Archive for the ‘Training’ Category
Scrapbook Tips Tuesday – 8 Simple Scrapbooking Tips
Tuesday, January 4th, 2011Hello Scrapbook Friend,
It’s Tuesday and that means that it’s Scrapbook Tip Tuesday… at least today it is. So, I’ve collected 8 really simple and easy to follow scrap book tips and jotted them down with some notes for you.
This should get your holiday scrapbook pages off to a great start and make sorting through the hundreds of images you took over the holidays easier to arrange.
Scrapbook Tip Tuesday – 8 Simple Scrapbooking Tips
It’s Scrapbook Tip Tuesday and I’ve collected 8 easy to follow tips that will make your scrapbooking; both digital and the old style hand scrapping go a lot easier. I’m keeping this short, so here we go.
1. Keep a small journal or small planner handy 2 jot down memories, thoughts, events.
This is especially handy while you are on your vacation or holiday, but works really well while you are sorting through all the photos you took. If the photos are printed, number them on the back and make your notes corrospond to the photo numbers. If you are working with digital images, put the number in the file name at the beginning and it will sort your photos for you as well.
2. Keep your photos organized.
Speaking of sorting your photos… It’s so much easier to scrapbook when you can easily find the pictures you want for each page as you need them! For printed photos, I use an assortment of ziplock bags and boxes and plan my scrapbook pages as I sort them. For my digital images (which is most of them these days) I create subfolders on my hard drive and number/name the photos in each directory to make for easy sorting.
3. When hand scrapping a page, write your journaling in pencil first, to make sure it fits and to rectify any mistakes before you ruin the page!
Better yet, even if you are not usine the much easier digital scrapbooking techniques, you can still use your computer and it’s 1000s of fonts to print your titles and journaling and then cut them out and afix to your scrapbook page. This way, you can arrange the page in several ways and get just the look you want.
4. Batch tasks such as photo editing, cropping, and layout planning and do each for several layouts at once.
This should make it possible to get more hand scapped pages done in the time you have. You can be working on another page while glue or other elements are drying on your original page. Digital scrappers can use this techniqe too. Just create your file with several blank pages and save your photos, elements and background to individual pages. Then go back to each page and arrange and finalize your pieces.
5. Don’t be afraid to hand-write some of your journal entries. The way you write can be just as important as what you write.
If your hand isn’t as stedy as it used to be or you have a condition that makes it difficult to write, the computer can still use your handwritting. Kathy, my wife had her best handwritting made into a computer font. It’s not that expensive and adds a really nice personal touch to not only her digital scrapbooks, but to her letters and emails as well.
6. Use Calendars and Greeting cards in your layouts or clipart versions from the internet.
It gives a different look and feel to your scrapbook layouts. Hand scrappers, be sure and make sure that there are no acids or lingon in the papers as they can destroy your photos. I don’t recommend anything with glitter or thick dimensional objects as they can cut and perferate your pages that surround them in your scrapbook when stored. Scrapbook Photo Calendars also make great holiday, wedding and baby shower gifts.
7. Try to make scrapbooking a part of your daily or weekly schedule.
Even if it’s just an a hour a week, you’re 1 step closer to being finished! Don’t forget, that if you are digital scrapbooking, you can start and stop at any time by just saving where you are at. So, with digital scrapbook techniques, you can scrapbook with as little as just 10 minutes a day. If you have followed the sorting and organizing tips above, you can even finish a digital scrapbook page in just 10 minutes.
8. I like to save lots of souvenir’s from vacation places or special events I have been to.
They are an added bonus to the page layout. Ticket stubs, napkins, invitations and other paper type souvenir’s work great. Be really careful with leaves and flowers as they need to be sealed, even when dried, to protect your photos from the gases and oils they contain. As stated above, avoid thick and sharp items as they will damage your surrounding photos and pages, especially when stored in stacks. If you really like a large thick object, consider taking a photo of it and using the image on your scrapbook page, then place the object in a shadow box for display with your page.
See, 8 simple easy to follow tips and you are preserving your life’s most precious memories in no time at all.
By: Wes Waddell
———————————————————————-
Kathy also just finished some new Winter Themed FREE Digital Scrapbook Page Downl0ads at: www.FreeScrapbookTraining.com in 8.5×11, 12×12 & Landscape 11×8.5 sizes.
You’ll also find new FREE Stationery Paper Downloads in Winter, Christmas, Kwanza and Hanukkah Themes at: www.Free-Stationery.com
No hassles, signups or junk… just go there and get all the scrapbook and stationery designs you want. Support the sites by checking out our sponsors links while you are there.
Happy Scrappin’
Wes & Kathy
Taking Better Photographs for Your Scrapbooks
Sunday, January 2nd, 2011Hi Scrapbook Friend,
We have a great short article with some wonderful tips on taking photos for your scrapbook, but first…
No Cost Goodies Update:
Kathy just added a new winter theme mini scrapbook photo page to www.PrincessCrafts.com. No hassle’s or signups, just go there and download from the main page.
Wes also just added Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanza scrapbook pages to www.FreeScrapbookTraining.com in the new Scrapbook Page Download area there in the Freebies section.
For our Members:
Kathy just added Christmas 68 thru 70, Hanukkah 16 thru 18 and Kwanza 11 thru 13 to our 8.5×11, 12×12 and 11×8.5 Landscape areas on www.MyPrincessCrafts.com. You took all those great holiday photos, now it’s time to get them put into your new holiday scrapbook pages and preserve the memories for generations to come.
Now, on to the main article:
==========================================================
Title: Taking Photographs for Your Scrapbook
Author: Audrey Okaneko
Article:
Once you begin scrapbooking, you begin to see photography in a whole new light. When I created my first album I realized that my photos always had way too much space that was not part of the picture, meaning too much sky, or too much grass.
Now, one of the joys of scrapbooking is that you can cut away all of the excess sky, or all of the excess trees, however after you begin your first scrapbook you begin to take pictures a little bit differently. As you look through the camera lens, you begin to see the scrapbook you’ll be making.
You’ll also to begin thinking about a “story” or a theme. I know for me, I take more pictures now, however where I used to take 5 shots of the same thing, I now take 5 shots of a whole story.
I also tend to take my camera to more places now, knowing I want to preserve the memory. It’s fun when folks ask me if I’ll share my photos, since no one else thought to bring a camera to a particular event.
If you are using a digital camera, you can view your picture immediately and determine if this is the picture you want. You then have the opportunity to either retake the picture or if you like the picture but see a lot of “waste” you know you’ll be able to cut it out prior to putting the photo into an album.
After you upload the photos from your camera, you can then print them out on photo paper, which can be purchased at any office supply store.
So, the next time you take out your camera, ask yourself what pictures you envision in your new scrapbook.
About the author:
Audrey Okaneko has been scrapbooking for several years now. You can reach her at http://www.scrapping-made-simple.com
===========================================
That’s it for this week, but keep watching as Kathy has 3 New Years Digital Scrapbooking Page Sets coming for the middle of the month along with Valentines Day and St. Patrick’s Day sets coming very soon.
Happy Scrappin’
Kathy and Wes
www.MyPrincessCrafts.com (main Members hub)
www.Cookbook4Kids.com (Where you never have to worry about the mess)
6 Easy Tips for Taking Better Photos with Your Digital Camera
Friday, December 10th, 2010Hi Scrapbook Friend,
Hanukkah is over, Christmas and Kwanza are almost here. So much going on I thought that I would get you all caught up today.
Before I get to Taking Better Photos with your Digital Camera, and I know how you could use the photo tips with all the holiday parties and family gatherings coming up…
Let’s first take a quick look at what’s new and the great freebies we have for you this holiday season.
Hope you are considering asking Santa for one of our scrapbook memberships this year!
Kathy just added all new Autumn/Fall sets to both the 12×12 Printable Pastels and the 8.5×11 Soft Expressions areas in the Members area. That’s 10 new 2 page matching sets on each site. You’ve got to see them to fully appriciate the high quality work she’s done.
More new sets coming the end of the month for the new year.
We have so much no cost freebies for the holidays, I’m just going to give you the bullet list from each site so I don’t take too much of you time here:
- New Christmas Stationery
- New Winter Theme Stationery
- New Sports (guy type) Theme Stationery
http://freescrapbooktraining.com
- New Winter Theme Digital Scrapbook page sets
- New Christmas, Hanakkah and Kwanza Photo Greeting Cards
- New Winter Theme Photo Greeting Cards
- 2011 Photo Calendar Templates, Last years 2010 sets are also still there too for baby pages
There’s also much more from just the last couple of months on both sites as well. You can spend hours one each site just exploring all the no cost content.
Now that that’s done, here’s the Better Photos article for you.
Title: Better Photos with your Digital Camera
Author: Kelly Paal
Everyone has a digital camera these days and we all take a lot of
photos. But, if your photos still have trees coming out of your
father’s head, mom has red devil eyes, and your beloved pet is never
facing the camera then here are some tips to help you take
better photos for your memories.
1. Always be aware of the background.
I know this is a hard one to follow sometimes, but it is critical for the final outcome of your photos. As you’re setting up a shot just take a quick look at what is behind the people in your camera’s screen or viewfinder. So many perfectly good photos are ruined by a tree or lamp seeming to grow right out of a person’s head.
The fix can be as simple as having the person take one full step to the right or left to move the obstacle out of their way and keep from ruining your photo.
2. Use available light as much as possible.
If your digital camera has an option to turn the flash off and if it’s light enough outside to read a book by, then use the available light and turn the flash off. In general, camera flashes are too harsh for human skin tones and the natural oils we have. Flash makes all of us look pale.
(Even better if your camera has a fill flash use that indoors where there isn’t quite enough daylight for the portrait image. You can always place the person by a window as well.)
3. Use ambient soft light.
The reason that so many of us tend to pose people under trees, and end up with the dark shadow ruined photo with a tree coming out of everyone’s head, is that we all instinctively know that soft light is best.
Sunlight filtered through a trees’ leave is beautiful and warm. It warms up the skin shades and puts a soft light to the features. You just need to stay out of the dark shadows. Indoors near a window with sheer drapes has a similar effect.
4. Aim your camera slightly down at the person’s face.
Now I don’t mean that you need to climb a ladder, but just don’t ever, and I mean ever, point your camera looking upward to a person. This makes us all look fat and bloated at that angle. Also, don’t shoot just face on to the person, try moving a little to the side sometimes. A three quarter view ads impact and allows you to see more of their face.
Remember camera higher looking slightly down and a three quarter view works wonders, it will slim your subject and add a more natural looking impact to your photos.
5. Remember your focus.
Are you taking a photo of mom and the tree she planed as a child… then take mom with the whole tree in the frame. But, if you’re taking a photo of mom next to just any old tree, do we really need to see the entire tree? Get closer to your subject. It’s fine if we can see some of the tree bark with mom leaning against it, but showing the whole tree is a waste of focas and space.
Remember this tip with children playing; many people take a shot of their dear child for an expression on the child’s face, but in the printed shot the child is lost next to another kid, the swing set, and the green grass all around. Remember to zoom in or get closer next time.
6. Never (or almost never) put your subject dead center in the photo.
All amateur family photographers do this and it’s as hard of a habit to break as remembering to look at the background before you snap the shot. But, if you’ve moved in closer to your subject, remember
to put them just sightly off center looking towards the larger area of the image. Not a lot, just a bit.
When you’re shooting, even numbered groups of people, this is especially easy. But, odd numbered groups can be a little more difficult. Just find your imaginary center line of your group and put that line just
a bit off center in your view through your lens or screen.
That’s it! With these 6 easy to follow photo tips you can be on your way to taking better photos
today.
About the author:
Kelly Paal is a Freelance Nature and Landscape Photographer, exhibiting nationally and internationally. Recently she started her own business Kelly Paal Photography (http://www.kellypaalphotography.com/). She has an educational background in photography, business, and commercial art. She enjoys applying graphic design and photography principles to her web designs.
================================================================
That’s it for this week Scrapbook Friend. You take care and have a great week.
Wes & Kathy
www.PrincessCrafts.com
www.MyPrincessCrafts.com
www.TwasTheNightScrapbook.com
FREE Photo Calendars as Holiday Gifts
Thursday, December 2nd, 2010FREE Photo Calendars as Holiday Gifts
Hi Scrapbook Friend,
I’ve been working on my own families 2011 photo calendars today. I give them to both my side and my hubbies side of the family each year for Christmas.
I actually have to!
See, two years ago, I did it for my brother and sisters and my husbands sister and parents. Everyone showed the rest of the family and before I knew it, I had been tasked with creating 4 more for my aunt, my parents, my cousin and hubbies aunt.
Now, everyone starts sending me their summer and fall photos the end of November so that they can have their new personalized photo calendars for Christmas. It’s so popular in fact, I’ve got my sister-in-law helping me out this year so we can get them all done.
It really doesn’t take too long, as I put all of one side of the families birthdays and anniversaries on one set of templates, then make another copy with the other side of the families dates.
Then I create about half the calendar with photos from family events and gatherings that work for the whole family. The other half of the photo calendar pages get custom images of the family the calendar is for on them.
Since the templates have all the graphics and formatting done for me, it takes me less than 5 minutes per page to paste the photos behind the transparent openings and to add my journaling text to each page. The only time consuming part is gathering all the photos and placing them into separate directories for each person.
So easy to do and yet so personal a holiday gift. You can print them yourselves as I’ve created the templates to fit on standard 8.5×11 photo paper, card stock or paper. You can even put them on your thumb drive (usb drive) or on a photo cd and have them printed at any photo lab.
It really is the perfect gift for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza or any other holiday or birthday event. I’ve even made them for baby shower gifts using mom’s pregnancy photos and first photos of the baby after they are born.
All the common holidays are there for you and you can insert text to add any other anniversary, birthday or event on the dates you want.
Here’s my finished page for December 2011… what do you think?
Kim and David
The perfect holiday gift and plenty of time to download them and get them done in time for your holiday gift giving.
The templates are at: http://www.FreeScrapbookTraining.com and you can also get your FREE Holiday Stationer for your Holiday letter writing at: http://Free-Stationery.com
Happy Holidays,
Kathy Waddell
www.FreeScrapbookTraining.com Free Photo Calendar Page Templates
www.ComputerScrapbookTraining.com The Greatest FREE Digital Scrapbook Gift
Using FREE Stationery for Invitations in Lake Tahoe
Wednesday, December 1st, 2010Hi, Wes and Kathy
So far, I’ve created two invitations using your free stationery…and I’m doing a holiday photo collage for my own personal use. Attached are the invitations… I also cut the major icon and placed it onto the envelope that these invitation were mailed in, to coordinate the look. I think they both came out GREAT!! Thanks again for your fabulous website…
Best,
Millie
Millie Szerman
Administrative Director
995 Tahoe Boulevard
Incline Village, Nevada 89451
Website: www.LakeTahoeSchool.org
From: Millie Szerman
Sent: Saturday, November 13, 2010 10:56 AM
To: PrincessCrafts Scrapbooking 101
Subject: Your website…it’s FABULOUS!!!
| Just discovered your www.Free-Stationery.com website, via Google! I wanted to let you know how much I appreciate your designs FOR FREE, since I’m now working for a non-profit school and we always need flyers (which we print on recycled paper), and your designs are terrific!
THANK YOU!! Millie Szerman Administrative Director LAKE TAHOE SCHOOL Incline Village, Nevada 89451 |
Your Family Scrapbooking For The Holidays
Wednesday, November 24th, 2010Hi Scrapbook Friend,
We have a great pre-holiday article for you today: Family Scrapbooking For the Holidays.
Before we get started, here’s a few updates on what’s new on our digital scrapbook pages for you.
Kathy just added 3 autumn and 6 thanksgiving digital scrapbook sets for our Scrapbook of a Lifetime Landscape format area.
She also added new sets on the Printable pastels 12×12 area consisting of Autumn 1 thru 5 and set 6 (not the a or b sets yet… next week for more.)
On our 8.5×11 and 12×12 members areas we added:
– Autumn Scrapbook sets 65 thru 67
– Thanksgiving digital scrapbook templates 34 thru 39
Kathy says that we Will get the rest of the Scrapbook of a LIfetime Landscape sets done and loaded as soon as possible. Extreame cold and Thanksgiving Holiday are slowing things down a bit.
For our FREE Scrapbook Downloads:
There are new Thanksgiving and Christmas Stationery on www.Free-Stationery.com
There is a Fall Mini-Page on the www.PrincessCrafts.com main page
and we have our 2011 Photo Calendars for you on www.FreeScrapbookTraining.com
One last note before we get to our article today:
Our kids are going through some really tough times right now due to our son’s medical bills and our daughters car accident medical costs. Insurance on both is refusing to pay anything and with the holidays so close… well it’s tough.
We know that the economy is hitting everyone hard these days, but we wanted to help in the only way we could.
Look for a new Kids Can Cook Cookbook in the next week. We are setting the kids up with a new site and 100% of the sales go towards helping pay off the kids medical bills. If you can help out and get a copy for one of your kids or grandkids or …? We would really appreciate it.
Thanks in advance,
Now, on to our Article:
Title: Your Family Scrapbooking For The Holidays
Author: Wes Waddell
Article:
Family is everything during the holiday season.
It’s the one time of year that even your teenagers will make an effort to participate in family activities. They may even instigate one or two of their own.
One of the activities we started while our kids were teens was to use the joy of the season to create holiday scrapbooks for other family and friends. We found that it wasn’t hard to get the kids involved as even they loved going through the photos from the last year and even years past.
The actual hard part was usually getting them to focus on just a few pages worth of pictures and not trying to create a 200 page complete family heritage project. Some of the details they remembered from the past year alone were quite the eye openers. To be young and see the world like that again…
We would take one of the early long weekends, like Veterans Day in early November, and use the long weekend with no school to plan, start and complete our family holiday scrapbook. We would start on Friday evening after school was out and use that time to brainstorm ideas to create the theme for that year. Once we got started, we would have little ideas pop up all night, during dinner, while watching TV and just before bed. We wrote each of them down on a long list, not stopping until lights out.
On Saturday morning, we would go over all the ideas over breakfast and choose one for the project. Each year, on member of the family was chosen (we went in order of birth and rotated each year) as project lead and they held the final decision power if we couldn’t narrow it down to just one idea.
It was amazing how being responsible for the final outcome of the project that was being given to other family and friends made everyone cooperate and get along.
The rest of Saturday was spent gathering up the photographs (digital and print) and writing down all the stories that went with them… again, this was sometimes very interesting from the kids point of view.
Sunday and Monday were spent in all kinds of different conversations while we worked to put it all together and match the themes into one finished book. The only boring part at times was all the duplicate pages for each gift. We don’t have that problem these days… but more on that in a few minutes.
It was sometimes amazing what you could do with an assembly line of family members once everything was planned and laid out. It’s funny, we never could get that organized any other time of the year.
One item of note: we took lots of photo’s as we did this and would make 2 to 4 pages of our own each year to add to our own growing book of memories.
Today, the kids are all grown and out on their own. But, we still use the phone and other technologies to keep the tradition going. Computers have made the duplication process a thing of the past as we do all our scrapbooking on the computer now. Everything is digital! Even the final gifts are CD and DVD presentations to most of the extended family. We have the books printed into real hardbound books for our special heirloom gifts that the grandparents (and now great grandparents) get.
The grandkids are even getting old enough to start joining in and the childhood perspective is again with us when we tell the stories.
This years project will be our very first Storybook Scrapbook. All our best holiday memories of the past 20 years are being added to the story of Twas the Night Before Christmas. We can’t wait to read the finished book to our youngest grandchildren Christmas Eve.
I hope that this gives you some ideas on how you can spend more quality time together as a family and make new memories in the process of remembering past ones.
Families really are everything… especially during the holiday season. I hope you’ll all find more time to spend with yours this year.
Happy Holidays!
About the author:
Wes and Kathy own and operate multiple digital scrapbook membership sites, including: http://www.twasthenightscrapbook.com Membership offers much more than just scrapbook templates, it’s help when you need it and a friendly push to keep you on track. Visit http://www.MyPrincessCrafts.com for details on all our Scrapbook membership sites.
