The Daily Digi released their third playbook this week (it’s FREE!), so I thought it’d be fun to scrap some layouts using the tips inside the playbook, as well as The Digi Files #20 which I picked up last week (they’re only available a few more days … for the templates alone it’s worth the $5!). 
What is The Daily Digi Playbook? “The Daily Digi Playbook is an e-book filled with techniques, tricks, and play-by-plays to recreate the looks in the layouts you see on The Daily Digi.”
This month’s e-book contains:
- a play-by-play for a hybrid project AND a digital layout (from start to finish)
- ideas for clustering elements
- how-to for using Flerg’s glitter styles
- how-to for creating the rainbow word art we use on Fridays
- cutting irregular paper strips
- using a photo as an overlay and background
- altering templates
- giving papers a new look
- editing photos in Flickr
- a couple of fun free gifts
So, let’s play the game! (And if you love what’s inside this playbook, head on over to The Daily Digi to snag June’s playbook and July’s playbook!)
Every supply in my layouts comes from The Digi Files #20.
On page 3, Karen shares tips for adding a photo to a template. So I grabbed a template from NeeNee’s Papercropz: Vol. 9 and decided to add a pic below the 2 main pics. And I used Happy Snapper by Captivated Visions for the layout.
On page 4, Jenn shares a method for “punching” a hole in your paper, and on page 20 she shares a tip for making an irregular paper shape. I actually ended up using my traditional method of punching holes with the aid of a clipping mask, which turned out to be a good thing ’cause I ended up wanting them smaller and in a different place. I’ll do a tutorial on my method sometime soon! But the irregular paper shape method was a clever trick and I totally used it to make the purple paper strip with the layout title.
Katie shares how she used a feminine kit to create a boy layout on page 7, so I challenged myself to do the same. I used the same kit as Katie, Emotions by Fei Fei’s stuff. I chose the orange paper and a green element to make the layout fit for my little boy. I changed the blending mode on the “joy” word art so it became a stamp instead of a sticker. I also changed the blending mode on the cluster elements so they became a dark orange. (Changing blending modes was mentioned on several pages in the playbook.)
The playbook also has a few tips on clustering, so I attempted to try some clustering with this layout. I started with the other template from NeeNee, which I modified a bit, and created the layout using In Bloom by Studio Flergs. My layout is definitely not as clustered as some … and would have been more clustered if I’d have had more to work with. More on that in a bit. I also used the “selectively moving parts of a png” tip from the playbook to move a few of the glass balls around to fit my layout better.
Well there you have it. My first time really delving into the playbook (versus skimming the contents & saving it for later) and I must admit that I learned a few new tricks that I’ll be using again in the future. I definitely recommend downloading this free resource & giving a few of the pointers a try. They also share a couple of hybrid play-by-plays that I’ll be trying in the future. Looks like fun!
I’ve been purchasing The Digi Files for a while now, occasionally to sample the designs, sometimes because one of my favorite designers is contributing, but mostly to support The Daily Digi because I believe they’re a valuable resource for scrappers. Because I’ve made little time to scrap in recent months, I haven’t scrapped with many of my digi file purchases yet. I must admit that I was a bit disappointed with this set. Don’t get me wrong, the quality is excellent and the designs are beautiful. But I felt the contributions were somewhat lacking in quantity of elements. It’s not my habit to mix-&-match kits, mostly for the sake of time. I like to scrap quickly, so it’s just easier to scrap using items from the same kit (exception: stitching, doodles, & alphas — I don’t mind digging into my stash to find those.) So it was a real challenge for me to scrap only from the contributions in The Digi Files.
I’m curious now to go dig through my stash of unused goodies that I’ve downloaded from past digi files and see if the contributions are usually this small. I know when I was a contributor I created a full kit but maybe I’m just super generous and that’s not the norm. 
I still plan to purchase The Digi Files in the future. It’s still a great deal, and I still want to support the site. I really enjoyed the templates by NeeNee, and all of the kits were absolutely beautiful. I just won’t limit myself to scrapping from only The Digi Files next time I play along with the playbook, especially if I want to scrap several layouts quickly.
Enough jabber from me — go download your copy of the playbook, scrap along with me, and share with me the layouts you create by posting a comment!
