Friday, July 8, 2011

snap shot ...


I used this digital template to capture a snap shot of some school holidays last year, at the time I didn't have the 'scrap mojo' to make a mini or in depth single pages so I went with this brief overview. Since then, most of the photos have had their individual story told but I am still glad to have to have this collage of memories. It is very simple and the journaling  glosses over the details a bit more than what I 'd like, but it meant I got something down at the time and it was useful to jog my memory later on when I wanted to scrap with more detail.
Template and papers are from Designer Digitals.

9 comments:

  1. sometimes if that is all you have time for , those snapshots prompt memories when you are looking at it - the kids always remember other different things that get prompted by a photo or story...which is what this is all about.

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  2. Love love love this! Such a great way to do a snap shot. Will be lifting it for sure as I have a million summer photos that don't all need a page of their own!!!

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  3. I love pages like this: rich in memories and occasions, and simple to do. As well as beautiful to look at. Perfection.

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  4. All you need is one little thing to bring the memories flooding back. I love the crispness and clean lines. This confirms in me that I am not a grunge person

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  5. That's a really nice memory page, Amy! The photos are lovely and I really like the little "colour-pops" that you've added - did you use that technique to "sample" colours from the photos, as they all seem to "go"?
    The journalling panel at the bottom is really good too.
    Just one thing... how do you get all the photos to stay the same size? I am still struggling with masks and don't seem to be able to make the boxes all stay regular, even and matching (even though the mask boxes are all in line to start with and I don't move them!) Sighs.... I'm a bit feeble at the digi stuff!

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  6. Ahh, Lizzie, this is such a great question and one I was stumped with for such a long time when I first started using templates.

    When you open your template you first need to select the area in which you want to 'clip' your photo to.

    Secondly, drag your photo on to the template, by selecting the move tool. At this stage it will apear far too large for the clipping area, this is ok.

    This next stage is one I repeat before and after clipping to the mask.

    There should be be a bounding box around your photo, if not, when you have the move tool selcted, in the tool panel at the top of the screen there are check boxes and one of them says, show bounding box ... make sure that is ticked.
    Then, hold down your shift key and click and drag your photo from one of the corner boxes so that it is a bit smaller and you can see what portion of the photo will show in the mask. This is important because it keeps your photo in proportion.

    Now, making sure your photo is in the layer ABOVE the clipping area (in the layers pallette, go to window > layers and it will open)hold down the ALT key on the line between the mask layer and the photo layer, a small double circle will appear, left click and your photo will be clipped to the mask in the correct proportion.

    This is the stage where I move the photo around and sometimes reduce the size ... holding down the shift key and dragging the bounding box until the area I see is what I am happy with.

    This all took a lot of time and experimenting - now it comes as second nature and really, it is very simple once you are comfortable with it. Don't be afraid to make mistakes, it is a frustrating learning curve, but once you master this you will move forward very quickly.

    I would highly recommend a digital class by Jessica Sprague, I took her beginners class and have never looked back. There are also many free tutorials on the web and Cathy Zielske has quite a range which are all catalogued on her blog - they are video based so it is far easier to work alongside the instructions rather than just read this great wad of text!

    Good luck Lizzie, I will be on the lookout for the results! :-)

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  7. How nice of you to explain this so carefully! I have not been doing this quite as you described - which is obviously the problem! I will print this out (!) and put it on the wall (!!), so I don't have to keep looking for your instructions every time I am using a template.

    Thanks Amy!

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