Creative Memories Software Solutions Blog

Looking for an original gift?

A great way to give original gifts to your loved ones is to create custom gifts using your photos and/or StoryBook Creator Plus Software. Anything from Mugs and T-shirts, to mouse pads and photo panels can be great presents for the holidays.

The best part is, that creating a custom gift is SO EASY, even a caveman can do it... (Okay, I can't steal that line... sorry). But seriously, it's quick and easy to create a custom gift just in time for the holidays.

The new Digital Center showcases examples of these gifts. You should really go out there and check out the new Digital Center anyway. It's pretty cool! 

Also, here is a link to the directions on how to create a custom gift. It shows you everything you'll need to know about choosing dimensions for each project and gives step-by step instructions.

What are you planning on giving as a custom gift this year?

New 12x18 Calendar SALE!

That's right folks, this fancy new calendar is ON SALE until 11/15/09! When you buy two or more beautiful, durable, versatile, superior quality...(oh, and did I mention SUPERFANTASTIC?) calendars, you get 20% off!

Here are the reasons you should take advantage of this offer:

1. GREAT for gifts
2. You can reuse the top and bottom portions for your albums
3. You can place the top portion on an Everyday Display
4. Your family and friends will be completely jealous of your new calendar and want one of their own
5. They look fantastic on any wall
6. To make the garbage men (waste management professionals ;-) happy by creating less trash and lighter loads because you've re-purposed the pages of your calendar.
7. They're on SALE
8. BECAUSE YOU WILL LOVE THEM!

In case you need a refresher on how to create one of these Beauties, here is a video to help.

Also, if you simply can't stand to wait any longer and need to purchase RIGHT NOW, grab your StoryBook Creator Plus 3.0 Software, create, upload, and order on the new Creative Memories Digital Center.

Calendar Templates: Defining your time

tem•plate: A pattern or gauge, such as a thin metal plate with a cut pattern, used as a guide in making something accurately.

Wow. I made my first calendar pages this week. At first thought it was going to be cool to show you how you can drop in 12 x 12 pages or Page Prints you've already done into the calendar templates. However, that doesn't even begin to scratch at the surface of what you can do with the new calendar templates.

You can:
• import completed pages as photos and just drag and drop (or, you can copy/paste from another SBC+ file if you still have items you want to change)
• start from scratch and create something new
• make any photo or paper the background of the calendar
• change the calendar style
• change any month to a new month (switch January to July without starting over)
• change the color of anything in the calendar, change the fonts
• add photos, embellishments or text to any cell on the calendar

I discovered all kinds of versatility within the template. Check out the screen shots below to see some of the great things you can do with calendars.

cal•en•dar tem•plates: a starting point, a guide to making your calendars just the way you want.

Insert your already completed pages

1. If you haven't already, save your pages as 300 dpi jpgs. From your calendar project, click on Get Photos. Import pages you want to use as photos.

2. Drag and drop on to calendar template. Size to fit the upper portion of the template.

Change the style of the calendars & adding a photo as your background

1. It doesn't get much easier than this. Right click on the calendar grid to see the pop up menu. Go to "Use a different Calendar Style", choose your favorite from the pop up window.

2. Adding the photo as a background is amazingly simple too. From the content menu, choose your photo, right click and choose "Make background". That's it. (You can do this with paper too!)

3. Just like any StoryBook page you create, you can add any embellishments or type you like.

Personalize the calendar grid

1. Right click the calendar grid, choose "properties" from the pop up menu. From this menu, you can change colors, fonts, spacing and more as it applies to the calendar grid. (see screen shot below)

Cells within the calendar

 

1. Drag and drop an image or an element into any cell within the calendar. Or, right click the calendar grid and choose "Edit Calendar Cells" to add text or make other changes to the individual days of the month.

When you're all done creating your own unique and fabulous calendar grid, you can sample the grid and apply the same features to any other grid in your project.

Find more great tips & videos in the Help Zone.

Looking for 2010 Calendar Overlays?

Well, you won't find them in the normal place because we've added calendar functionality to StoryBook Creator 3.0!! We're so excited about this fabulous new feature - it launched last week with an Update to the software. And I'm personally excited to have an option to the yearly "Weather Calendar" my husband loves to buy!

Here's what's new:

• When you're inside a project in StoryBook Creator Plus 3.0, just click on the Insert tab and on the far right you'll find a new option to add a calendar object to ANY project! You can customize the look, the month, the year - all the flexibility you've come to expect from StoryBook Creator Plus software!
• A new project type -- that's right, you can now build, upload and share our fabulous new 12x18 Calendars in BOTH StoryBook Creator 3.0 (free version) and StoryBook Creator Plus 3.0! These gorgeous calendars feature a 12x12 design on the top and a calendar grid on the bottom. We perforate above and below the 12x12 design so once the month is over you can remove the grid and save the page! This project is a bit different from other StoryBook projects in that you must start with one of our Predesigned or Basic Calendar Pages. 

• For StoryBook Creator 3.0 users (the free version), you will start with SBC 3.0 2010 Predesigned Calendar Pages. There are 3 options for each month -- seasonal/holiday, decorative or basic. You can add your photos and journaling to the top half of the calendar and add text to each individual day.
• For StoryBook Creator Plus 3.0 users, you have 2 choices:
  • The Basic Calendar Pages give you just the calendar grid itself, which you can still modify and customize, and then add your own page design on the top of the calendar.
  • The SBC Plus 3.0 2010 Predesigned Calendar Pages give you a starting point for each month and allow you to enter photos OR text OR both in each individual day!

And the best part? These gorgeous new calendars retail for only $20.99 ($28.99 CAD)! You can start creating them now and upload to the CM Photo Center to view and share. You'll be able to order starting November 1 so start having FUN now with this new addition to our software!  

A special note -- if you downloaded the free artwork packages on either 10/1 or 10/2, please download and install them again -- we had to make a few tweaks and you'll want to have the latest & greatest!

 

Endless Color

Color. It’s everywhere. People define themselves with color from the car they drive to the iPod in their pocket. So, why should your digital scrapbooking be any different? Try these quick adjustments to any paper or embellishment, the possibilities are endless.

I started out with Paper4 from the Best Buds Digital Kit and a fabulous photo of my nephew.

Color Wash: Black & White Image

1. Select the paper you want to adjust. In the color tab, click on Black & White to take away all color.
2. Click on Color Wash. For this image, I selected the blue from my nephew’s shirt by sampling from the screen. Then adjusted both the saturation and the intensity until I achieved the color I wanted.

Adjust Hue: Color Image

1. Select the paper you want to adjust. In the color tab, click on Adjust Hue.
2. Using the saturation slider, move it to the left. This will give you the same color patterns, but at a different level of color. In this case, it took on more of the colors of nature going on behind my nephew. Move the slider in the other direction and you can achieve those off-air Techni-color stripes the networks used to run when you got up too early on Saturday morning.
   

Color Balance

1. Select the paper you want to adjust. In the color tab, click on Color Balance.
2. Move those sliders around! You can get all kinds of color going on here. More red, more yellow, more green...it will change the balance across the whole image and give your page a whole new look. In my image, I decided to let the blues take over, reds become more purple, greens trend toward being more blue-green.
   

Really like the new paper you made?  
Paste it onto a blank page, save it as a jpg and add it to your own collection of artwork to use over and over again.

What's Your Favorite Feature?

Working full time and being a mom is hard work and takes a lot of time.  Like most first-time moms, I have tons of pictures of Jordan, but struggle to find the time to get them printed, let alone in albums.  That is why I am so excited about the auto populate feature in StoryBook 3.0!  You just pick your template, select you pictures (by the way, it is a good idea to put your pictures in the correct orientation prior to doing the auto populate - learned that one the hard way the first time) and whalaa - the software will auto pupluate your pictures in your StoryBook!  Of course you have to review the book to make any adjustments needed and add some journaling, but this feature has been awesome for me to complete several projects quickly.  Here is one of my favorite pages that I created with auto populate.

If you want to learn more about auto populate here is a quick online video training to show you how to do it.

I have to say that auto populate is my favorite feature about the new software!    What's your favorite feature about the new StoryBook Creator 3.0 software?

 

For the love of StoryBook Creator

I wish there was a button you could push on the back of every case of StoryBook Creator 3.0 that would open a video of me jumping up and down shouting “I HEART STORYBOOK CREATOR 3.0!”  I think even then, it wouldn’t do the software justice… or perhaps would do an injustice, depending on my annoyance factor...

Look, I know this is a corporate blog and you probably think I’m supposed to say things like this, but I genuinely love this software and often shout it from the roof tops. When I came in to Creative Memories as a contractor in January of 2009, I had a background in Photo Shop and design software, and obviously a marketing education, but knew zip about scrapbooking. In my new role I was quickly tossed into the development and marketing of StoryBook Creator Plus 3.0 Software. At first, I was thinking, “what do these scrapbookers know about software?”

Boy, did I learn that I wasn’t messing with amateurs! This software is a brilliant mix of photo editing, design, and photo/content organization software-it's even fun to use! It has unlimited potential to create glorious things like cards, invitations, scrapbook pages, and of course the StoryBook (which I will “geek out” over in one of my future posts).

The StoryBook Creator 3.0 feature I would like to “geek out” over today is the content manager.
It allows you to see and sort your digital artwork to easily find what you’re looking for. You can assign search-able keywords to content, making it quick to locate the papers, embellishments and color schemes you need. I like to assign my keywords to break my projects up into themes like:  baby, wedding, girl’s night, and favorite embellishments etc.

Here’s a little tour to walk you through it.

Let me know what you think of StoryBook Creator 3.0 and if you’re on-board with my geeky-ness! What are your favorite things about the new content manager?