Make Your Page Pop!

In a past life I used to enjoy traditional scrapbooking...loved to get my hands in it, rub, rip, fold, print, layer, tack, and of course filled my dining room table with IDEAS that I just hoped to come to life. I left this out for weeks at a time because... I could. Now little fingers are a factor, as well as the fact that now I have a family and life is a tad bit different so I USE my dining table – FOR EATING.

That past life comes to mind when I get out the stickers, play dough, scissors, puzzles and any other activity for today’s playtime for my kids, which of course is followed by the take down and clean up. A task I do for my kids but couldn’t imagine having time for in my own hobby. I was so thankful for digital scrapbooking when it came to be. A way I could scrapbook, come to and from a project with so little effort. 

As much as I am thankful for digital scrapbooking, I do miss traditional some times. I love the look of hybrid scrapbooking (when you combine the two) but still I don’t do it often because of lack of time or energy. 

Because of this new (again) found love I have been playing around with Creative Memories Storybook Creator software. It has such great tools, that with a little effort and creativity you can make your pages pop much like they do in traditional or hybrid scrapbooking.

In this page, I created a frame which can be made using SBC cutting tools, surface tools and shadowing tools. I'll show you how in the instructions!

I learn so much by fiddling around (so my Husband calls it) in StoryBook Creator! I have spent many hours trying out the different techniques – tried, failed and have been shocked at my success. Getting used to the tools is your first goal...and then play...try new things...and have fun!

How to create the page:

Nancy O’Dell Recipe Digital Kit

Vintage Romance Sewing Room Digital Embellishments

Stitching Digital Embellishments

Garden Sunset Digital Kit

Serene Digital Kit

Elements Digital Embellishments

Office Supplies (Gold) Digital Embellishments

Vintage Romance Digital Kit

Instructions:

Insert O'Dell RecipePaper18. Rotate the paper so the words are no longer in the top right but move the paper until the words are in the top left. Add VintageRomancePaper5 and using the cutting tools, cut the paper with a rough rip to expose the top of the paper. Copy and paste that paper onto the page. Change the color of the paper, sampling the blue from the top paper. Rip the top of that paper and slide it just below the Romance paper. Apply a shadow to the papers to show depth. 

Add VintageRomSewRm31 which is the large thread-like paper from the Vintage Romance Sewing Room Digital Embellishments package to the top left portion of the paper. Add this 3 more times to the top left of the page. Select Vintage Romance Paper5 and ‘fill the selected shape’ of two of the papers on the top left.  Add VintageRomSewRm26 (straight stitch) and VintageRomSewRm25 (curly stitch) in several spots in the top left corner on top of your papers. 

To make the frame, first add pre-made frame from one of the kits with straight lines. If you don’t want to use an already made frame, simply add a paper and make it the shape of a rectangle and cut out a rectangle for the center. Change the color of the frame to white. Highlight the frame you are using. Using the Format ribbon on the top of StoryBook, select the surface button under effects. Add a wrinkles2 with very low contrast. To manipulate the frame to look as though the corners are folded up or curved, you must add your own shadows. Do not shadow the whole frame using the shadow tool. You must add a long triangle (like a wedge) to the page. Make it a dark grey or black. Use the format ribbon and select soften edge. Soften the edge dramatically to make it look more like a shadow rather than keeping it actual shape. Fit this triangle along the top left corner along the side and bottom left corner and just shy of the bottom right corner. This is something that you may have to play with to get the right effect, as its hard to explain via words the shapes and specific spots to place your shadows.  

From the Serene Digital Kit select "I" white tag and place this on the top right of the top frame. Also add this tag to the page using the cutting tools - cut out the letter "I" and fill it with a sample of the white from the tag.  Flatten this new tag. Copy and paste this 3 more times to the page. Inside your second tag, type in ‘love’ using Adler font. And add ‘you’ in the third tag and ‘Smile’ in the fourth. You can manipulate the size of the tag to fit the words you are inserting. Once your words are placed in the tags as you wish, flatten the tags so you can move them around and increase/decrease their sizes.

Place the I - love - you tags along the right side of the homemade frame. Add a small amount of shadow to the tags just so they stand out. Find the VintageRomSewRmEmb3 (the blue button) from the Vintage Romance Sewing Room Digital Embellishments package. Place this button to secure the tags to the side of the frame. Add another text using the shape ribbon. Using LaineyDaySH font insert a ‘&’ symbol in a light green color (color sampled from the page). Also using LaineyDaySh font, insert "your beautiful" text in a white color. I often add a fractal map (noisy) to my text to add a worn look. I did this on "your beautiful" for this page. 

Now slide the "smile" under one of the papers on the page. Using another one of your shadow triangles (copy and paste one you used for your frame), insert the long edge along the bottom of the tag but exposing both sides of the point so it looks as though you have indeed lifted the tag from the page (A REALLY COOL LOOK). Another way to make the tags look 3D is to darken the edges using the edit image, select touch up brushes when right clicking the image. I also darkened the top right edge. Add a HINGE from Garden Sunset Digital Kit to secure the frame to the page and add shadowing to the hinge. Behind the hinge and frame, add ElementspaintedBubbleWrap from the Elements Digital Embellishments package.

Add OdellRecipePaper18 to the bottom of the page and use the arrows to change the shape from square to rectangle and make it smaller to use for journaling. Along the edges of the journaling paper, add Stitch8 from Basic Stitching Digital Embellishments package. Along the top of the journaling spot, add What I Love from Serene Digital Kit. Secure it with VintageRomSewRmEmb3 (the blue button). Add your journaling.

Add frames and photos to the bottom of the page. Use GoldClip from Office Supplies (Gold) Digital Embellishments to secure the pictures and frames. Finally, add VintageRomSewRm18 (the cute little brown bow) to the clip.

Enjoy!
Jennifer Gibson
Creative Memories Design Team Member

 

Comments

[Jennifer Gibson]

Using the Format ribbon on the top of StoryBook, select the surface button under effects. Select Cord texture...that is how you get the lined/textured effect.

[Caroline]

Could someone please comment on the paper at the bottom of the page which appears to have horizontal lines in it? How in the world do you get that effect? Thanks.

[Gari Ann]

Oh, love! love! love! Thanks for the tutorial!

[Rachel]

I stand corrected. I was not reading this as one complete sentence. I read this as "I love you & you['re] beautiful. Smile"

I shall sentence myself to 3 hours at the chalk board - diagramming sentences. Well, maybe only 3 minutes.

Sorry.

[Maureen Feist]

Fabuluous work Jennifer! I love how this turned out. Now I know how to get that curved up look to photo frames, thanks to your instructions! Can't wait to try this out!

[Sharon]

Grammatically correct and what an impact this page makes. I love it! Thanks for sharing.

[Leslie]

Gorgeous layout!!

And "your" is correct here. :)

[Craftmomof8]

Wonderful layout!! Thanks for sharing!! I have not tried any digi layouts but am now thinking I may try.
And yes your title is correct!! Just say it out loud "I Love You and "You are" beautiful smile" does not make any sense!! "Your" is ownership "You are" is something that the person is (happy, sad, in trouble.....)

[Jennifer Gibson]

"I love you and your beautiful smile"... She does have the best smile in the world. Glad you are enjoying the page. I am not sure how to make a video of creating the page but I will talk to Creative Memories Team about that and see if that can be done. The instructions for the page do seem long and complicated but totally worth it...do the frame once and save it in a folder and use over and over again :)

[Susan]

"I love you and your beautiful smile" is grammatically correct.
Nice layout; describing it surely took longer than actually doing it!

[Lisa]

Jennifer, I'd love to see a video of you creating that shadow technique. It's amazing and I can't believe I never thought to do it. You're right about it being hard to write out in words (that's sometimes hard to do) so I'd love to see you create that.

PS...."your" is right if you mean "I love you & your beautiful smile" since smile is part of the title....at least that's how I read it.

[Rachel]

Great page. All that work, and the first thing I see is the grammatical error. I know it's the old school teacher in me, but the first thing I saw was the word "your" which should have been "you're" or "you are." One of the good things about digital is that you can easily go back and correct the error - unless you are like me, you don't find the error until the book is printed.