Scrapbooking Techniques & Tips – Personalising Your Backgrounds
One of my fave hobbies is Scrapbooking. So I thought I might run a series of Scrapbooking Techniques & Tips on the subject. If you find this useful, I’d really appreciate you leaving a comment so I can get an idea of whether it’s worthwhile continuing with this or not.
Here we go.
When you have a special photo and you really want to ‘showcase the moment’ try scanning an item of clothing that the subject was wearing in the photo and using it as your background for the layout. It doesn’t matter if there are creases or seams or pockets in the scanned image; that will only add to the uniqueness of the background.
My suggestion would be to scan at the highest resolution that you can. Then using your photo editing or drawing software (Photoshop Elements 4 is my weapon of choice), open a new file with a transparent background in the size of your layout. I usually pick a resolution of 300dpi for a good quality print.
Drag your scanned image onto the new file (it appears as a new layer in PSE4). You can then move it around to find the best section to cover your background layer. You can Shift-drag on the corner of the image to reduce the size if necessary but don’t worry if parts hang off the edge of the background layer.
Once you’ve positioned the image as you like it, crop it to the size of the background layer and build your layout.
The example below is a photo of my daughter dressed for her formal in her last year of High School. The background is a scan of the velvet dress she wore on the night.
Other related posts:
Scrapbooking Techniques & Tips – Photomerge: Electronic versions of your paper scrapbook layouts
Scrapbooking Techniques & Tips – Upsizing your digital photographs and images
Scrapbooking Techniques & Tips – Printing your digital layouts
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12 Responses to “Scrapbooking Techniques & Tips – Personalising Your Backgrounds”
This is great Karen!! I know Clikchics are desperate for more tutorials and tips.. would you be interested in including it there?? Just a thought, it might be nice for you to be “published” at a site, it’s a great tip
By heather on Oct 2, 2006
Hi Karen, I’ve asked about getting tutorials/tips into Clikchics and what you have to do is send it to Robyn (Clikchic) and take it from there… if it gets approved, then it’s into the Articles/Tutorials section!
By heather on Oct 2, 2006
hi ya – i think these tips are fantastic, i got your blogpage from scrapboxx (i am pootle) & would be interested in reading more
thanks
sam
By sam on Oct 9, 2006
This is gorgeous. I actually scanned my dd’s favourite dress and used as a background in an SC article I did. Can’t remember which issue, but it was called colour v’s black and white..quite a while ago now.
Love that you are writing tutorials here..
By Mel Diener on Mar 18, 2007
I love the idea, even if I do not have a scanner now!
By Corina on Mar 22, 2007
Hi, there. Thanks so much for the article. I’m a little lazy and it would require going to the “other” computer and scanning and then bringing over to my notebook, but in certain cases, like your example, it would be the perfect touch. Thanks.
By Tami Stephens on Aug 4, 2007
Glad you enjoyed the article Tami. And I agree that it’s not something you would want to do all the time. But it’s a cool idea for special layouts.
By karooch on Aug 4, 2007
I made my twin daughter’s prom dresses… what a great idea as a background for their prom pics! I’m glad I stumbled onto your tips! Thanks, Pam
By Pam on Aug 15, 2007
Thanks Pam. I love doing this to create a truly unique and relevant to the event layout.
By karooch on Aug 15, 2007
If you don’t have a scanner, you could also snap a close-up photograph of the dress fabric with your digital camera. It wouldn’t even matter if it was a teeny bit out of focus. If you’re feeling particularly ambitious, you could even run an artsy photoshop filter on it, if you happen to have that program.
Wonderful idea, really creative.
By dvana on Mar 15, 2008
I like that idea dvana. Thanks a lot.
By karooch on Mar 15, 2008