Monday, September 29, 2008

Back to digital

With the help of a great tutorial by Cheltzey, I was able to finally use a PSD template to create a page. I typically use Microsoft Digital Image Suite for digital scrapbooking, but it can't read Photoshop layered files, so I've been trying to learn the free GIMP instead. Most digital scrappers use either Photoshop Elements or one of the big Photoshop products and I have considered joining the crowd, but even when I carefully follow a tutorial, I get very frustrated with Adobe's non-intuitive menus. In no time, I begin to swear and throw things. This is not the best way to ensure your computer's longevity, so I'm gonna keep tackling GIMP.

There's no hope that Microsoft will bother improving functionality because they discontinued the product last year. Too bad, because I realize I've been using Microsoft everything for just under 20 years. Anyway, GIMP did a great job and once I'd gotten the hang of pasting papers to shapes, it was pretty darned easy. Their drop shadows are way more customizable than what I used in DIS and I am thrilled about that! I couldn't figure the text insertion out easily, so I bailed and went back to DIS for a quick touchup.

This first page uses kraft paper by Ronnie McCray. That kit is worth it just for the great variety of interesting kraft backgrounds. The blue paper is from Stephanie Burt, but I bought it at her closing her store sale, so I can't provide a link. The font is CK Journaling.


I found the journaling for this page saved to my external hard drive. It was sweet, so I went diving for the accompanying photos. The template is #58 from Heather Ann Designs. The gingham paper is from Jenn Ulasiewicz and I used a pink background behind that from Beth Kern. The fonts are Bodoni MT and Pea Jenny Script and Pea Shirley (the J - I didn't like the other.) The Pea Font site has tons of free handwritten fonts, along with some cute doodles. Good to know, eh?

One thing that makes me chuckle is how the photos of my daughter eating a single sandwich quarter included both a fish face and cheesy grins. What a nut!


It's time for my semi-annual asthma-a-thon, so I hope to get more digital pages done. I'm too wiped to manually cut and paste, but clicking a mouse is just my speed. Besides, I've had a lot of good ideas lately and this lets me get them out of my head quicker.

3 comments:

BeckyButtshaw said...

I really love the page with Rose-I wonder if I could do something similar on paper? Hmmm
Such a good idea, Denise!

Average Scrapper said...

Yeah Becky, you could totally do this on paper. If you wanted to fit a ton of pictures, you could print wallets. Or mix wallets with 3x5 pictures for some variety.

tz said...

Wow...I should get on more often, look how great your pages are...

It's so nice to live vicariously through my scrapbooking friends ;)

hope all is okay your way...