Going Digi – and the many stories along the way

Sometimes life has to take priority and this Spring has been hard. Hard in terms of the day job being extremely busy and then on top of that some personal stuff has just had to take priority including a trip to England and maybe another coming up. It’s not I haven’t been scrapping I  just haven’t had the time to blog as I was  trying to keep up with the online classes I’d signed-up to do. I’m though still here and I’m still scrapping on three creative teams and have been busy creating layouts for them all plus doing some testing for WendyZine along the way as well.

Wendy is a great “action” writer. Not action story but action in terms of photoshop. An action is like a mini app which you can run in your program to do a series of tasks you do often. I’ve blogged before about Wendy’s powerscrapping actions which she did with Katie the Scrapbook Lady. These actions are still some of my favorites but recently I’ve had the opportunity to test some of Wendy’s new ones and her BannerIt action has stood out for me. It allows you to make a banner to add to your layout with your own digital papers. Now banners are totally the rage in scrapbooking and if a designer has added a banner to  a kit you can now make your own.

Here’s a layout I did using Chelle’s Creations Yeehaw Kit with my own banner

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Chelle’s Creations has another kit coming out tomorrow. Its called Graduation and its perfect for all those graduation layouts you have coming up.

If you buy Graduation before 5.23 you get the wordart for free. Here’s the layout I created for Chelle celebrating a graduation from over 20 years ago.

Ronnie

Some how this month I’ve managed to get myself a little stretched with 2 classes, design team commitments, and work is crazy with some big functions coming up. The crazy weather we had in Texas last week didn’t help either as part of my work world involves the roofers of North Texas and the storm means additional work for not just them. You can’t complain though being busy is way better than twiddling your thumbs in my view. I signed up for 2 classes which I don’t usually do as I couldn’t miss Tamara’s Shadow class at www.gottapixel.com. I took her clustering class a while back if you remember and loved how she is so willing to critique your pages. I for one want to know how my layouts can be improved. I don’t need to be told that it’s a great page. I wouldn’t have shared the page if I didn’t think it was a great page. I like to know how to make it a stand out page. Tamara’s pages are all stand out pages when I look at them I marvel at what she does with clusters and shadows and although I don’t want all my pages to be like this I do want to know how to create pages like this so when I want to I can. Tamara is so awesome at giving detailed comments on how things can be improved. The other class was a follow on class for the blending class I did with Jana Morten and it’s the last time it will be offered in 2012 so I just had to take it now. The class is at www.creativepassionclasses.com and Jana is a great teacher. I love the class room set-up at this site and that videos are part of the class. I need to get moving on this class it started on Monday and I haven’t even had a chance to watch the video lesson so I  can see the project for this week. Looking at the gallery from other students its going to be a fun layout when I get it done.

Given I’m so busy and I have creative team requirements to do I decided to combine the new release layout from Chelle’s Creations with homework from the shadow class. What I’m learning with the shadow class that PSE is really limiting on the shadow controls and that if I really want to be able to do this easily I need to upgrade. A friend gave me a copy of photoshop 7.0 which she doesn’t use any longer. Its really old but it has shown me how much easier it will be to use to do my shadowing. I have been creating my layouts in PSE and then shadowing in photoshop but I’ve discovered that the angles don’t transfer well between the program which has been causing me some issues. So I need to do all shadowing in photoshop and not use my shadow styles I have in PSE. I’ve also discovered that some of these shadow styles use the linear burn and not multiple mode. This different modes create very different looks to shadows and people have preferences for one or the other. What I don’t need to do though is use a mix on my layouts and if I’m using linear burn I need to use a lower opacity for the shadow as otherwise the shadow is too dark. All this transferring between programs has resulted in a slight disaster for me I created my layout for the release today. I modified it in photoshop and then went back to PSE with the flattened jpeg to save it using my action to make it the correct size for loading to the web. Somewhere amongst this I managed to loose my layered PSD file and now my PSD file is only one layer which means I can’t make the changes that Tamara has suggested. I’m just going to have to live with it. I don’t have the time to recreate the whole thing

Here’s the kit its using. When I first saw the kit I knew I would have to use some of the pictures from when we lived in Germany. I have so many pictures from this time which would be perfect for this kit that I’m sure I will be using it again.

So back to the layout

I’ve made the layout a little bigger so you can see the issues about this layout. Look at the gold paper behind the pictures. Some how I managed not to shadow this paper with the same shadow angels as the rest of the layout. Not sure how I missed that! Tamara also comment that the shadow on the red book element on the left was may be too big. She wasn’t sure what this element was meant to be and it’s a book so I think in reality it needs this bigger shadow as it’s a thicker element on the page. The other comment she made was on the { – see it the cream one. When I shadowed this I was trying to make it look like a chipboard one which was sitting on top of the book. This is what she said – “The shadows are pretty harsh on your {…you might want to lower the distance a little..as it appears to be paper..and then soften it..a hair..to make it less harsh.” When I look at it again I have to agree. I didn’t get the result I wanted with that did I.

In reality the only really problem is that paper that I missed. I could kick myself especially as I lost my file and can’t change it now. But I will forgive myself. I’m learning and my layouts are improving all the time so I will accept that I can’t get it 100% right all the time.

Ronnie

The latest creative team I joined was that at the Simple Scrapper Site. It’s a great blog/website with lots of information but locked behind the premium membership wall is many great things.

Premium Membership

• Access to archive of past freebies
• Finally Get Organized online course
• 5 Simple Truths of Time Management online course
• The Simple Guide to Holiday Memory Keeping ebook
• 21 Ways to Find More Joy in Memory Keeping tip sheet
• New! Simple Scrapbook Organizing ebook
• Exclusive content every month
  • Three (3) single page sketch templates
  • Two (2) double page sketch templates
  • Instructions for easy projects
  • Online scrapbooking short courses
  • Journaling & photo prompts
  • Layout ideas & inspiration
• Bonus – Access to our entire creative library
• Bonus – Printable scrapbook planning pages
• Bonus – Private members-only Facebook group
  Bonus – Light Your Fire online course
• Just $7/month + a one-time membership fee

What this doesn’t say and what I didn’t even realize when I applied for the creative team is the sketches are provided as layered psd downloads each month so “us” digital scrappers can use them directly in our program. If you consider that most templates sell for around $1.99 this is a great deal to get 5 each month for $7. Thats without all the other things that are offered each month like special projects and journaling prompts. I have been highly surprised about the amount of content the members get. It’s a great value for both digital and paper scrappers. For me its been fun to be around some paper scrappers again. Having moved to digital I have moved from the old forums I used to hang out and join the ones at the digital stores so its been interesting to see the paper scrappers versions of the templates.

Below I’m sharing some of the layouts I’ve done using the templates. I love working with templates. I would say I start 90% of my layouts with a template. Sometimes the finished layout looks nothing like the original layout but just having something to start with gets me creating. If you’ve never tried them I highly recommend trying them out. In PSE they are really simple to use basically you can just clip your papers to the design and add some embellishments.

April 2012 – Single

Aprilisa – School Days Kit
Dream Big Designs – Such a Smarty Pants
Sahlin Studio – Explore Learn & Grow
Sahlin Studio – Learn Journal Bits

April – 2012 Double

GBG Designs – Fall as Hoot
Katie Pertiet – Vintage Butterfly Blendables
April Lisa – School Days
Connie Prince – Back Yard Barbeque
Mye de Leon – All Summer Long
Mommyish – Around the World

March 2012 – Single #2
Butterflies – Anna Aspnes FlutterBy Glitter – Jazzmin Designs – It’s Getting Cold Out There Stitching – Kpertiet –Sew Good Stitching
Silhouette dancers – Kpertiet –Silhouetted Dancers
Papers – Chelle’s Creations – Tutu Cute
Alpha – Designs By Kat Close to My Heart

Double 2 Template March 2012
Kristen Rice – Reflect
Paula Kesselring – Speech
Tracie Stroud – I am Beautiful
Suzy Q Scraps – A fresh start
(all from The Daily Digi January 2012 Files)

Ronnie

I just spent the last three and half days scrapbooking. I arrived at the retreat center on Thursday at 1pm and I didn’t go outside again until I left on Sunday just before 2pm. All I did was eat, sleep and scrap! 51 pages later and I’m happy with what I achieved. I was working on my road trip album for our 2009 road trip. I’ve already done the 2011 album and we didn’t take on in 2010 so that gets me up to date when I have this one complete. I can’t complete it all in one weekend but got about half way through and will continue to work on it now I’ve started it. The retreat center we go to is in Mt Calm Texas. There isn’t much to Mt Calm but that doesn’t matter as Melissa the owner runs a great retreat at the Compass Center. We go every March and October and they are always great weekends. Each time there is a different group of people so different dynamics at play and this time was no different. 24 ladies. Not all scrapping as this time we had a few scrappers who have crossed over to sewing so much so we even considering a name change to our weekend. Some of the girls do 4 weekends a year but I manage the 2 and I’m grateful for that.

I can’t share my favorite layout from the weekend as I’m considering entering it for publication and so until I’ve been rejected can’t share it here.

Of the other layouts here some of my favorites.

We’re starting to plan the road trip for this summer. Eleanor wants to go to the west coast and drive north. Not sure what we will end up doing. It will depend on a number of things especially the price of gas. The kids really look forward to our trips and it’s a great family time. I know they will treasure the albums I have created in the future when they can look back at these trips. Maybe even one day they will re-do the same trip with their own families.

Ronnie

It’s Elemental is a digital scrapbooking class about embellishing digital layouts. First class I’ve taken with Tiffany Tillman and let me say she is an awesome teacher. I also really liked the way the chats are via webinar so you can actually see her working on a layout and see her talking about it. Really makes you feel like your in the classroom with her. I will be doing classes with her and at Reneepearson.com again!

In the class she introduces her strategies for building clusters on layouts. Normally I don’t really think about how I put a cluster together I just play with it until I’m happy but the strategies allow you to look a cluster your building and analysis what is going wrong with it. Less playing more analysis.

Its week one at the moment and we’re not even doing layouts – just building clusters. This is  rather hard when your used to working on them to add to pages rather than as stand alone entities. The first cluster I made is this one.

When she reviewed this she comments that she thought the bow was unnecessary and I agree (it was the last thing I added and I shouldn’t have). She also noticed that the shadow on the journal card was at the wrong angle compared to the others. PSE strikes again! When I went back and looked the angles were all consistent but for some reason occasionally PSE decides to have a mind of it own. PSE is meant to have global lighting which means you shouldn’t be able to set shadows at different angels on the same image. That is unless you use a script from Anna Forrester which separates the shadow onto a new layer but I hadn’t done that. So I went back and removed the shadow and added one again. Fixed.

You can see version 2 looks much better without the bow and the strange shadow! (All supplies from Chelle’s Creations Girl Power Reload)

Since then I’ve made a couple more clusters

This one I’m fairly happy with. I’m not sure I like how I stitched the yellow flower petal. (Supplies Dream Big Designs (Swim Bike Run) and Scraps N Pieces (Tag Em & Bag EM)

The final one is my favorite

Supplies When you need a friend Collab from Sweet Shoppe designs.

I’m still waiting on Tiffany to comment on these. She comments on everyone’s and gives real detailed notes but I’ve only just uploaded. I’ll let you know what she says!

What I’ve liked about this class especially is the amount of Tiffany input. Yesterday she did 2 webinars and most days there is a bonus layout with comments on why it works.

If you haven’t checked out Tiffany and her products I highly recommend you do. She first came to my notice with her templates but I’ve since discovered that there is way more to what she does. Sign up for newsletter at http://simplytiffanystudios.com/ or follow her on Facebook. If you sign up for her newsletter you get a free template!

Ronnie

Thursday and Friday are generally when the designers release new products and this week both Chelle’s Creations and Dianne Rigdon have new products available so I have some new goodies to play with. As the season is moving into Spring they are both Spring based kits and they found me digging into the pile of pictures from pre-digital days to find something to scrap with. I then scanned the pictures and tweaked them a little to make useable. Older photos are fun to scrap with but the scanning is a bit of pain so I’m thinking I may get them set to a service and get them all done. Or maybe I will use child labor and offer the job for payment!

Chelle’s Creations offering this week is called Carrot Patch is has a really cute rabbit and in the bundle there are some really great quick page items. I love using quickies to make a page really quickly and easily. As you can see I like the rabbit so much she appears on both layouts. The layouts won’t go in the same albums so I’m not worried about that.

The first layout used a template as the basis of the page from Simply Tiffany while the second page used the quickies. Both are great ways to scrap quickly and effectively.

The second layout is about a shop in Salzburg in Austria. When we lived in Germany we would visit Salzburg quite often as it was under two hours away. This store sold blown eggs which are hand painted. They are strung with ribbon and you select your eggs in an egg carton. I love the eggs I bought there and still have them today. They are a treasured item and one which brings back great memories.

The layout I did with Dianne Rigdon kits is very different. It features a young Philip (he turns 13 this week which shows you how old the pictures are!).

I decided to practice some of the blending techniques I’m learning in Jana Mortons class at Creative Passions Classes. The pink chair he was sitting on bothered me a little until I decided to add the pink spring which helped bring it into the layout. I thought about changing the picture to black and white but I wanted the rich green colors. I did mask the pink out of the picture in the background. In this layout I also merged/blended two of the patterned papers in the kit to make my background.

Don’t you love the trees in this kit? I think they are going to become a stable in my scenic scrapbooking.

Now I’ve done these I’m going to do week 3 of the class or is week 4. Need to get my homework done tonight as tomorrow night I have 5 boys sleeping over. If you never hear from me again you know why. I’m not sure why I agreed to 5 boys. The last time we did this was for his 9 birthday and I said never again. I must have said yes in a week moment. I hope I don’t live to regret it. I will be removing all cell phones and I-touches on arrival so they have limited means of getting into trouble. Wish me luck!

Ronnie

So back in the fall I took a class with Tamara Allen at www.gottapixel.com about digital clustering and it was one of the best digital scrapbooking classes I’ve taken. I learned lots and Tamara is an expert in her field of clustering with great shadows. She is on a lot of creative teams for designers and creates some great quick pages for people like Connie Prince. I didn’t know any of this when I signed-up for the class I was just looking for a class on this particular topic and took a chance. Well I’ve been chatting with Tamara since then and following her layouts more closely. I knew she been working on a new class offering so when I saw the latest class offerings email by gottapixel was disappointed because once again there was no news on the class. Then just this week an email came out specifically about her class all about shadowing. I was signed up for the full access version within minutes of getting the email. The class/workshop is called “Me and My Shadow” and runs in April. This is the class specifications

The Me and My Shadows course will introduce you to a whole new way of shadowing your layout! Through step by step instructions, illustrations, videos, and my own personal tricks of the trade, you will be able to create stunning, shadowed layouts designed to emulate the best of paper layouts!  We will work together in class each week and then you will have a homework assignment that will allow you to put your new found skills to use! After all, practice makes perfect!!! Through the assignments, you will learn how to:

• Customize basic program drop shadows to add depth to your layout.
• The basics of Inner Shadows  
• The basics of Cast Shadowing to create a 3-D look
• Customize shadows by separating your shadow  layer.
• Create your own Drop Shadow Styles
• Shadow those “hard to shadow” elements

Prerequisites

Me and My Shadow is a four week online course designed at helping you understand the technique of shadowing your layout. It is written for scrappers who have an advanced knowledge and understanding of Photoshop CS.  If you feel comfortable with your program and have always wanted to learn how to shadow your layout to look more realistic, then this is the class for you!

This workshop is for Photoshop CS2, CS3, CS4, and CS5

Note this is a class for Photoshop users and yes I currently use PSE10. Trying to debate on what to do about that. Maybe I will upgrade to to photoshop this class took take me over the edge maybe I wont and I will just try and do what I can in PSE10. All I know is I’m not passing up a class by Tamara. Check out her layouts around the digi world and you will know what I mean – there is a great interview of her here.

Ronnie

I haven’t posted in a age as my live writer stopped working and I couldn’t get it fixed. I tried and tried and then gave up. Well yesterday I decided to give it one my go and found a solution on the web which I think has fixed the issue. I’m not claiming to really understand the problem but in the end it wasn’t anything to do with the LiveWriter but was due to an upgrade of wordpress which had stopped the interface between the two working, This meant when I wrote a post when I published it came through nothing like the post I had created.

Nothing to do with scrapbooking but I feel better for having got it fixed as I really have wanted to get this blog running again – just hadn’t had the time to spend working it all out.

I’m busy doing Jana Morton Blending and Beyond class as Creative Passion Classes its week three and so far I have learned loads. I will for certain be signing on for the follow on class which a few weeks after this one is done. The layout you create with blending are very artistic layouts and nothing that could be done with paper scrapbooking but I love the look for certain pictures. It also allows me to use the products from some of my favorite scrappers like Anna Aspnes.

Week 1
Supplies Anna Aspnes, Katie Pertiet and Penny Springmann

Week 2
Anna Aspnes ArtPlay Basketball
Anna Aspnes Sport Word Transfers
Live Design – Overlay – Afternoon Stroll
Aprilisa – Fame
Staple – Connie Prince Starpower
Chelle’s Creations Slamdunk
LindsayJ Slamdunk

week 3
Supplies Katie Pertiet and Anna Aspnes

Then I decided to do another for week 3 as this layout idea just came into my head while driving today.

Little Dreamer Designs – Dear Diary
Art Warehouse Basketball Brushes
Pattie Knox – Staple Clusters
Scraps N Pieces – SlamDunk
Studio Zrampf – Adventouriste
Captivated Vision – The Bees Knees
Jen Wilson Designs – Grunge Edges
Lindsay Jane – Slumdunk

I’m having fun learning all these blending techniques and what’s ever better is that I’m finding I can use the skills for some of my “real” work which makes me look good to the boss!

Have you noticed all the layouts are my son? Not sure what that’s all about. He commented on it. Maybe its cause I find male layouts hard to embellish and thus these artistic layouts without much added work for me.

Half-way in on the course and I would highly recommend it if you want to learn how to make this type of layout. The course work is based around a video which I watch once through and then I watch again for the second time while I work on a layout stopping and starting while I go. I have it running on my desktop while I scrap on my laptop. Then I can follow the directions as she goes. They provided a document you can print which has step by step instructions but these aren’t enough to follow on your own the first time you do it I have found. Jana does a great job of explaining on the video and I’m a visual learner so it works great for me.

Well I’m going to post his post for now. I hope I really have fixed it and if so you will be getting more regular updates.

Ronnie

The “English Girl in Texas” is now available on iTunes as part of the digishow. Really strange to listen to myself but I think it made for a good discussion. If you feel like checking it out you can either find it on iTunes or at the website.

Also check out Chelle’s Creations new kit “Family Tree” at www.scraporchard.com.

There is also some great word art which goes with it! Here’s the layout I made with it. Not family tree so totally off theme but I think it went really well my pictures!

If you like this kit don’t miss the freebie on Chelle’s Creations blog available here.  Well I better get back to life. Its really busy round here this weekend so not sure what I will get to do for myself but I hope to work on a couple of layouts I have in my head and I have a video tutorial I thought I’d record. So watch out for that!