Last week, I was going through scans of old pages on my hard drive and making back up copies of them, and I came across a page from 2005 that I absolutely loved. I can't remember where it might have shown up—possibly for an article in Simple Scrapbooks magazine or maybe for a class I was teaching—but it featured a rockin' picture of me taken by the one and only Tara Whitney, and I looked like a complete and total badass.
I didn't even need glasses back then. Dang!
The thing I loved most about the page is that it was a chance to give some much needed advice to my then much more uptight self. You guys know I'm all about the self pages. I think we as story tellers belong in our albums right along side every one else we're scrapbooking about. You know the drill: if you don't tell your story, who will?
I decided to revisit this page and turned the design into a layered template to put into my Designer Digitials collection.
Here are the two new journaling-driven hybrid pages I made:
Today I have a short tutorial for working with a digital template to create a hybrid scrapbook page. I love the idea of writing notes to yourself, or notes to someone in your life. This template is designed to do just that, with the design work all taken care of for you.
Hybrid Scrapbooking Tutorial from Cathy Zielske on Vimeo.
STEP-BY-STEP: Here are the basic steps for working with the template using Photoshop Elements 8. Note: this template was designed using a free font called District Thin, available at fontsquirrel.com. You will need to download this font, and activate it on your computer before beginning this process. Or, you can change the fonts to any you currently have on your system.
WORKING WITH THE PHOTO:
1. Open the template and then open the photo you want to use. Copy the photo (Select > All, or Command or Control + A, then Edit > Copy, or Command or Control + C). Close the photo.
2. On the template, click on the PHOTO layer, then Paste your photo into the document (Edit > Paste, or Command or Control + V.) The photo should pop right into the green template rectangle shape.
3. To size your photo down, click on the Move Tool, and then click and drag on any of the 4 corner handles. (Be sure Show Bounding Box is checked in the upper tool bar.)
4. Once you're happy with the photo placement, you can then modify your title to whatever you would like it to say by using the Type Tool and highlighting the title words.
5. Turn off ALL layers except the photo, the PHOTO mask, and the title. Then send photo to print onto 8.5 x 11 cardstock with a full bleed setting. Trim photo and set aside.
WORKING WITH THE JOURNALING:
1. There are 6 separate type layers containing the journaling placeholders. Start with the first one.
2. Using the Text Tool, highlight the journaling subhead area and type your new words. Do the same for the body of the journaling entries. Highlight, and type over. Try to keep the same number of lines on each block of journaling.
3. To change the color of the journaling subheads, click once on the Set Foreground Color icon at the bottom of the Tool Palette to bring up the Color Picker. Move your mouse around to find different colors to try. Once you find a color, click OK.
4. Highlight the subhead again, go back to the Set Foreground Color icon, click once to bring up the Picker (which will already show the last color you picked) and click OK. The color will apply to your subhead.
5. Once all of your journaling is done, turn off the PHOTO layer, and send the file to print onto 8.5 x 11 cardstock. Adhere photo onto cardstock.
Note: 12 x 12 scrapbookers can create this page, and mount it on coordinating 12 x 12 cardstock. It creates a really nice area of framing white space around the core content of the hybrid 8.5 x 11 design.
LAYOUT SUPPLIES: Layered Template No. 79 (Cathy Zielske) • white cardstock (Bazzill Orange Peel Texture) • District Thin font (template is designed using this free downloadable font)
Questions? Leave me any you have in the comments today. Good luck making a journaling rich hybrid page!
