Our Signs of Spring Digital Scrapbooking Layout Idea

By: Denna DeMotta

Ingredients:

• StoryBook Creator Plus 3 Software
• Cheerful Spring Digital Additions
• Font: Never Let Go

Ingredients (Canada):

• StoryBook Creator Plus 3 Software
• Cheerful Spring Digital Additions
• Font: Never Let Go

 

How to Create:

1. Open a new 12x12 page. 
2. The only kit you need is the Cheerful Spring Digital Addition.  First, grab a paper!  The yellow Cheerful  Spring Bursts is great. Click on the paper, then in the side bar, go to Cut a new shape.  Using the square cutter, (find the square shape and set at original aspect ratio so it’s a perfect square), cut around the big white burst in the yellow paper, leaving a bit of yellow space around the burst.  Now resize this square, so it fills the whole 12x12 page.
3. Now with the yellow square selected, go to >Cut & Fill>Cutters>More>Cutup into a grid and select a grid that is 4 by 4 squares with 3 mm between.  This will cut up the whole page, and each square is now it’s own element. Nice and easy!  Now you can cut some of the squares into circles.  Three is a great number!  Choose the square that’s one line down, one line in from the top left corner, select it, go to Cut & Fill>Cutters>Ellipse Cutter  and don’t forget to check the “make circle” box to get an exact circle.  With outside the circle shaded, click “erase the shaded area.”  Do the same for 2 more circles.  I did another circle one line down from the first, and the other was in the bottom right hand corner, one line up from the bottom.  Now would be a good time to select all the squares and circles, group them,  and reposition them on your page if necessary.  When they are lined up to your liking, you can ungroup them now or later if you need to.
4. Inserting the photo frames is next!  I inserted 5 empty photo frames.  Two of these will be squares and you will fit them exactly over two of the yellow paper squares, right in the middle of the grid, third line down.   Insert another square frame and make it smaller and add it right on top of the topmost yellow circle, lining it up in the right hand bottom corner.  The other two photo frames will be rectangular.   The top one almost covers a yellow square, but is a rectangle.  And the bottom photo  is a small rectangle,  lined up with the top left hand corner of  a yellow square.  Select three of the photos (the ones that DON’T completely cover a yellow square) and mat them under Format Photos>Frames>Mat and give them a thin black mat, a 2 or 3 size.  I also gave the topmost and bottommost matted photos a heavy shadow.
5. I had a photo of a beautiful spring tulip with a plain background, so I added it to the page, went to Arrange>Grouping>Flatten and flattened it so I could cut the background out.  Since it was a uniform background, it was easy to use the Wand cutter and get it all erased quickly.  Another way to go is to use the Custom cutter and click around the flower to cut it out from the background.  This flower I added to the bottom of the page, extending off of it, and under the small rectangle photo and added a heavy shadow.
6. Now for the embellishments!  In the Cheerful Spring Addition, select the blue butterfly, blue birdhouse, yellow birdhouse and the yellow sunflower.  Select the yellow sunflower, zoom in and, using the custom cutter, cut off and erase the stem and flower pot.   Add the wordart SPRING to the page.
7. Move the blue butterfly and yellow birdhouse up near the top square photo, the blue birdhouse goes on the intersection of the bottom 3 photos, and the yellow (now trimmed) flower  goes on the right side of the middle square photo on the right hand side.  Give all the embellishments a heavy shadow except for the butterfly and wordart.
   Select the SPRING wordart and fill with white, then go to Format>General>Opacity and set the slider at 60.  Line up the word with the top line of the grid.  Insert two text boxes with the font Never Let Go (by Kimberley Geswein).
8. In one text box type “the Signs”, and make it bold and size 48, this goes right under, and partially on, the SPRING wordart.  The other text box is for your journaling, with the text lined up against the left hand side. (Do this under Format Text>Paragraph, the icons near the bottom).  To make this text go around the flowers:  select the text, the yellow flower embellishment, and the cutout flower photo and go to>Format>General>Text Wrapping>Element shape>no space around element and Accept.  Now select the text box and move it downwards on the page, so that the embellishments are over it for the text wrapping to work.  This way you can reposition your text and it will still be wrapping around the flower shapes!

Comments

[Martha]

Very simple, yet pretty. I like the idea of cutting the paper. For some reason I always thought of cutting the pictures but never the paper in squares!! Thank you.

[Melissa Ullmann]

Beautiful layout Denna! :) Sure makes me think about SPRING!

[Cecilia Thurman]

BEAUTIFUL ... now a comment for Creative Memories "Web Person" ... what would be SUPER helpful is if you could make a link to a PRINT page so that one could easily print the directions and save them ... would that be possible ... I am sure I am not the only one who would enjoy that ... The one can print ones favorites (easily) and have them handy when working with Storybook ... and I won't forget to say PLEASE ... :-)

[Cherryl Dillon]

Cecilia, can't you just "highlight" "copy" and "paste" in a word document, then save? That is what I do to save things I like. : )

[Cecilia Thurman]

Cherryl, Oh I can but would it not be just so much easier if there was just a button to push ... ;-) ha ha ha ... thanks ...

[Kori M]

I second the suggestion for a print button. I like to print out the ideas and keep them in a notebook. I used to have some success printing out the full web page in landscape with the old format for the project page. But it just doesn't work now. Come on CM - give us a print button!

[Charlotte M.]

Not only a print button but a Search button on the main webpage would be great. I type in my search info and can find no where to start the search with an arrow, button, etc.

[Susan Bohlken]

I absolutely love the idea of a print button --and the sooner the better!

[Linda Pollom]

novice....how can I take a page from a previously created digi book and just upload 1 page for printing. each time i try I ...it wants to reprint the album

[Cecilia Thurman]

from novice to novice ~ novice ;-)
ok so this is what I do ... I click on the itty bitty arrow under save and options come up ... I pick the 'save pages as' option then I change the 'Start File Names with' to whatever I want it to be and on the right hand side click on '1 selected page' and you can also view that page as you can see ... then save the page to the desktop and go from there ... I am sure that there is an easier way but that's the novice way for me right now ... ;-)

[Trina Elerts]

Are there instructions for Mac users? I can't seem to find any of the cutters you are talking about in my version of the software.

[Alisa Moody]

Just an option until the print button is available... I keep all my project ideas in Microsoft OneNote. All you need to do to print to OneNote is press the "Send to OneNote" button in Internet Explorer. I can easily look up the idea on my laptop later or print.

[Cecilia Thurman]

I am not sure anyone from CM is reading this ... so we may be speaking to deaf ears ... but one can still keep hope alive ... ;-)

[Melissa Ullmann]

Unfortunately, with the platform that we currently use for the Project Center, there is not an option for a "print" button, but it is something that we will definetely keep in mind!

[Barb]

Beautiful. And thank you for the great, detailed, narrative description. You did an excellent job explaining how you did it.