I would love the power to …
adjust the hue of those *almost* perfect clothes in the store …
add some more brightness back to those faded t-shirts …
duplicate my favorite pair of jeans (over and over again) …
resize those fab pants that are just a tad bit too small …
custom tailor those clothes that are a bit big in all the wrong places …
clone over those stains …
mend the tear in the knee of my jeans …
add sleeves to that dress …
add a bit of length to that skirt …
adjust the hem on those pants that are too long …
flip the shirt/pants so that the buttons/zippers are on the other side …
and hit CTRL+Z to undo what I just did.

And that’s just clothes. If only I had the power of Photoshop in real life …

K, so for supplies, I used some digital stamps (specifically, Digital Stamps: Under Construction and Digital Stamps: Dinosaurs, both in my store at my Scrap Orchard) and some papers and elements from my kit Dino-RAWR 2.

(I apologize in advance that I don’t have a screenshot for every step … forgot. Oops!)

Hybrid Mini Coloring Book Tutorial

1. Create a new document, 7.5 inches wide by 10 inches tall. (This allows for 1/2 inch margins for printing … and allows for 8 pages to the coloring book per sheet.) We’ll come back to this document in a bit.

2. Create a new Photoshop document, 3.75 inches wide by 2.5 inches tall. (This is the size of the coloring page, and creating this document will help us to line up our pages in the large print document.) Fill the background with white (hex code #ffffff).

3. Open one of the doodles. Drag the doodle into your document — if you’re using Photoshop, be sure to hold CTRL+SHIFT while you drag so it is centered in your new document.

4. Right-click on the layer and choose Merge Visible. Drag you document into the large print document.

5. Go back to your small coloring page — undo the merge visible and delete the doodle. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for each page of the coloring book.

6. In the small coloring page document, create a front cover and a back cover. (I used pieces from Dino-RAWR 2.) I chose to create everything digitally, but I could have printed out the pieces separately and attached them. (The reason I didn’t is because I knew my little boy would pull them off, so why bother with the extra effort? LOL!) Drag your covers into the large print document.

7. Once you have all your pages in your large print document, you can arrange them for printing. It helps if you turn on the snap (View > Snap). Then you can get everything to line up nicely. I ended up with 13 coloring pages, 1 “this book belongs to” page, a front cover, and a back cover.

8. Print your page(s). I chose to print on a heavier paper so we could color with markers or even use paint.

9. Trim off the 1/2 inch margins. Then cut the papers lengthwise (measure at 3.75 inches) and then cut apart each page (2.5 inches).

10. I used my Crop-o-dile to punch a hole in the bottom right corner. I picked this corner for two reasons: so I wouldn’t cut off any of the images, and because my son is left-handed.

11. Use a ribbon, string, book ring, or other element to fasten the pages together.

Here’s the finished project again. (Sorry the picture is washed out — too much flash, lol. I was in a hurry.)

And my son coloring.

If you give this a try, I’d love to see what you create!

I am a firm believer that NOT every scrapbook layout needs journaling. Case in point — this layout created by my sister (using Lullaby Girl and Tickled Pink Alpha, both retired):

The title is clever and the pictures take center stage, and not much else needs to be said … especially because this is one of many layouts from my sister’s wedding.

However, it wasn’t until I received my first set of printed layouts in the mail that I realized how many had no journaling … and some of them really begged for a story. (Especially obvious when people looking through the scrapbook stopped to ask questions about some of the layouts … and I’m sure I won’t always remember the answers, lol.)

Since then, I have always paused while scrapping each layout to ask myself 2 questions. The first, “Does this layout need journaling?” If the answer to the first is “Yes!” then I ask myself, “What story do I want to tell?”

Other times I start with a story and find some pictures to go along with it — this technique works especially well if you have pics you want to scrap that you don’t feel have their own story. Those pictures are perfect for illustrating other stories.

Like in this layout. I wanted to share about my son’s love for water, so I used pictures of him playing in the pool. But the story itself isn’t about this particular day in the pool … the photos just help illustrate my story.

(This is a lift of Keyr’s “mov.ie” and I created it for the Facebook/Scraplift mini challenge for Iron Scrapper using Calypso by Amanda Heimann — you still have one day to participate in this one!)

Next time you’re scrapping a layout … pause in its creation to decide if a bit of journaling may be in order.

Have a great Monday!

The challenge ends 7/31 at 11:59 pm Eastern. You’ll receive a 30% off coupon to my store just for playing … one lucky winner will receive a $10 coupon!

Here’s some inspiration from my team:

Britanee

Dalis

Julie

Sam

Lori

Can’t wait to see what you create!

Funtastic Friday — A great way to catch up on some of the new quality products, freebies, and tutorials in digi land every week. Thanks TDD!

Photography Class with Katrina Kennedy — Seriously, at first read my jaw dropped. Wow. Talk about terms I’ve never heard before. It made more sense the second time around. Definitely need to read it a few more times to digest everything. And try it out. Be on the lookout for a future blog post from me to prove that you can do it too!

Living on the Edge — Some great ideas in this post … I’ll need to create some layouts and post on the blog.

Altered Frame Tutorial — I’ve always wanted to try one of these … so maybe now I will.

Life In Pictures: The Things He Sees — Note to self: Give the camera to Caleb more often

4×8 Mini Book I Love You Today Because — I am so in love with this mini book and want to make one for my family. Soon.

That’s about as far as I got (I’m a bit behind in my “reading,” lol). And I must now stop reading blogs and get on to finishing a kit. Before I do though, a shameless plug for Iron Scrapper at SO. Here’s what I created for Challenge One.

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After I finish designing this kit … and create some graphics my sweet hubby needs for the new web site design (hooray!), I plan to work on the Iron Scrapper Facebook/Scraplift challenge.

On to today’s post. I’m in the middle of a site re-design and realized that I haven’t done very good at keeping the resources section of my site updated … with my own tutorials and with tutorials from other sites. So I’m working to fix that.

The following list of blog posts are all from The Daily Digi, one of my favorite places to learn new tricks, get some great tips, and discover new ways to scrap. I hope you find these useful (and eventually I’ll add them to my resources section, as I update the site).

Here we go!

Computer stuff
Calibrating your monitor

Fonts, text, titles
Tips for Using Fonts for Journaling
Cutting Out Titles
Creating a Sticker Alpha
The Long and Winding … Path? Part 1
The Long and Winding … Path Part 2
Font organization

Elements
Grayscales are going to clear up (recoloring elements)
Elements go chameleon (more recoloring elements)
How to Guide for Clustering Elements

Techniques
Rounding Corners

Thanks for stopping by!

So last month we discussed emphasis, and now we’re building on what we’ve learned and focusing on contrast, which adds emphasis to a page.

Why do we want contrast on our digital scrapbook layouts?

• catches viewer’s eye … guides them through the page
• adds visual interest

From Robin Williams (not the actor) in her book The Non-Designer’s Design Book: “Contrast is often the most important visual attraction on a page — it’s what makes a reader look at the page in the first place.”

Remember, contrast creates interest and aids in organization. I don’t know about you, but I definitely want my family to notice my layouts. And I want them to “know where to go” in the layout to find the important details … at least, the details that were/are important to me.

How do we add contrast to our scrapbook layouts?

• type
• color
• size
• shape
• space

The key when adding contrast is to make it obvious. So how about some visual examples? Using contrast helps to emphasize various parts in all of these layouts.

Type

You can add contrast in your titles and journaling with various fonts, alphas, or combinations of the two.

In this layout, I split the title and used a handwriting font for the first part of the title, and a large chunky alpha for the second (and most important) part of the title. (You might recognize this layout from the post I did on emphasis — see how these design principles are interconnected?)

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Same idea with this layout.

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And in this layout, I used different alphas for the two words in the title (which makes “taste” stand out) … and I used 2 different fonts to differentiate between the quote and the journaling. (Yep, used this layout to describe emphasis as well … yet another example of how design principles are used together.)

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Color

Think colors in photos, color scheme of your layout, colors in fonts …

Some fun color contrast is this one. The orange contrasts with the blue, helping draw the eye to the main photo. You’ll also see that the main photo is black & white, in contrast to the color photos which almost blend in with the blue papers.

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I know, I’ve used this layout before, but it’s an excellent example of using color to add contrast in journaling.

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Size

Not just photos … also elements and embellishments, journaling, titles …

Different sized pictures add contrast to this layout … as well as the different crops.

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Another contrast in picture size.

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Shape

Shapes of pictures … even elements …

My “Icky Nose” layout above shows contrast in shape as well — rectangle versus squares.

In this layout, the journaling forms a long rectangle box with a vertical/portrait orientation, while the picture that splits the journaling has a horizontal/landscape orientation.

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Space

Nope, I didn’t get this one from Debbie Hodge’s article. I pulled it from Robin Williams’ book. So you won’t see it in Debbie’s article at The Daily Digi.

Check out how the negative space in this layout helps guide your eye to the focal point, my grumpy lil’ bubby.

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And same idea with this one.

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So remember — if you’re going to add contrast, make it obvious. Contrast is a way to emphasize something on your page — it adds visual interest and guides the viewer. You can add contrast in lots of ways on digital scrapbook layouts — with type, color, size, shape, and space … in your titles, journaling, elements, papers, and pictures. So many possibilities!

I’d love to see how you apply the principle of contrast in your layouts. Link me up!

We have 3 here on the blog. Thank you for all your comments! I really enjoyed reading all the different uses you have for this collection. And the winners, chosen by Random.org, are …

#44 … Kanani!
#34 … Janice!
#11 … Nikki!

The winner at Scrap Orchard … #16 … mazzzz!

The winner at DigiShopTalk … #27 … DarkAngel73!

And the winner at DigiScrapAddicts … #SweetPeasMom!

Congrats! I’ll be sending your prize codes shortly. And thanks to everyone for playing along!

Don’t miss out on the rest of the fun stuff happening this week during the blog party (scroll down for the detailed ad). Have a great night! Off to play!

Holy toledo! An entire collection, a word art add-on that will definitely interest the adoptive peeps, plus an addition to the digital stamp family.

THREE lucky people will be winning my new collection — that’s 2 full kits, a mini kit, an element pack, 4 alpha packs, a brag book, and hybrid printables. Plus I’ll toss in the digital stamps. And the adoptive word art pack if you want it. WOOT!

Want to be one of those lucky winners? Leave a comment on this post telling me how you’d use the collection and I’ll enter you in the drawing. Blog, Facebook, or Tweet about it and you’ll receive ANOTHER entry … so if you leave a comment for each separate thing, you could have UP TO FOUR entries. Sweet deal!

Want more chances to win? I’m doing giveaways at DST, DSA, and SO — one lucky winner at each site! (And 3 winners here on the blog!)

I want to give these away BEFORE the collection is released in the store so the DEADLINE TO ENTER IS WEDNESDAY NIGHT (TOMORROW NIGHT) AT 9:00 PM EASTERN.

Don’t miss out on the rest of the blog party fun either!