Another Digital Scrap to Traditional Scrap with Lissy Kay

 Welcome to The Cherry On Top.

We're back with another challenge, nifty trick and step by step tutorial on turning a digital template into a traditional or hybrid page.  It's done in just a few short, easy steps.  Keep reading to find out how.

Have you ever seen an awesome digital page and wondered if you could pull it off traditionally?  At The Cherry, we LOVE that challenge and sometimes it IS a challenge and other times it's really quite easy.  Maybe easier than ya think.

If you've got a cutting machine or like fussy cutting, hybrid scrapbooking might be just for you!  You print out exactly what you want.  That awesome paper can be printed out again and again and that fabulous flower that ya just can't wait to use, is yours, as many times as you like, in just the size you need, too. Doesn't that sound just dreamy?!

Hybrid scrapbooking is scrapping smart.  It's about taking all of your favourite elements of scrapbooking and combining them to make the ultimate pages and projects.  Learn all three of these scrapbooking techniques and blend them all together to design total awesomeness.  Save time and money as well!

Here's a digital page I was asked to break down and show how to pull this off traditionally.  When you look at it step by step, it's really not that difficult.  Of course, it is easiest digitally, but if you're not into that and love the glue and glitter then see how it's done, right here.  

We're doing this in phases to keep the blog short-ish.  We'll be back with the next installation, next week.

Here is my finished, digital page using Lissy Kay Templates.  A digital template, as you can see by my screen shot, is a layered file. For a digital layout, you go piece by piece and either clip in papers and or replace the elements or embellishments with those from a kit.  You can just use all papers and insert some kicking effects to bring more dimension and interest to a page, too.  That way , you don't even need a kit.  You could as fas as creating anew document, add colours and make your own papers that way to use on the template.

Here we go with the tutorial:

Check out how I selected all of the layers in my template/page and de-selected the frame.  Then I just hit the delete button to get rid of everything except the frame.

Boom!  Now, I've got this really great framed outline.  

Make sure you clear the layer style if the piece you want to use has a shadow.

You could take this one step further and clip in a paper of your choosing by using command G or choosing clipping mask with the right mouse click. This is how I do it in PhotoShop Elements and with my Mac.

Now, size your image to how you desire and SAVE.  If you've got a nifty cutting machine, consider what format you need for it.  PNG format works in many programs and it's an option in PSE as well.

Something else you may want to consider is inserting background papers and or photos before printing and scrap all around that.  This way there is NO FUSSY CUTTING.  Layer and embellish traditionally, until your heart is content! How easy is that?!

Print out your outline and get scrapping!

I'll leave ya with a couple of templates from Lissy's shop in case you're interested in trying this out for yourself.  Digital templates usually costs less than a fancy coffee at the corner shop.  So, you may want to give them a try. The ones I chose here, are similar to the one above.

Think of how gorgeous your pages can be!

If ya don't get anything out of using templates like this, consider using them as sketches?  Save them to your idea board on Pinterest when ya need the mojo for your pages.

We'll be back with more step by steps for our page.

Happy scrapping!

Our Finished Scrapbooking Challenge. Where Is Your Page?

Welcome to our third and final installation for this fun, digital to traditional scrapbooking page.

I am not here to talk you OUT of traditional scrapbooking.  I still traditional scrapbook, too.  Just a lot less these days.  As I go through today's step by step tutorial, I'll also chime in on the many advantages to hybrid and digital scrapbooking to make you a more rounded, efficient and better scrapper.

Here is a very good reason why I scrap more digitally.  

Hello!!!   I mean seriously, all I did was remove my lunch to take this picture.

What a disaster, above!  That's exactly why this area is in the attic.  Hehehe...

Back to our tutorial...

This project has quite a lot going on.  It's a part of our digital to traditional challenge and it isn't our first.  To see more click here. (We've got a really fun, free template for you there, too.) There are several tips through out today's blog.  Great for beginning scrappers AND the kind of cool part, I'm using all mega old and cheap scrap stuff.  I'm not only on a serious budget, but there are ZERO scrapbooking stores in my area.

These items are not at all coordinating together in a pack.  I LOVE purchasing coordinated collections, though.  They save SO much time!  I probably spent more time sifting through my old, immense scrap stash trying to coordinate colours and subject matter than it would have taken me to scrap this digitally.  Hehehe...

Let's just dive right in there with the steps, tips, tricks and our final result.

In our first installation, we offer this free template.  In the second installation, we explain how to use the template and we give many examples and tips on the BEST way to use the template.

free template to get you started

As I mentioned above, I don't have a fun, summer, vacation collection.  So I had to rummage through all of my stash.  Stickers, papers, embellishments, etc.  These are what  I grabbed.  I thought I'd show you a bit of the process in case you too are not blessed with boxes of prepared collections.

I loved the blue in my son's swim trunks and since water and sky are a part of the photo, it seemed fitting to go with blue.  Take a close look at my colours.  Primary, basic colours in relatively, the same hue.  (I didn't end up using all of these papers.)

I also matched up the papers as closely as possible to my embellishments.  When you use colours that are not similar, your page will look miss matched and busy.  A good tip to prevent that is to use less colours.  I went with the blue, yellow, white and green.  I had some fun embellishments with pink and other colours, but when I put them on the paper, it all looked way too busy, distracting from my pretty picture.

I see a lot of people's pages out there with miss matched matting and thought I'd give my two cents about how to do this best.  Above, I show ya what my photo looks like on the yellow and the blue paper.  Do you see the difference?  My photo looks a little...ill on the yellow paper and the mountains look even less green, but on the blue the photo looks much better.  Keep reading to see how we pulled it all together.

I loved this flowery paper, but it was missing that splash of yellow I wanted to make it all more cohesive.  I guess, I kind of forced these things together to fit.  As you can see by the next image, the flowery paper doesn't play a large roll in the overall page.  I thought it'd be cool and fun to add some of the yellow colour the paper missed by colouring it myself.  I only needed to do it around the edges so it wouldn't be a big time suck.

As I was colouring, I was shaking pretty bad which got me to thinking of another good thing about digital scrapbooking and that it's less physically demanding.  If you're shaky, you won't ruin your entire project or send those tiny gems flying into the air and all over your work space and the floor.

In the above image, I'm showing you two things.  The detail work of the coloured in yellow around the edges as well as my placing technique once I've adhered my adhesive.  I use TWO different kinds of adhesives in almost all of my pages and projects.  Adhesive often loses it's stick and when ya double it up, you have a better chance of things staying put.  I also want to explain how I plop down my layers once I've applied my adhesive.

I'm super, super stingy with my adhesive.  Like I mentioned, scrap stuff is VERY hard to come by.  Hehehe...  For the blocked image, I put a large piece of double sided tape across the middle and used glue around the edges.  To place it on my blue layer,  I lightly press one of the edges until I've eyeballed it into place.  When I got it right where I want it, I press gently on the entire thing.  Voila!

Above, you'll see the outside edges of my yellow layer are flayed upward because I used the opposite adhering method, using double sided tape on the outside of my blue page and glue in the middle.  For this way, you push very gently in the centre where the glue is (glue has give and double sided tape does NOT).  Gently slide or nudge your layer into the desired place and press gently over its entirety.

Above, I show off how I test my stickers.  I don't pull them off until I'm sure I know where to put it.  I also wasn't sure if this sun was going to be too big.  (I did find it a bit big, though.  Hehehe...)  I cut around and test.  I'm not taking any chances! 

Digital scrapbooking allows you to resize, alter, duplicate and even recolour your embellishments allowing for a PERFECT page.

I love a page with dimension.  When the embellishments are lifted off the page, it gives it more pop and it's fun.  Digitally, this is done with shadows.  Small darker shadows are used for less dimension (like one layer of paper or a paper clip) and when ya really want lift, you add a larger, light shadow (for a balloon or butterfly).  There are even "effects" you can install in your software where it's done for you!

Use foam double sided tape for this effect, traditionally. I'd also recommend having a separate pair of scissors for cutting adhesive.  They will get all gunked up.

What often makes a page look awesome is its layers.  Layers add lift, polish, cohesion, contrast...When in doubt, add another layer!

I had these fun, what I call wordies.  (I've got some in our shop for only ,99 cents. Print out as many as you like on sticker paper, the size ya need and use them over and over...)  I layered them on the scraps of my yellow paper to add more contrast and dimension as well as make my miss matched stuff match better.

In one of my embellishment sheets, were these circles.  I cut them in half to make them go further and spread the coordinating colour around my page.

You can note those awful little nubs where the element is attached to the page.  You certainly don't have that in digital or when you use your cutting machine.  To get rid of them, use your fussy cutting scissors, a nail file or rub gently with your finger nail until it isn't so visible.

Many of my elements had those tiny gems so I added a few more of my own to bring it all together.  I so did not want to add pink, but those glasses were just perfect.  That's why I added a touch more of the pink circles.  I tried several things to cover up the stars, but was not crazy about the result.

So there is our finished digital to traditional challenge.  I sure hope you'll join in, too!

Head over to our scrapbooking group on Facebook and show us what you've done.  You may gladly show us any of your family friendly pages and paper projects.  Feel free to ask questions there as well.

Thanks for hanging out with The Cherry.

Happy scrapping!

Free Template, A Challenge and a Step By Step Tutorial

Welcome to The Cherry On Top.

We're back with the second installation from our second digital to hybrid challenge.

In the previous Traditional Tuesday blog, I provided you with a template so that you can get this block effect, easy and fast.

Of course, you can grab a photo, your square punch or just start cutting your photo in to blocks.  Though, I'd practice first.

Check out to see how we are designing our page and give it a try yourself.

Go back to this blog for the download link of the free template and save it to your favourite scrappy place.

Open up your scrap program, and then open our nifty template.

At first I thought it would be difficult getting just the right photo in the squares, but with this template it was really easy.  YAY!  

Allow me to give you some tips for just the right placement of your photo.

I went through my photos and chose several photos with a lot of background, to see which one would look best.

This first one is me and my boys.  I placed the photo over the template and enlarged and moved it to fit the entire template.  (You can shrink the template to the desired size you wish to print or save that step for last.)  Notice the blue sky in the top square.  I didn't like it.  I could get our heads all nicely placed in the boxes though.  This is a very important step to take before printing. Make sure that the feature of your photo, in this case, our heads are placed so that the spacing doesn't interfere with the image. 

Try NOT to have the center of the face with the spacing.

Here's another example of decent placement.  The background is just gorgeous and I could fit my little guy perfectly in those two squares with the spacing at a place that doesn't distort the photo's image.  The colour balance is spot on, too.

Check out where I placed my son's head in this example.  I have the spacing slightly to the left or to the side of his head so as not to mar his cute face.  The background is all nice and balanced with colour as well.

This is my last example and the one I'll be using for this tutorial and page.  Both of my babies, a gorgeous background and decent balance.

You may decide to delete that top square or any square for that matter with the marquee tool.  That's the dashed box, at the top of the tool bar on the left. Depending on which box you want to exclude, you could just crop a perfect square with the center blocks.

If you're not getting the perfect fit with your photo, consider changing the photo, horizontally and trying again.  That often does the trick.

I selected both layers and made it smaller.  Just under 8 inches because I typically scrap 8x8, 6x6 and 4x4 when it comes to traditional.

Don't forget to save your image.  Especially, if you print in a different program. For some reason, I can't print successfully in PhotoShop Elements so I use my finder and print from Preview.  It has a lot more options.

 Go to your image and print.

Perhaps you have the ability to select "best" quality.  I also can choose the kind of paper I'm using.  I always use glossy or slightly glossy paper for photos and most of my projects.  It comes out truer to colour and more crisp with gloss.

My Brother printer prints pretty well, but it doesn't like thicker paper.

Print your lovely image and get out the scissors and adhesive!  You could save your image as a png and put it through your cutting machine as well.

The next step to consider is, will you cut out each and every square OR will you cut around the edges, save yourself a ton of work and puzzling and create an extra layer for your page.  Not a bad idea, right?

Now you have the basis for your page!  All you have to do is pretty it up.  Need a hand with this part?  Check out the sketch we have provided.

Here's my digital version if it helps.

This is the pack of templates from the set if you'd like to have the other templates. You can use them exactly the way I showed you here or use ALL of the layers and scrap digitally.

Hip 2B Square Templates

These are my other digital pages with the templates.

We'll be back with the finished page and step by step for it, next Tuesday.

I hope your page is coming along nicely.  Feel free to share it in our group on Facebook.

Happy scrapping!

Scrapbooking Challenge! Turn Your Digital Page Into A Traditional One

Welcome to The Cherry On Top's Traditional Tuesday.

I posted this page in a traditional group that I am in and I was bombarded with questions as well as dozens of lovely comments.  Thanks if you were one of them!  This page is from a series of free digital templates that I designed last year and perhaps one of my all time favourite photos of my oldest.

I must confess that this layout was scrapped in minutes, once I figured out how to get that cool caterpillar look for my photo.  I did lift this idea and so can you either digitally or traditionally.  To see the digital version on how to do this, click on the image.

Keep reading to see the various ways you can do this traditionally.  I've got  more traditional pages here and a link to a free cutting template and another scrapbooking challenge, too.

It really doesn't matter how many photo spaces you use.  I'd say it might depend on the detail of your photograph.  One thing that is important, is that your photo has a lot of background.  This way you do not have your faces or important details split up.  Check out both of these pages.  The faces are nearly entirely in contact.

Keep that in mind when you're doing this traditionally.  You'll see further the kind of photographs I chose for this kind of style.  Digitally done, this is so much easier.

Another aspect of both pages you may have seen is how huge the photo is.  You don't have to use such a large photo.  However, you can see I didn't need a lot of other stuff to finish my page either, making this a pretty fast scrap with limited embellishments needed.

I chose about a dozen photos before going with these two.  The first one is all background, but taken at such a distance that when chopped up to pieces you'll still get a clear picture of just what it is.  The second picture is full of background and I'll be able to get each boy in his own photo spot without messing with the balance of the photo.

Check out how I marked the back of my photo with 3 centimetres in between each.  It really doesn't matter too much where I'll cut the beach scene, but for the boys it will.  For that one, I'll be using a grease pencil on the photo itself.  I'll have that in another blog.

I want to show ya something in the photo above.  I printed out both of my photos at home on a photo paper that is thick, but not very glossy.  Check out what happens to the edges.  Terrible!  This is what happens when ya don't use glossy paper.  The ink comes off a bit.  I wanted to show you this so that you might consider using professionally printed photos.  They will more than likely last longer and come out more crisp.

Here's what they look like.  I chose to ink with black all around each spot to conceal some of that annoying white from the paper.

Then I chose to use black to mat my spots after putting my photo on a bunch of options.

I quite like the way the black looked on this paper and thought my photo didn't get all drowned out by it either.  The photo is a touch on the dark side so the light paper is a good choice it also contrasts perfectly with my matting.

I've also showed ya one way to place your spots.

Above, yet another manner to place your photo spots.  I did under, over, under...and matched up the photo with the one before and after it.  This way you get a really good image of the photo itself, in whole.

Here's yet another way to position your strips, but that image is making me coo coo.  Hehehe...

This how I decided to position my strips.  I did like the slight interruption between each photo strip and you still can get a great view of the entire photo.  For the other photo, I'm going to go over under and raise the upper layer with some foam tape.  You'll see that in a future blog.

I'm using this Posh collection from Simple Stories for both of my layouts I'm working on with the caterpillar style photograph.  I thought I'd share my other nearly finished pages with the collection.  I just need to get my photos pasted.

Above is a project life style page using the awesome cards from the paper pack and some left over strips.  Pretty easy!

I love this page.  I did it at the pizza box event at Tiny's Hobby in Kortrijk.

I also did this one there, too. I can't wait to get my pictures from our vacation in Spain on these spots.

Here's something that might interest you.  It was my first challenge where we take our digital pages to paper.  I've provided a template with these basic shapes for you.  Click on the image, below to get it.

This is a digital template from my shop on Etsy.  You can find it here.

I'll be back next week with my finished page.  Thanks so much for checking out The Cherry.