Let's embellish that, shall we?

Bug's question: How do you merge a digital layout with a paper layout?

Good question. And this is where saving your layout is the psd or pspimage format really becomes a time saver, especially if you are going to be printing out the elements from your page.

And that is what we are going to do here. First you need to resize your page to the printing size. I do all my layouts in 12x12; but normally print out in 8x8. Once you have done that then print the layout.


Once you have that done, drag the element layers you want to use to the desktop.


To make printing to one sheet easier I drag them all to a new image.


Since my page is 8x8, I just printed the elements at the bottom of the page (please excuse the mess, my printer is severely in need of a cleaning).


Have you run done to your favorite scrapbook or craft store, Michael's or Joann's? You need to pick up some pop dots. They come in several different heights. Scrapbook.com has a suggestion on how to make your own homemade pop dots. If you decide to do this make sure the craft foam you purchase is archival safe. You don't want to get carried away with using them on a page. Think of that little extra umph...

Now all you have to do is cut it/them out. Since I had three flowers clustered together, I thought that would be the perfect elements to cut out and use. Use the different height dots to apply the elements if you are using more than one cut out. By leaving the flowers on the layout when I printed it gave me the placement and the order they needed to go in.



But let's say I have some real elements that I want to add to my layout. In this example I will be replacing some of the pebbles with starfish. (word of caution; make sure the element(s) you use are in perspective to the page).


First thing (again) is to resize my layout to my printing size (8x8). I am going to click on the top layer and add a new layer above it.


Selecting the new layer and using the paint brush I will place "dots" where I want my "starfish" to be placed. Doesn't matter what color you use, just make sure the brush size isn't too big.


Now selecting my rock layer I am going to: Layers>Merge>Merge Down so that my rock and rock shadow are on the same layer (if you don't have a shadow placed yet, skip this part). Still on the rock layer, with the freehand selection tool, I will marquee around the rocks which have the red dot over them. Noticed the marquee didn't show up well, so I have highlighted them with neon green.


Once I finished with the marquee I hit delete on the keyboard. The rocks are gone but the red dots are still there to show where to place the starfish.


All that's left to do is print out the page; trim it and glue on my starfish.


Until I get my printer cleaned, though, I think I will stick with having them printed elsewhere. :)

Black Beauty (c)Armina Designs; Template by Bunny Cates;
Fonts: Kingthings Wrote, Vtks Wine Label

Take me out to the candy

Technically we have one more day until the little spooks and ghouls make their way down the streets, but if your county is like ours you will be having it tonight. So we are going to be making a mini-take out box from Mirkwood Designs. It's small, quick to put together and makes great Halloween party favors. I will be using Spookyville's Night from the designers at GoDigital. If you haven't done so yet take a look at yesterday's post to see how to set up the templates. The only thing I did different was to add the scoring lines before I saved the template as a psd/pspimage, which I didn't do yesterday. I added them at the end.

I'm going to start by putting guidelines along my horizontal and vertical scoring lines, then resize my chosen background to a little larger than 1/4 the size of the template. Move to the top center, right click on layer>duplicate.

Image>Rotate Free>180 degrees; all layers unchecked. Using move tool, move copy layer to center bottom of template.


Hide template and scoring folds layers. Make sure that one of the background layers is selected. Right click on it>Merge>Merge Visible. Unhide the template and folds layers.


With the folds layer as a guide use the lasso tool to marquee the sides (as shown below) and delete from keyboard.


Duplicate layer (right click>duplicate>. Rotate (Image>Free Rotate>90 degrees). Hide original background. Again using folds layer as guide and lasso tool, marquee around the top and bottom edges of background copy as shown, delete.


Hide template and folds layers. Unhide original background layer and make active. Right click on the layer>Merge>Merge Visible. Select the template layer and unhide (I have the background layer hidden for demonstration purposes, but you can do so yourself as well). Chose the magic wand, uncheck contiguous and click anywhere outside the template.


Make your background layer visible and active. Delete.


Go to Image>Change Grid, Guide & Snap Properties.


Click on Guides tab. Check Delete guides>ok.


Unhide and make folds layer active. Control+a, control+f, control+shift+f. Flood fill with a darker or lighter color than your background color. Control+d to deselect. Lower opacity until just barely visible.


Make background layer active and start adding elements, making sure you rotate them in the proper direction.


Layers>Merge>Merge All (flatten).


Print the cut out and then follow the directions on the Mirkwood Designs site (or whatever template site you used). (Unfortunately my printer is running out of ink so it did not print as shown on the screen).








Once you have your template made, you can resize it by going to Image>Resize. If you want to save it, make sure you use "save as".

I think you will agree that these make terrific party favors, not only for Halloween but for celebrating any holiday, birthday or other special occasion. And here are a couple of other boxes you might want to try out:

Bon-Bon
Tiny Cubes
Small Boxes, corrugated look gift boxes, daisy gift boxes

Template by Andrea Gold; Bewitched (c)Candy Treats, Crystals Creations,
Brenda Mascari. Tooty Pup Scraps & Designed by Stina; Font: Arial