Making My Own

by Dotti

This is how it started –

After a recent spring break trip with my daughter and granddaughter, I began to process my photos and think about how to tell the story in my Project Life album, which is a new undertaking for me. In order to tell the story without using a dozen or so pages, I decided to use 4-photo mosaics. When I travel, I always take a lot of photos with my phone and even though they’re not square it’s so easy to make a mosaic that I knew that would be my tool. Thus, I pulled out the square design PL pages.

 One problem: I had no square PL ‘title’ cards. So, using the photography app, WordSwag, I created my own, which you see above. Well, as so often happens, a little seed began to germinate. While I have two sets of PL cards which I like, I sometimes find them wanting. Many of the beautiful stock PL sets are  geared toward families with young children at home, which is not my case. Those days are over. So, what to do?

I know that our ever creative Kelly makes her own PL cards with her beautiful calligraphy but my handwriting is not that great, even though I went to school when they actually taught penmanship. However I do have a library full of beautiful fonts in Photoshop and so I made my first ‘card’.

It’s pretty but kind of plain. I needed/wanted more pizzazz. That’s when I remembered my library full of Kim Klassen textures and the notion of making more of my own PL cards began to grow wings.

You see here examples of some of the cards I created last week for the Project Life pages I was working on, using a combination of textures and fonts/designs from WordSwag. You can use your own fonts and designs as well. It’s fun to create your own cards and the possibilities are endless but here are a few tips.

1. I created a blank file, 1800 x 1200 pixels (or vice versa for portrait orientation) and always use it as my template. I used this size in order to be able to print the cards with at least 330 dpi. If the file is too small, you won’t get a decent print job.

2. Print on card stock. When you’re creating what is essentially a photo with a texture and words, your printer is laying down a lot of ink and smearing  may will result on glossy stock. Card stock is safer and when it’s in your PL sleeve, it looks fine. I actually use blank 4x6 cards, no trimming necessary.

3. Don’t be afraid to lower the opacity of the texture you’re using to achieve the look you want. Remember, this is your creation.

4. An easy peasy way to make a card is with the WordSwag app which has a terrific library of backgrounds. After saving it, I cropped it to the 6x4 size that I wanted and saved it in Dropbox. It took less than five minutes.

So there you are. That’s my idea for the day. If you’re a Project Life person or a scrapbooker, you might find some of these ideas useful. And because you’re all so much more creative than I am, I have no doubt that you’re going to come up with some wonderful ideas. Do share them with us!