make them fit your style. Your organization needs to be comfortable for you to work with.

Establish Some Structure
Let's start by setting up a structure. Think about the hierarchy that you like to use when you organize. Do you sort by color? By style? By purpose/function? I prefer to keep all my digi stuff under one main folder and then broken down by Store/Company and then Designer with a few exceptions. The exceptions are for specific functions (I'll get to them in a bit). Under each designer or company, I then create a folder for each kit. I like this method so that when I'm working with a particular kit, I know I have all the coordinating papers and embellies together. It also makes it easier for me to reference the designer and their products that I have used when I am posting or sharing a project. My folder structure would look like this:



There are some items that just work better for me to be organized by their function. This is why I have "exceptions". I have folders labeled: Alphas, Brushes, Quick Pages, Stitches, Templates, WordArt. I use these to store digi stash that does not belong to a kit and is used only for a certain purpose. You may find that you have other items that work best this way like collaboration kits, especially when the contributing designers are from different stores. BTW - Quick pages are ones that a designer has made that are nearly complete and just require you to add your photo, while templates are designs or layered templates such as the templates you can download here at Ideas For Scrapbookers.



You may want to set up your main structure just by designer name (not store). You can also use the "tags" in your photo editing software to help you locate items in your digi stash more easily. For instance, if you are using Photoshop Elements (PSE) or Picasa, you can set up tags for themes, styles or element items you might regular want to access. Things such as "frames", "flowers", "teens", "buttons", "wedding" and colors. I use the organizer in PSE and have a separate catalog for my Digi supplies with tags to help me search for items. While you'll need to spend some time in the setup, this can help you get right to a kit that will work perfectly for the project you have in mind.

Purge
When you download digital kits to your computer, you get the files for the paper, alpha, embellies and elements along with some other files that may clog up your drive. You don't need to hang on to all of them. Here's my suggestions:

TOUS: Always keep one designer Terms of Use (TOU) file for each designer. This is the file that explains in what manner you are allowed to use the designers products. You'll get a TOU from a designer with each kit that you download. If you download more than one kit from the same designer, these documents are typically duplicates. You only need one for each designer. Be certain to check if their terms have changed or been updated from one year to the next. Keep one copy of each specific TOU and delete the rest. (If you are using your stash for commercial use or scrap-for-hire, please keep all relevant file information pertaining to those TOU's)

Previews: Often kits will contain a preview folder with each download for a kit. Since these are duplicates taking up valuable drive space, keep one and delete the others.

Ads and Inserts: Some designers will include advertisements, and coupons in with the download. Be sure to review them, use them if you care to. Then purge them when you are done. These could include things such as coupons or links to their shops, blinkies, links to their blog, and other thank yous.

Other files: You may also get some files when you download that are not necessary. Such as thumbs.db files and MAC OS X files. These have to do with how the files were created on the originators computer. They are not necessary and you can delete them.

No Piracy: If you've been collecting digi scrap supplies, I know you've come across one of these. It has a very important message! Do not share, do not redistribute, do not claim as your own, do not re-sell. Heed the message! But only keep one copy of this and delete the rest.



You may want to take all of your kit previews and store them in one folder on your computer. Especially if you don't have a system to assign tags to files. This folder could act as a big catalog of what items you have to work with. You could browse through it to find the kit that will work best with your photos and then be able to locate that kit because you took the time to get organized!

Relax
Now with these simple tips in mind, you should be able to tackle getting your stash organized and free up some space on your computer! Remember to apply these guidelines each time you acquire new digital scrapbook supplies. You've got a great jump on your Spring cleaning! So take some time to relax!