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Posted by karooch on

June 4, 2008

Make a Transparent Scrapbook Layout

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Transparent scrapbook layouts have been a feature of the paper scrapbooking world for a year or so.

They’re a cool scrapbook idea. You make them by creating your scrapbook layout using a transparent plastic sheet as your background. Like the ones used for overhead projection slides.

And there are a few things you need to consider when you plan your layout design.

First you need to think about how it is going to look from the back. Remember with a transparent background, the back of all of your elements can be seen on the reverse.

One of the ways around this is to think about doing a reverse layout on the other side of the transparency. To make this successful, it’s probably a good idea to keep your layout design relatively simple with large shapes dominating, that are easy to work with when you design your reverse layout.

And make sure you exploit the transparent aspect by leaving plenty of space to see through.

Transparent layouts can look very cool and there’s a certain sense of satisfction in creating one, because they present challenges that are different from ‘normal’ scrapbook layouts.

But can digital scrapbookers create transparent layouts too?

Answer: Yes!!

The real value of the transparent technique is in it’s physical form, not it’s digital form.

It’s easy to just colour the background of your layout white and it looks like a transparent layout on the screen. But once you print it out, there’ll be nothing transparent about it.

The trick for digital scrapbookers is to save the layout file as a PNG rather than a JPEG. That way you can print it onto a transparent sheet and all the transparency will remain intact.

In fact you can even take it one step further and add a couple of ‘real’ elements to your printed digital transparent layout. Say a ribbon or a border of buttons. Brads are not so good as they look pretty ugly on the reverse side.

Once again digital and paper scrapbooking techniques come together to result in great scrapbooking.

I love Hybrid Scrapbooking.

And don’t forget, if you are interested in getting started in digital scrapbooking, there’s a bunch of information and videos to get you up and running over at Step by Step Digital Scrapbook – the site that’s especially for the beginner to digital scrapbooking.

Kirtsy with your Sk*rt

Well the big news in Women’s Social Media is that Sk*rt has changed its name to Kirtsy

The ladies over at Kirtsy (nee Sk*rt) were looking to give the site a refresh (must be a Spring thing). And one of the areas they decided to update was the name.

Now as any of you who have done this with your own blogs will know, changing the name of your site is a very tricky thing. The technical side is easy — just make a new banner and do a search and replace for all the instances of your old name on the site.

It’s the Internet links that are the tricky things. People have linked to your old site and they will often not think to change those links. So your new site gets starved of all that linky goodness. People who thought they knew where you were on the Net suddenly can’t find you and confusion reigns.

So Kirtsy have asked all their members to let people know about their changes so that they can try to prevent any confusion.

And by the way, if you decide to join and help them spread the word about their name change, you’ll be entered into a giant contest to win over $1000 worth of prizes. Not bad eh?

And what is Kirtsy you ask?

Well Kirtsy is like Digg but for Women.

It covers a huge spectrum of topics but it’s populated by women so the focus is obviously on stuff that is of greater interest to women. It’s actually a cool place for finding interesting things to read.

And like Digg, you can vote them up (or down) to get them to more people’s attention. But unlike Digg you don’t just blindly vote. Your vote is activated when you click on the link to the post from the Kirtsy site. This means that voters actually get to see your post, rather than just clicking on a vote button and never even visiting your site.

I like that. It’s more what voting should be about I think. And I like that you the reader, play a part in what becomes popular.

So if you haven’t checked out Kirtsy why not click over and have a look. And once you’re registered with them, please feel free to give some Kirtsy love to any of the Scraps of Mind articles that you like by clicking on the link at the bottom of the posts. I would certainly appreciate it.

Embrace the Space … on your Scrapbook Page

Yesterday I wrote about Simple Scrapbooking and I touched on the minimalist style of scrapbook layouts. Where you leave a large part of your layout canvas empty.

This is called ‘white space’ or ‘negative space’ and is a technique used in advertising and magazine layouts. Basically it means that by leaving plenty of space around your focal subject, the viewer’s eye is not confused and is drawn automatically to your point of focus. It also means that the layout design is more restful to the eye as it is not darting about all over the page, trying to take in all that there is to see.

When this style started to be taken up by the scrapbooking world, I admired the scrapbook layouts that these minimalist scrapbookers were creating but I found it really difficult to do it myself.

It’s amazing how strongly a habit becomes ingrained. I felt I just couldn’t leave so much empty space on my layouts. I had to just pop a cluster of flowers there, or maybe some ribbon and brads.

It took quite a while before I could come to terms with the Less is More approach. But I have to say, I’m really glad that I persisted. And now it’s become one of my favourite scrapbook ideas.

In this Forever scrapbook layout you can see what I mean by Less is More. The elements for this layout are from the Scrap Girls Refresh Kit. I love the effect created by a single photo with just a small collage of embellishments in a corner and a title. And I can now happily deal with leaving all the rest of the layout canvas empty. Because I think the overall effect is stylish and easy to look at.

What do you think of the Less is More approach?

Have you tried it? Maybe is isn’t for everyone, after all how boring would it be if we all adopted the same scrapbooking style? There’d be no fun in looking through other people’s galleries.

And if you’re thinking of giving it a go, here’s a little tip. If you choose your background paper with an interesting design in it, it’s easier to cope with leaving so much of the space empty.

What are your thoughts?

The Digital Scrapbooking Blog Carnival is Back!!!

Digital Scrapbook Blog Carnival

Back at the beginning of the year, the Digital Scrapbooking Blog Carnival pulled down its shutters and ground to a halt.

Hummie had made a humongous effort over the previous year to really inject some life into this. It’s a great opportunity to share useful and interesting digital scrapbooking links and info amongst the digital scrapbooking community. And it also can give a readership boost to up and coming blogs who write good stuff but don’t know how to let the world know that they’re out there.

Anyway, Hummie had born most of the load herself and was finding it difficult to get volunteers to host the carnivals on their blogs. So she finally said enough is enough. And the Carnival was over.

But the musical horses are back!

June is hosting a May edition of the Digital Scrapbooking Blog Carnival over at Cen’s Loft.

You really have to get over there and check it out. There are some great links to some terrific scrapbook ideas.

It’s really easy to host a carnival on your own blog and it can benefit you as well, with extra readers coming to your blog.

If you want to know how to do it, just read this article everything you need to know about blog carnivals and then stick your hand up and help support the carnival.

It’s all goodness for digital scrapbooking bloggers.

And if you can’t host one, why not submit some good links to the next edition? They can be from anyone’s blog…including your own.

Let’s give this new Digital Scrapbooking Carnival our support and help it to help us.

RSS Awareness Day

Several months ago I wrote an article talking about RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and what it is. And more importantly how it can be of value to you as a reader of many blogs and web sites by saving you lots of time.

Daily Blog Tips has declared 1 May 2008 as RSS Awareness Day and has urged the bloggosphere to write about it and help to spread the word on how handy it can be to pretty much everyone who regularly visits blogs and web sites to read their latest offerings.

This video by Commoncraft steps you through the whole RSS thing with great simplicity. And if like me, you find that a picture is indeed worth a thousand words, then a moving picture must be priceless.

If I look at my Feedburner stats, Google Feedfetcher is easily the most popular feed reader amongst Scraps of Mind Readers with email subscribers coming in a long way behind in second place, and Bloglines following along third. A long way behind these leaders comes a mixed bag of other feed readers and bookmarking sites.

My personal preference is for Bloglines and I totally rely on it to help me keep up with what’s going on at the sites I want to track. It is exactly like the guy in the video says, I only need to look at sites that have new content added since I was there last, and my feed reader does this filtering for me, saving me heaps of time that I can better use to write articles to publish on Scraps of Mind or maybe even to do some actual scrapbooking!

So if you’re someone who hasn’t embraced the benefits of using a feed reader and still uses the bookmarks or favorites tab in your browser, maybe now is the time to try getting the updates delivered straight to you.

Click on the orange button at the left, and sign up to one of the feed readers that are listed there (all free of course). Or if you want a more personal approach, you can subscribe to my email feed and have Scraps of Mind updates delivered straight into your email inbox.

And when you see what a handy thing it is, you can add all your favourite sites to your list. If you decide you no longer want to visit them, then just click the Unsubscribe button on your feed reader and they will disappear from your life (of course you wouldn’t want to do that to Scraps of Mind, would you?).

It’s as easy as that.

Using Word Art in Real Life

On the weekend my sister said to me ” I really love the Word Art in your Weekly Newsletter, but I don’t really know what to do with it. It looks great but I just don’t know how I can use it in ‘real life’ ”

So I thought I’d provide some examples of Word Art in action and also show you how to use it as greetings inside your cards.

And for those of you who don’t make your own cards, you can still do this and use it in cards with blank insides to make them a bit more spiffy and personal.

Word Art on Scrapbook Layouts

Word Art can be used in two ways on scrapbook layouts.

As your Scrapbook Layout Title.

Coming up with a knacky title for your scrapbook layouts can sometimes be a little challenging. Using Word Art as your title is a handy little scrapbook idea that can meet the challenge. If you’ve been collecting a library of Scraps of Mind Word Art you should have quite a few potential scrapbook titles in your stash by now.

You can see how June from Cen’s Loft has used the Host of Golden Daffoldils Word Art (from the Scraps of Mind Weekly Word Art Newsletter) quote on her layout here.

For Digital Scrapbookers it’s as simple as opening the Word Art file and dragging the Word Art onto your layout. You can then adjust the size and colour to suit your layout and you’re done.

For Paper Scrapbookers you can print out the Word Art onto paper, cut around the edge and chalk the paper in a complementary colour. Then matt it onto a piece of coordinating cardstock, cut it out, ink the edges and you have a cool scrapbook layout title element.

You can use Word Art as journaling on your scrapbook layouts too.

The Word Art that is based on quotes is particularly good for using this way. Just follow the same steps outlines above for a cool journaling alternative.

Word Art in Card Making

In the same way as for scrapbooking above, you can use your Scraps of Mind Word Art as part of your hand made card design. Just resize to suit the smaller card size and follow the same techniques as for scrapbooking.

Word Art is particularly handy to use as messages for the inside of Greeting Cards.

Here’s how you do it:

Open your Word Art files and drag them onto a New File that’s set up for 300 dpi and is A4 or 8.5 x 10 inches (whatever is the size that your printer takes).
1. If you don’t use a photo editing software program you can still do this in Word by selecting Import Picture.
Resize your Word Art by dragging it in by the corner handles until it’s the size that would fit your card.
I would suggest that you repeat this with two or three pieces of Word Art so you can print off a few at a time.
Print out your Word Art on good quality white printer paper. Allow the ink to dry thoroughly.
Now rub some coloured chalk gently over the surface of the paper And blot with another piece of paper to set the chalk.
You can then cut out the Word Art either cutting around the edge of the design or adding a few doodles or scrolls to frame it.
Fix it to the inside of your card either with glue or with brads and you’re done.

And if you have a blog, I’d love you to spread the word about the Scraps of Mind Word Art by proudly displaying this blinkie on your blog.

Just copy and paste the text in the box below into a Text Widget for your blog’s sidebar (or whatever the thingy is called on your particular blog platform) and help me share my Word Art with the World.

<a href="http://www.scrapsofmind.com/2007/11/27/free-word-art-newsletter/" target="_top">
<img src="http://www.scrapsofmind.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/free-word-art-blinkie.gif" border="0" alt="Free Word Art at Scraps of Mind - 3 pieces of original Word Art delivered to 
your inbox each week" hspace="0" width="125" height="125" align="left" /></a>

I hope this article has given you some ideas to help you get the most out of your Word Art.

Why Wordpress?

Let me state up front:

I have a bias towards Wordpress as a blogging platform!

I started blogging on Blogger but I soon moved over to Wordpress.com which is the free Wordpress blogging platform.

Reasons to move to Wordpress.com

Security.

Wordpress has a fabulous security tool call Akismet. Akismet does a mighty job of filtering out the spam comments so you don’t have to spend your time double checking all your post comments.

It’s a relief to know that I don’t need to worry about a comment sneaking through containing post links.

Security.

Because of Akismet there’s no need to ask commenters to complete those extremely irritating text capture boxes. You know, the ones with the semi-disguised text that you have to type in the box before your comment can be accepted.

With Wordpress, once you have filled out your initial comment details (name, email, blog address if you have one) and it is approved, then all subsequent comments are easy peasy. And you don’t need to go through that again.

Especially if you tick the box for your details to be remembered. If you have a preference for moderating each comment than you can set your preferences for this, but with the security blanket of Akismet, you don’t need to do this.

Did I mention Security?

Wordpress.com has duplicate hardware. This is known as full redundancy. What this means is that your blog is stored on seperate servers in two seperate locations.

So if anything happens to the main server, they can easily flip over to the secondary server and you’re back up and running.

Also you can do a simple back up of your data to your desktop by creating an export file, which takes approximately 3 minutes. So you can always have comfort that you are in control of your precious words and pictures.

Statistics.

Wordpress comes with a nifty statistics dashboard which I love. You get a graph tracking your visitors, pretty much as they hit, which is a whole lot better than the day’s delay that you get with most free tracking packages. You also get the source where your visitors came in from, and the links that were clicked on from your blog.

And you can see what your most popular posts have been and what search engine terms were used by traffic that came to your site via Google.

Automatic trackbacks.

The Wordpress dashboard also lets you know which blogs have linked to you in their posts.

I wrote an article a few months ago which explained about trackbacks.This process is fairly fiddly and most bloggers don’t do it. But with Wordpress (and I think Typepad also does it) you don’t need to worry about it. You can see who’s linking to you.

Note: this does not apply to blogroll links or to most links when you leave comments on other blogs.

Lots of themes to choose from.

Wordpress is probably the most popular blogging platform on the planet. And there are libraries of thousands of themes to choose from.

Not all of these are available for the Wordpress.com platform but they certainly number in the hundreds. Many of them have the option of customising the header banner so you can design your own. Just make sure that you pick one with this option.