Sun Ray Tutorial

by Yobeth Puckett

Here's a layout I made using shapes in MyMemories Suite. I used J W Designs kit Spring Has Sprung and the font is Freehand 591 BT.

I used a sunrise picture that I had taken for this layout.  The sun rays work perfect here but you can use it in so many ways.  Sunrise, sunset, landscapes, a sunny day at the park or pool, someone you love with a sunny personality, the possibilities go on and on.

I bet you are already thinking of a shot you've gotten that would be perfect!  If you'd like to give it a go you'll find tutorials here and here that show you everything you need to know.  Have fun!

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Tiling with Memory Mixer and ... more snow

I made this Spring (allegedly) page for a tiling challenge on Touched By A Butterfly's Facebook group. The kit is her Spring is Here. It was meant to be done in MyMemories 4 but I'd rather stick pins in my eyes than tangle with that, it's an unstable mess and needs rewriting from scratch IMHO. It languishes on my old computer while I use MMSv3 and Memory Mixer on the main one.

The tiling effect in Memory Mixer is actually a font. It sounds weird but this picture is the letter b at size 410 in a special font. The fonts are only $4 each and you can find them here. I was going to write a long tutorial for my website but it's all explained brilliantly in a pdf that you download with the font.

These photos were taken in my Mum's garden in Birmingham on Easter Sunday, 31 March.



We brought Mum's camera card back with us and she had lots more snow pics on it so I made another page with a photo from almost the same angle. Mum was standing on the doorstep not in the snow so it's a bit different! I used Trixie Scraps' Frosted Windowpanes including a clustered border and frame.


Far too much snow!

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Breathtaking Arrogance

I had my time wasted today.

I sent a support ticket to one of the big "We're God's gift to scrapbooking" stores. More like one of the many "Oh dear, we don't seem to have exclusive designers so the customers can walk and buy elsewhere" stores. So they rely on customer loyalty. So they probably shouldn't waste people's time.

My query, which involved a copyright issue, was resolved but only after they wasted our time for hours with snitty ill-thought responses including the classic "I can give you my attorney's number". Ooooh, I'm really scared. An attorney??? Wow. Does it not occur to someone running a business that the person they're dealing with might have a legal background? Might have worked for many years in an intellectual property company??

It is foolish indeed to assume your correspondent is a scaredy cat who might run away. I've had dealings with this arrogant pair before. Snitty is basically default mode. Ever heard of the Chinese proverb "A shopkeeper should keep a smiling face" ? And a bit of respect for someone who has spent thousands (really) of dollars over the years would not go amiss.

So ... I did run away. And I took my Paypal account with me. "Profile deleted". No-one gets to waste my valuable time.

Sharon Horswill

A White Easter!

White Easter ??? Ridiculous... and it's still freezing and snowing in April :( We went to Mum's on Easter Sunday. We hadn't seen her for a while since my very slow recovery from knee surgery wouldn't allow me to sit in a car for several hours. So we celebrated Christmas, Mother's Day, Easter, my birthday and our wedding anniversary all on the same day. Confusing layouts with Christmas crackers and Easter eggs to follow!

Here's a page showing snow still lying in Mum's garden. I used Hunt and Gather by Raspberry Road Designs. The alpha is one of Traci Reed's Thickabets.

Here Comes The Sun.... Not Just For PS Peeps!

I love sun ray shapes, it reminds me that there might be some summer - or even Spring - out there somewhere. If you've looked with longing at the many PS/PSE templates with sun ray shapes but you use MyMemories this is for you. It's an easy tutorial on how to make and save a sunray wedge shape and then fill it with paper/photos. Be warned though this kind of page could take you a while. You're adding a shape then filling it with a photo (papers are jpegs just like photos are) rather than the other way around. Unfortunately MMS takes you to your pictures folder each time rather than to where you were when you filled the last shape. This meant about 12 clicks for each wedge for me since I have everything in multiple nested folders. This is why I save sun ray papers in a special folder, it's much easier that way!

Here's the page I made with Connie Prince's Swim On kit:


The tutorial is on Coastal Scrapbooks HERE.

Sharon Horswill

Proven Principles

There are many design principles that apply to artwork across the board.  Whether you're interest is sketching, painting, photography, interior design, scrapbooking or some other artistic pursuit there are techniques to use that have been tried and proven.  One of these "rules of thumb" is the rule of thirds.   Have you ever wondered why one layout works while another seems kind of boring or uninteresting?  It could be all about technique.  I've got a post that goes into a little more detail that you might find interesting.  You can find it here.

April Daily Word Challenge

Here are the April words. They were chosen at random - apart from today's word - from our huge list using the old fashioned method of random number cells in Excel. Yes, I had to Google how to do that! It's a very long time since I learned Excel ...

Anyone can play and there are basically no rules. You can show us a page with the word in it as a Title, photo or text, something inspired by the word, or something completely off the wall but the word made you think of it. You don't have to make a new page. You can show us something you made ages ago.

This month's word page was made with CatDesignz' Celeste kit. Feel free to right click the image and share it or share this post.

As for me and my house ...

Yesterday's word challenge was poem or scripture. We've had this scripture in our hall in many forms over the years - carved, printed, cross stitch etc Now I'm about to print and frame this one (12 x 12 frames are usually available at The Range for my UK friends). The kit is The House That Built Me by Raspberry Road Designs. Grab it now, she has 50% off .... I used a stacked paper background and extra embellies. The word art is from Rina Kroes' Scripture Scraps 3.


This one was made for my UK Census scrapbooking in 2011. It was the first time we could answer the optional religious question and a lot of people did answer it, some because they want to keep church schools in the future. Elements are from Just So Scrappy's Denim and Daisies. Word art is by Ronnie MacCray.

I don't know what rabbits ever did to deserve the abuse they get at Easter. No animal should ever be bought as a present at Easter or Christmas. Last year 67000 rabbits ended up in rescue in the UK. Many more are abandoned and starve to death. I know rabbits very well and I know when they're scared or distressed and that's what I see in these cutesy kids-with-bunnies layouts scrapbookers are fond of. They think it's OK to cause animals distress for their amusement and they're teaching their children to do the same. It's disgusting. I was told I caused offence to US scrappers by saying so because it's a "tradition". That brings up two questions:

1) What kind of nation thinks tradition is more important than kindness and respect for animals? Oh, right, the one with the gun tradition...

2) What on earth makes people think they can push me around in a Facebook group that I RUN ??? Unbelievable ...

Incidentally this was made in Memory Mixer. Don't even try to create subway art in My Memories, it will freeze by the time you get your third text box on the page. Tutorial to follow shortly.

Organize, Colorize, Scrap!

On our Facebook pages we're frequently asked how we organize our scrap book stash.  Digi-scrapping does not generate the same mess as paper scrapping but it can quickly clutter up your hard drive!  I'm sure there are many ways to regain control of you digital disaster and what works for me may need a little tweaking to work for you.

Sharon has written an excellent article that will definitely help you tidy up a bit.  You can read it here.  It may seem overwhelming to think about but break it down into smaller tasks and before you know it you'll be able to find what ever you're looking for.  I'm sure you've heard the saying, How do you eat and elephant? Answer - One bite at a time.

You may have some things in your stash that don't really fit into a specific subject theme.  I like to group these kits and alphas by color scheme.  If you use the tips in Sharon's article you will use Windows Explorer to view your stash.  Did you know you can recolor your Windows folders?  This may make is even easier to identify items filed by color.  You can read my article about colorizing Windows folders here.

I hope these tips are helpful and you'll have more time for what's important, scrapping!

Let's Split Things Up!

Sometimes I want to use more than one background paper but want something different than a basic stacked paper look.  One method I like to use is a split stacked paper technique. Sometimes the kit has so many pretty papers I want to use them all! Not only is it visually appealing it gives me more places to tuck in elements.  If you've seen many of my layouts you know I love clustering elements. I feel like I can add more clusters without over doing it. I love it so much I've used this type layout a lot.  Here are a couple of favorite layouts I've made using split backgrounds.
  

 

Kit: Sherwood Studio's Winter Caprice

 

Kit: The Digichick Designer Collaboration Glitter & Memories

Pictorial Backgrounds

One thing I really miss about paper scrapbooking is the wonderful pictorial backgrounds some companies produce. I kept quite a few beach ones and printed 8 x 8 digital pages to add to them. You can create all kinds of effects using a photo for your background but it's a joy when you find a pictorial background in a kit.

This one is from the huge Animal Magic bundle by CatDesignz which has several artistic  backgrounds. It really does capture the feeling of Mum and Uncle Frank's safari trip. All I needed to do was add the photos and the leaf garland. Less is more with fancy backgrounds!

Totally Tropical

A "think outside the box and go backwards" two part tutorial! I've talked a lot about using reduced opacity backgrounds in my layouts and that's easy to do but some designers actually do the work for you and provide a "faded" background in the kit. CatDesignz has one in the Totally Tropical kit. I leapt on this for a page of hibiscus photos but then I wondered what would happen if I tried to "Un-fade it" and use it for an album cover. This was the result:



I changed the background in Picmonkey (the free version you don't need to upgrade) and that tutorials is HERE.

Then I made the page in MyMemories and used the adjusted background to make a shadow box frame. you can see that tutorial HERE. It also tells you how to change the shadows on the elements and make your butterfly fly above the page.