All posts tagged: behind the scenes

Behind the Scenes: 6 Ways of Re-using Templates

Published by Sula H.

I love drawing inspiration from templates. See, the good thing about templates is that they are so versatile. You don’t have to work with a template just once and then it’s kind of an old shoe. It’s not. Working on the creative team of a template designer (Cindy Schneider), I’m always amazed to see all the different ways my other team colleagues are using the same templates. The sky is the limit. So, in other words I’m saying: use your templates more than once to take full advantage of them. 6 Ways of Re-using Templates Option #1 | Flipping & Rotating Obviously, the easiest way to re-use a template is by flipping or rotating it. When you do that, you’ll be amazed at how differently the page will look, and unless someone studies the two layouts in question very hard, no one will be able to tell that you’ve used the same template twice. [border ] Option #2 | Using Different Kits, Topics, Events Another way of making sure no one realizes …

Behind the Scenes: 5 Tricks & Tools I Use Most Often

Published by Sula H.

Today, I’m going to take you once more behind the scenes of my own processes of scrapbooking. I thought, it would be a good idea to show you some of the tricks, tools, and techniques I use on almost every layout of mine. 1. Alignment There is no page, on which I don’t use the alignment tool. Most often, I use it to align alphas, and to position my clusters on the page (if I want to make sure something is centered or spread out evenly). There are two ways to align things on a layout: Align within a selection (Marquee Tool or Magic Wand) Align in relation to other elements (select all layers you want aligned and align to each other, or spread out evenly) Aligning the alpha [border ] 2. Blending & Opacity I love making things look realistic on a page. One way to make your journaling (fonts) and brushes look as if they were really placed on your paper (as opposed to floating) is by adjusting blending modes …

Behind the Scenes: Scrap Magazine Style

Published by Sula H.

Who says you can only scrap the traditional way (if there is such a thing as “traditional” in digital scrapbooking)? Or with the trend of art journaling lately, pages tend to get all artsy and messy. Today, however, I would like to talk to you about a very different style of scrapbooking: magazine style. If you look at a magazine, you would probably notice certain key features that are typical for this kind of media: lots of text (comparatively, though you could argue that it depends on the magazine, I grant you that), little to no shadowing of pictures and elements, and title work that catches the eye. If we transfer that onto a scrapbooking layout, there would be three things you would really have to focus on: the photos, the text, and your title work. (Clustering lots of elements – doesn’t really work well for this, sorry for all of you who – like me – love to pile things onto their pages.) So, how does this really work on a scrapbooking …

Behind the Scenes: 6 Ways of Scraplifting

Published by Sula H.

Who of us hasn’t stumbled upon a pretty scrapbook page in one of the galleries, and thought, Oh man, why haven’t I come up with the idea for this page? That, however, doesn’t mean you still can’t use that idea on one of your own pages. The solution to the problem? Scraplifting, duh! But there’s more to scraplifting than scraplifting, if you know what I mean. There are lots of ways, in fact of how you can lift someone else’s layout. No. 1 | Whole Layout Probably the most common way of scraplifting (at least for my part) is to reproduce the whole page. You take a layout, look at the way papers and elements are arranged, and then you copy that straight onto your own canvas. No. 2 | Clusters Another way of scraplifting is to take one cluster and reproduce it on your own page. This could be the main cluster of a composition, but leaving out other details, or it could be parts of a cluster. Lifting clusters of other …

Behind the Scenes: Creating Paper Pockets

Published by Sula H.

Alright, friends of the digital scrapbooking business, if you remember well, then you’ll remember that I promised you the other day to show you how to create pockets like the ones on the Project Life layout I shared with you the other day. This one: It’s actually a fairly simple process, and doesn’t require much skill at all. Soooo … Here’s How it Works Step 1 | Create a Rectangle On your canvas, add a new layer to your Layers Panel (windows key + shift + N – on my computer), and activate the Rectangle Tool (shortcut U). Draw a rectangle of the size you desire, and rasterize it (right click on the rectangle layer in the Layers Panel and choose Rasterize Layer from the options you are given). Step 2 | Create a Circle Now, you want your pocket to look like a pocket (of course, or else it wouldn’t be a pocket), so for that you want a little semi-circle to be cut out from your shape. Similarly as in step one, …

Behind the Scenes: Creating Dashed Lines in Photoshop

Published by Sula H.

Stitches always make a good impression on any scrapbooking page. Lots of designers create awesome stitches which they sell in their stores (just check Traci Reed’s sewing line over at sweetshoppedesigns.com, if you don’t know what I’m talking about), but it’s actually not that hard to create similar effects on your own in Photoshop. All you need for starters is a dashed line, and today, I’m going to show you how to create dashed lines in just seconds! All you need to do is, create a new layer (windows key + shift + n), and then use a brush. Here’s How It Works Open your Brush menu. In the Brush palette, choose a default round, hard brush. Now, change the roundness to something like 15%, and the spacing to whatever parameter you prefer (for the stitched line above, I used 650%). Draw your line. To add more texture to your dashed line, you could add a style, and that’s pretty much it. Take a look at this P365 layout that I created the …

Behind the Scenes: Creating a Frosted Look

Published by Sula H.

Christmas time is winter time. At least where I’m from. And who of us doesn’t dream of a white Christmas? As many of us are moving into the cold season, we also get to scrap more of those chilly, frosty memories. So, I think it’s the perfect time to talk a little bit about how to add a little bit of frosting to our pages. If you’ve seen some of my December Daily pages this year, you may have noticed that some of them come with a nice frosted feel to them. And if you’ve wondered how to create this effect, I can tell you: it’s super simple. Take a look at one of my early DD pages: If you take a closer look, you’ll notice that around the edges some of my papers seem to be frosted. You can easily add your own frost layer by playing just a little with your style settings. (This technique can be applied to papers, elements, as well as text.) Here’s how it works … Choose the paper or …

Behind the Scenes: December Daily Twenty-Twelve

Published by Sula H.

Like every year around this time, all the talk is about the December Daily project. So, for today’s tutorial post I’d like to take you behind the scenes of my own DD project this year, sharing some of my thoughts and processes. Last Year If you have looked at my DD album from last year, you will have noticed that all my pages were based on the same foundation page: photos on the left (stuck into photo pockets), journaling on the right side with two clusters of embellishments, the title, and the date info. I had created myself a foundation page template which helped me jump start each page quickly, and without having to spend much thought on composition, choice of papers, and placement, scrapping each page was a breeze. Even now, one year later, I still love how my pages turned out, and when I first started thinking about this year’s DD project, I was seriously tempted to just use the same template and format again. The thought of having two very similar …

Behind the Scenes: Using Paper Piecing Patterns with Digital Scrapbooking

Published by Sula H.

The holiday season is upon us, and that means some of us are busy busy making cards to send to loved ones and friends. I at least have made it a priority again this year, to create more handcrafted cards, after I failed at it miserably last year. And since I’m someone who tends to get bored with repetition, I’m always looking for new ideas that I can incorporate in my own card making. The www is a great source of inspiration, and over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been able to dig up some treasure or other to inspire one of my own cards. Being a person with both limited time and limited resources, however (craft stores where I live are not what craft stores are in Northern Europe or North Amereica), I have a few guidelines to govern the choice of projects I create: They have to be simple in design, and they have to be with materials I have at hand (printer, paper & maybe a ribbon). A very fun way …

Behind the Scenes: Must-Haves in My Scrap Stash

Published by Sula H.

Let me get really basic in my Tuesday Tutorial today. As my external hard drive (on which I keep all of my digiscrap supplies) has been acting up recently and I haven’t been able to access my stuff without the hassle of first having to copy what I want to use from the hd to another device before I can use it on my computer, I came to realize one thing: There are some things I can live without ready access (i.e. kits because I’ll use them once initially, and then later maybe again), and there are some digiscrap supplies that I just can’t live (and scrap) without. They are filed in my folder named “embellishments”, and include a range of different products. And while I use some of these element packs rather rarely, there are those, which I check out almost every single time I create a page (that’s not for CT purposes) to see what I can use on my layout. Here’s a list of what I found to be indispensable additions to …