Layout with ScrapGirls' Freebies

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We made this layout with ScrapGirls’ freebies, thus disproving the old saying ‘You never get anything for nothing!’

We are not yet digital scrapbookers (if you are, would you answer a question for us later, please?) Yet after just a few free newsletters there were enough products to make a successful digital scrapbook layout – and we were surprised how easy it was to do with just a basic knowledge of the program we used.

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Isabella had downloaded a few of the ScrapGirls freebies in the last week or so but hadn’t used them. So we got together and came up with this. We’re pleased with the result. What do you think?

Actually we’re not quite telling you the truth … most of the items were from the newsletter, but the ‘love’, ribbon, heart and two little fabric fragments are from the ‘Eternal Love Kit’ which is a free download from the Creating Keepsakes website (Feb08).

We made this digital page in Macromedia Fireworks MX 2004. The digital scrapbooking products used are:

• Frame: Melissa Renfro’s ScrapSimple Embellishment Templates: PhotoMasks-Downtown Special Frame
• Paper: Melissa Renfro’s ScrapSimple Paper Templates: Downtown Special
• Pearl Pin: CFR_BLP_WhitePearlPin – this was downloaded in April07 and we couldn’t find it today when we searched the ScrapGirls site
• Love word & embellishments: Eternal Love Kit -free from Creating Keepsakes website (Feb08)

You can sign up for the ScrapGirls newsletter to get your hands on some freebies. But you’ll get a lot more than that for there are great layouts, tips and instructions too.

Each of the items used here is one small part of a whole scrapbooking kit specially designed to work together. Being digital, these kits are not as expensive as paper ones, so if you are on a tight budget digital scrapbooking may be the way for you. As you learn to use your digital scrapbooking software you will discover how to manipulate the colors to better match the photographs you are working with.

It’s time to hit the ScrapGirls store for digital scrapbooking products you can download immediately – any time of day or night (which is great if you don’t live in the same time zone or continent as the supplier!)

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Here is a closer view of the layout.

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Scrapbooking Tips

1. Visual echoing is one technique used in scrapbooking. It means reflecting something that appears in the photo or the papers. Here, a pearl pin is used echoing the bride’s pearl necklace, earrings and hair pins.

2. Another technique is to substitute a letter within a word with an embellishment. So here’s what we did …

In this second version we used the heart from the Eternal Love Kit as the ‘o’ in ‘love’. To do this we removed the ‘o’ with the eraser tool and the loop at the top of the heart in the same way, then substituted the heart for the letter.

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Now, the question we referred to earlier …

When you select a file prior to opening it, a border surrounds it to highlight what you’ve chosen. With this layout, it had the effect of deepening the colors around the layout so it looked like it had a wider border. We rather liked the effect and wondered how to ‘thicken’ the border. Can anyone tell us how to do that?

Actually another question: we ended up with a whopping great file of 34mb … is this normal for digital layouts? Simply doing the math and adding the kb for each product comes no where near 34mb so how has it mounted up so much? If you know what we did wrong we’d appreciate hearing from you. And if you answer in the comments section then others can learn too. Thanks.

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If you are just starting scrapbooking, whether as paper scrapbookers or digital scrapbookers, hope some of this has been useful. We love to help when we can!

And as experienced scrapbookers you are bound to have many great tips you can share with us here at ScrapbookingGems – we’d love to hear from you.

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We were delighted to make such a pretty layout with ScrapGirl’s freebies. If you haven’t tried digital scrapbooking yet, sign up for the ScrapGirls Newsletter and make a great start. As a digi-scrapper you probably already know what great digital scrapbooking products they have – if not have a look at ScrapGirls store and broaden your experience.

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Tagged as: Creating Keepsakes, Digital Scrapbooking, Melissa Renfro, ScrapGirls, start scrapbooking, wedding