Summer Fun

Wow, two days in a row!  Today’s entry is for the June theme challenge hosted by Syrena.  The theme is Kid fun.  I think this layout fits the bill.  It’s of my oldest granddaughter and my youngest son playing in the wading pool on a sunny September day.  I used the Summer PinWheel Party kit, which was one of June's Design Club kits.

Lots and Lots of Birds!

The folks over at the MyMemories forum are running some great challenges with lots of prizes.  I decided to join in in hopes of getting my creativity back.

My first entry is for the layout challenge hosted by Elizabeth.  I decided to use the pictures I took during our vacation to Klamath Falls.  I used one of my photos for the background and changed the opactiy to 65%.  The other papers are from the Spring Fling collection by Touched By a Butterfly.

I created a second layout with the same photos, but a different paper pack.  This one is Sweet Autumn by Carena.  Both layouts are very simple and I’m not sure which one I like better.  I tried adding embellishments, but couldn’t find anything I really liked.

Dandelion Bouquet

I made this layout with this week’s freebie, A Little Mini 1, by Art For Scrapbooking.  I also added some Dandelion clip art images I got from Lettering Delights.  I used the recolor feature to change the color of the rick-rack and the ribbon.

Sand Angel

I created this fun layout with the Brown Paper Bag Combo by Polka Dot Pixels which is one of this week’s freebies.  I wanted to create a layout with some pictures of my oldest granddaughter at the beach and the colors from this paper pack worked very well. 

I recently upgraded to PaintShop Pro X6 and I’ve been playing with some of the cropping and background removal tools.  I was very surprised at how easy is to do and love the effect.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

I made this layout for a challenge at the Paper Wishes forum.  The criteria was to use tea bag folding on a layout.  Since nearly all of my scrapbooking layouts are digital, I didn’t think I would be able to join in on this challenge, but then I got an idea.  Why not make some tea bag tiles from one of the digital paper packs I bought from Paper Wishes?

To make the tiles, I created a photo box 1.75” square, then I dragged one of the background papers into the square and zoomed in on the upper left corner.  I copied the box 8 times and printed the tiles.  After cutting the tiles out, I inked the edges, then I used a simple kite fold to create a frame.  After assembling the frame, I scanned it, then used PaintShop Pro to remove the background and saved it as a .png.

I moved the finished frame into the same MyMemories embellishments folder where I keep the embellishments for this paper pack so I can use it again if I need to. 

Materials List:

• Soft Nostalgia digital paper pack (Paper Wishes)
• 23 Blooms & Leaves Cutting and SVG files (Paper Wishes)
• Lacy frame from Denim and Lace-(TNS)
• Pearls from Cuddle Season-(SCA)

Best Friends

I was digging through my pictures this morning looking for something to scrap when I came across the pictures I took at Grandparent’s day last year.  I chose the Classmates paper and embellishments because it has a nice heart frame.  Sorry about the blurred faces, I don’t know these girls’ parents to ask permission to post their pics.

The heart that comes with My Memories didn’t fit the frame, so I had to make one of my own using Inkscape.  You can download it here: http://handcraftedgreetings.com/downloads/Heart1.svg. Save it into the ..\My Memories Suite\Components\Shapes folder, restart My Memories and it will show up in the photo shapes.

After I added the ribbon across the top of the heart, I didn’t like the flower that was included, so I added a different one over the top of it. 

I’m still learning how to use shadowing and blurring to make different elements look like they stand out from the page further.  I’m getting a little better at it, but I still have a ways to go.  Barb at Albums To Remember has a great tutorial on adding shadows: http://albumstoremember.com/4/post/2012/05/shadows-from-good-to-great.html.  She also has a lot of other My Memories tutorials, so be sure to check out her site.

All I Want For Christmas

I made this page using the Lavender Snow Album by Becky’s Creations ,which is one of this week’s freebies from MyMemories.  It comes with six digital papers and eleven embellishments.  That’s plenty to make several pages.

I used the recolor feature to change the color of the ornaments, ribbon and packages.  I love that feature because it gives me so many more options.  I wanted each one of the bows on the ornaments to be different, so I used the search feature to find three suitable bows, then I recolored them to match the ornaments.  I could have also used the bows that come with MyMemories Suite 5 if I had wanted them to all be the same.

Importing Pages and Objects from Albums and Designer Templates in My Memories Suite 5

One of the really cool features in My Memories Suite is the ability to import individual pages from other albums and album templates.  With My Memories Suite 5, you can also import individual page objects.  The method for importing has changed a bit since version 4, and is a little hard to find, so I put together this quick tutorial to show you how to do it.

If you found this tutorial helpful and you’d like to see more like it, please leave a comment. 
Disclaimer: I’m not employed by StoryRock, Inc,, the makers of My Memories Suite, I just love playing with their software.

Chipmunk Cheeks

I created this layout using this week’s freebie from Touched By A Butterfly.

This kit will only be available for free until December 15, 2013 so be sure to grab it while it’s free.

Vintage Photo Frame

I made the frame for this picture in just a few minutes using the Old Secret designer pack by ButterflyDsign.  The little girl in the picture is my grandma Ila.  She was an incredible lady.

The Old Secret designer pack is free until November 3, 2013, so be sure to grab it while you can.  If you like vintage, be sure to check out the other designer packs from ButterflyDsign as well.

Pretty Painted Piggies

Here’s a layout I created in MyMemories Suite 4 using pictures of my sweet little granddaughter and the new Serendipity digital paper pack from Hot Off The Press. 

Isn’t she adorable?

I used the basic circle and scalloped circle shapes for the flowers and I used the photo shape tool to make round photos for the flower centers.   The font for the title is called Robot Teacher and the font for the journaling is CK Carefree from Creating Keepsakes.  Everything else except for the ribbons is from the Serendipity digital paper pack.

Attaching Text to a Shape in MyMemories Suite 4

The May challenge over at the MyMemories forum was to use the Attach to Shape feature on a layout.  I was almost too late to join in the fun, but I managed to find some time yesterday afternoon and put this page together:

I attached the journaling to a tree shape from the Treedle Dee svg collection from Lettering Delights.  The combo pack I used for the papers and embellishments is Outdoor Adventure by Albums2Remember.

After I posted the layout, someone asked a question about attaching text to shapes, so I wrote up this quick tutorial.  Of course, I wrote it in MyMemories Suite 4!

If you’d like to purchase MyMemories Suite 4, be sure to use coupon code STMMMS97442 to receive $10 off the purchase price plus a $10 gift certificate to use in the My Memories online store.

Another Page Done!

I was late joining in on the fun, but I did manage to win a $10 gift certificate for any of the packages by Jusme Digital, so of course, I had to spend it today while things were on sale.  I made this page with the Whenever You Remember kit.

The page layout is from another Speed Scrap challenge on the My Memories forum.

Cute as a Button

As a beginning digital scrapper, I find things like the speed scrap challenges very helpful.  I’m far from speedy, but having a recipe for a page is very useful.  Since yesterday was National Scrapbooking day, there were plenty of challenges to choose from.  I chose this one from the MyMemories forum, and here’s what I came up with.

The papers and embellishments all came stock with MyMemories Suite. The font for the page title is Accent Dot Writer.

Making Photo and Page Masks For My Memories

Today, I learned how to make masks to use in My Memories Suite.  It all started with a post on the Facebook group.  One of the members posted a page that had been created in another program using a page mask and wanted to know if she could do the same thing in My Memories and apply paper from a specific kit to the mask. I had been playing with creating .svg files to use in MM so, I thought I’d see if I could make a mask as well.

So, I broke out the crayons and scribbled a quick frame on a piece of white paper.

Then I scanned it and imported it into Make the Cut using the pixel trace tool.  I had to fiddle with the settings quite a bit, but I finally settled on using the luminescence setting with a threshold of about 225.  I then exported the mask as a .svg file and saved it into: C:\Program Files\My Memories Suite\Components\Shapes\Users.

I opened a new page in My Memories 4, added a photo, then used the shape tool to add the .svg mask over the top of the photo.  I filled the shape with blue paper and here’s the result:

Papers for this page and the next page are from My Kid bundle.

Next, I got to thinking about layering multiple masks, so I ran the frame through make the cut again, this time setting the threshold to about 190 (I can’t remember the exact number) and the resulting frame had a lot more transparency.  I layered that over the first frame, filled it in with a darker paper and ended up with this:

If you’re going to try a frame this complex, be aware that it takes a LOT of memory and your system will bog down.  So far, the only way I’ve been able to free up the memory again is to exit My Memories and start it back up.

Next, I thought I would try torn paper, so I tore The middle out of a piece of scrap paper and ran it through MTC’s pixel trace utility. Here’s how it turned out:

And another:

And finally, I decided to make a complete page mask.  One thing that’s really nice about using .svg files in My Memories is that you can shrink or stretch them to fit any page or picture and as long as you do the resizing before you add the digital paper, there’s no stretching or skewing of the paper.  Here’s a rectangular page I made from my square page mask.

The papers and embellishments on this page are from the Spring Fling designer pack.

I did not have the memory problems with this page that I had with the layered masks, which confirms my theory that the more nodes and vectors (jagged edges and holes) you have in a frame, the more memory it’s going to take up when you use it.

If you don’t want to shell out the money for Make the Cut, I found a free online svg conversion tool here:  http://image.online-convert.com/convert-to-svg.  It’s not as flexible as Make the Cut, but hey, it’s free and it worked very well on the images I tested.

If you’re interested in purchasing a copy of My Memories Suite 4, be sure to use coupon code STMMMS97442 to receive $10 off the purchase price plus a $10 gift certificate to use in the My Memories online store.

Come Run With Me Beside The Sea…

Here’s another page I made with MM4.  This one is for this week’s challenge on the MyMemories blog.  The challenge is to use papers and embellishments from the Hello February Add-on which is a free download.

Cute couple, don’t you think?

MyMemories Suite 4: Ripped Photos Feature

One of the new features in MyMemories Suite 4 is the ability to simulate a torn edge on photos and digital papers.  It’s super easy to do and I love the look!    There’s a great Tutorial on the MyMemories blog describing how to tear photos and pages.  After watching it, I was able to put together page 2 of my beach trip album in no time at all.