New Pocket Frames!

So, I emailed the designer, Rachel, of Pretty In Green and told her how much I adored her Ready Squares. I requested she make more with bigger picture spots... and guess what?!? She did! I also told her it seemed navy blue went with most kits these days... and she made them in blue! She also gave them to me in exchange for promoting them. And to think I was almost too shy to write her an email and request more Ready Squares!  Check them out here: Ready Squares 2.

Here's what I did with them so far:

I used a Ready Square with the kit All Kinds of Awesome by Pretty in Green.

For this one I used the kit Quiet Moments by Blue Heart Scraps. Isn't my baby just the cutest?! Okay... okay... they're all cute.

Hope you love the new Ready Squares as much as I do! 

**I've seen this disclaimers and I'm not sure if it is necessary, but I received the kit Quiet Moments without charge because I am on Blue Heart Scraps' Creative Team. 

Save your own templates!

If you've been fiddling around with your Ready Squares one thing that makes life easier is you can save your layout as a template! I like to duplicate my layout, then I select all the pictures by clicking each box while holding down the shift key. Next, I use the drop down menu at the bottom to select image and set them all back to placeholders.

Then file, save as template, selected page.

Save as smart template! Now when you add a page by using the + button on the left hand side of your program, next to where it says Pages, your saved template comes up in your choices! Sweet!

Recolor stamps!

Oh my goodness. I feel so dumb! I have been taking those cool stamps from project life type kits, opening them in PSE, recoloring them and saving as pngs... then dragging back into iscrapbook. Tedious. Boring. Wastes my macbook battery (have you ever noticed what a battery hog PSE is).. then I was trying to edit a photo in iscrapbook. Click on your photo, drop down menu... effects.

Choose tint... then click on the little colored box next to the word color.

It will open your color wheel and you can pick the eyedropper. I chose the blue in my background, which I believe is from one of Chrissy W.'s kits. Turn the intensity up all the way for a perfect color match! Then I just barely added a shadow (120 degrees, offset 1, blur 1, 30% opacity) to make it stand out a little like a sticker. Sweet! The sad part is it only works for one colored elements. If only we could recolor multiple colored elements with a paint bucket, because I totally love Cindy's Layered Cards (Sweet Shoppe is her store) and it would be fun (faster, easier) to recolor them in here.  If there's a way and anyone knows, teach us!

Ready Squares by Pretty in Green

You know how I just said I don't like how iscrapbook doesn't have pocket templates? Well, I found a cure for what ailed me! [url=http://store.gingerscraps.net/Ready-Squares-Set-1.html]Ready Squares[/url] by Pretty in Green scraps! These little beauties are a png frame which you can drag right from finder onto your layout.

Center it, then add square shapes and size slightly bigger than the openings of the frames. What I like to do is size my first shape:

use the drop down menu under the shape to change it to an image placeholder, then just copy and paste the square to move it to other places/resize as needed!

I move them around and resize to fit the openings in the frame, drop my pics in, and when I'm done I move my ready square layer to the front! It hides all unaligned imperfections and BINGO! A perfect pocket layout!

Here's a few examples:

Here I used the bundle Make the Grade by Blue Heart Scraps.

This layout was created using Pocket Life for the Boys by Traci Reed.

And this layout was created using Boom and Sparkle kit and cards by Pretty in Green. 

All these layouts used Ready Squares! Fun and fast! I may actually get books made this year!

Why it begins...

I'm starting this blog because I recently purchased iScrapbook from the Mac app store. I do have Photoshop Elements 12, and I love to scrap digitally. I discovered Becky Higgins' Project Life app on my iphone/ipad and loved the ease of dragging/dropping pics onto templates and just adding cute cards. It was fun! It was fast! It was totally manageable. But... most of my pics are stored on my macbook. What about those? Searching the Mac App Store for a Project Life app for my macbook I found my solution in iScrapbook.

I love how it pulls in iPhoto (photos for mac too now!) and I can see all my pics on the right hand column of the screen. I pick a picture, drag it from there to the left and drop it right on my layout. There are two things I don't like about iscrapbook- their templates aren't awesome for pocket scrapbooking, and their shadows can be kinda tricky. I suppose there's one more thing I don't like- their customer service is spotty and their manual doesn't tell me everything I want to know. Which is why I started this blog!