Digital to Physical

I wanted to talk to you a little bit about how I make my project life layouts today. When I became a designer of project life, I stopped buying physical Items, well sorta. When I started designing my own cards, the possibilities became endless to me. I could really make any card that I needed for my layouts. This year has been really easy for me in the project life world. I have to give credit to the girls of little paper projects, for really pushing me when it came to taking photos. It really does matter a lot to have these photograph albums around. Some go all out, some are super minimal. Me, eh, I'm half way in between. I love simple layouts, with color. I definitely have a passion for minimal but colorful layouts. I guess my motto is to let the pictures tell a story. That's what PL is all about right?

So, lately I have really been into my #simplestories album. I picked out the chipboard album with the lemon colored linen stem on it for my spring to summer album this year. And I'm in love it! I feel the pockets in the pocket pages are sized better, not to mention the same size. I'm a bit of a perfectionist, and no offense Becky Higgins products, which i love, but the pockets in the simple stories albums are the same size from pocket to pocket. Which make sizing my cards a bit easy.

So, down to the nitty gritty, the fun stuff :) I love doing my layouts digital first. My process to to grab any elements, wood veneers, acrylic pieces, or flairs that I may want to use for the project. I pull papers from my collections of favorite kits from other designers, and my own. I don't use Photoshop for these simple crop and resize. I use a FREE program called Paint.Net. It was written by a maker of Photoshop, and it free to use for anyone to download.

Important: make sure you size your print paper. In this case I have sized mine to 300ppi 8.50x11.00 in. This will ensure that you will get a crisp print from your printer. Also, if you don't know all Digital Project life, or Digital Scrapbooking kits come in 300ppi.

I resized and cropped all these cards and papers to 2.05x2.05in the pockets are 2x2 but I like a tight uniform fit in my pockets to the are aligned perfectly. ha ha internationalist. :)

Once you import and resize all your photos and papers, its time to make some elements that you might want to you and don't have. Above I made a arrow label, and record label from the Teal Lime Press Kit "Document Nerd", and a Easter 2016 flair round.

Important: you can place a small thin boarder around each photo and paper to make it easier to cut once printed. I align all of mine into a 6x8ish grid together so it makes for quick cutting later.

I place all of my elements at the bottom of the page and print! That's it! Cut your cards and photos out, and start playing around with all of your elements. I use a #marthastewart cutting mat to align my cards, photos, and elements. This way you can play around with your layout, before you make it permanent.

I print all of my cards and Photos out in Cannon Matte Photo Paper. The cards and photos have a crisp and true color value, and the paper is thick.

This is my final layout! from digital to physical. :) I hope this has helped everyone who has asked about how I do my layouts. If you have any questions email me :)