I am so excited to have Heather join us in THE DIGI FILES this month!!  The first time I used Heather’s products was on an album I created for my dad for Father’s Day a few years ago.  I have since learned that Heather can really rock the boy kits (as well as hybrid projects)!

Here’s a closer look at Heather’s contribution to The Files this month:

Our team really had fun working with this kit:

Layout by Karen, additional supplies: Fizzy Pop Designs template; Lauren Reid Scritchy Scratches; Natalie Braxton string; Eva Marina alpha

Layout by Katie, additional supplies: template by Janet Phillips, Fill-a-bet alpha by me, Pea Jiawei font

Layout by Kellie, additional supplies: Template by ChrissyW; Date Element by Bella Gypsy; Photo Action by My4Hens

Layout by Jacki

Layout by NeeNee, additional supplies: Alpha:  All In A Day’s Work by Heather Roselli and Libby Wiefenbach and Font:  Pea Squeaker

And a hybrid project by Leigh:

Paint tin from Archivers.

Heather Roselli

Nashville, TN

Married for 11 years with 3 boys – 8 years old and identical twins 5 years old

Store

Blog

Supplies: Kit – Party On by Heather Roselli
Alpha (6) – Party On: Build a Cupcake by Heather Roselli
Template – Sketchers Set 2 by Julie Billingsley

Supplies:  Kit – Pet Shop: Crazy Cats by Heather Roselli
Template – Scrap with Laura by Darcy Baldwin
Font – DJB Messie Amanda by Darcy Baldwin

We sometimes try to create for others…and it often times just doesn’t work (in layouts and in kits). I always tell my team to scrap what they want to in the style that they love…because the layouts they love will almost always be their greatest work. I truly believe this. Do what you love, love what you do…and your family will love you and your efforts to preserve your family’s memories.

I began scrapbooking in January 2002 after my first child was born in order to share his new life with my Mom and Dad since they lived so far away. I soon became frustrated with having pictures the wrong size for what I wanted to do. I started laying out my page spreads on the computer so I could crop the photos the way I wanted to before ordering my digital prints. Somehow while doing that I stumbled across digital scrapbooking and realized that was what I had been doing, except I was then translating my digital layouts to paper ones. I put up all my paper supplies and immediately started creating digital pages!

Within just a few weeks I started designing my own kits based on the colors and patterns in my children’s clothes, not with the intent to sell them, but just to use for myself. Soon I had 10 kits on my hard drive! Turned out that I loved designing! I was incredibly lucky to be involved with The Digi Chick forums at that time and was accepted as a designer there in the Fall of 2005. In July of 2007 I moved to my dream gig at Sweet Shoppe Designs and absolutely love it there! What a wonderful group of designers, staff members and community members we have there!

When I’m not designing (is there a time when I’m not??), I spend time with my three sons (8 years old and 5 year-old twins) and husband of over 11 years in Nashville, TN. My oldest is in 2^nd grade and the twins attend preschool two days a week. When not in school we attend Cub Scout meetings, swimming lessons, go to the zoo, play at the park, visit my in-laws just up the street, take geo-caching hikes, etc.

My kids, their clothing and activities, my team’s ideas, the seasons, different websites…everything! hehe

I work on a 17” HP Pavilion Entertainment PC laptop running the new Windows 7 that is just 5 or so months old. It has 8GB of RAM and handles all my programs really well. What I hate is the screen…it is the worst I’ve ever had. It is darker/more saturated at the top and gets lighter toward the bottom. I swear I don’t what my colors really look like anymore!!! hehe

I use Adobe Photoshop CS3 (I need to upgrade!) and Adobe Illustrator CS3. I also use several filter/texture plug-ins on occasion.

I have just a Nikon Coolpix S10 point and shoot, but my dh has a professional Cannon 1DS that is on “permanent borrow” from a friend of his that loves photography and buys every new camera that comes out! My husband’s photos are the ones I really love scrapping these days.

I have a wireless Wacom tablet that I don’t use near as much as I should! Turns out I draw better with a trackpad than a pen I guess! hehe

Hmmm…impossible to answer…each new kit is my new favorite most of the time…right now I’d have to say that my Pet Shop series is my favorite. It has such bright colors and cute graphics…I’ve scrapped several pages with it (which is very unusual for me these days).

For 2009 by best selling kit was What’s Your Story? with Water Play Days a very close second.

Here are some of my favorite products from Hether’s shoppe:

Here’s a little inspiration using Heather’s products:

Layout by Katie, supplies: Good Night by Heather Roselli
Template by Janet Phillips (modified)
Traveling Typewriter font

Layout by Kellie, supplies:  Whatever Floats Your Boat by Heather, White Almond Alpha by Amy Hutchinson; White Stitching No. 2 by Anna Aspnes

Go have a look in Heather’s store and come back and tell her what you like, we will randomly select a winner from those comments to win $10 in product from their store!  (Comments must be posted before midnight EST March 11, 2010 and must include a product name to qualify)!

As a THANK YOU to our readers, Heather has this coupon for us to use in her store:

I would like to say a BIG THANK YOU to Heather for joining us this month in THE DIGI FILES and sharing her many talents with us!!

Flickr

First, we are soooo excited about our new Flickr group!!  I had not ever done anything with Flickr when Katie approached me about creating a group.  She did a post about how to register, join, and add some layouts to our group over the weekend.  The group is open to any products, any store, and any designer.  Just keep the layouts family friendly!

I have had so much fun looking at layouts from our readers!  We have a seriously talented group of scrappers checking in with us everyday!!  I am working on some ways to share some of the layouts posted in that group!

We have threaded comments and Gravatars

From the very beginning of this blog, we have been answering your questions left in comments via email.  Sometimes though, it is helpful for everyone to have that information!  So, now we can just post a reply to your comment like Katie did in one of the comments from her Flickr post:

We also can view Gravatars now in the comments.  Signing up for a Gravatar is very easy (enter your email, verify, set up a password, upload, select, go) and then your avatar will be available across any blog or site where Gravatars are enabled.

New Team Inspiration Category

One of the things our readers said they wanted in the survey we did last fall was a way to view our team layouts from THE DIGI FILES in one place that was easy to find!  Well, I think we have made this one pretty easy!  Just click on that Team Inspiration category and it will take you to that part of the site.  You will see in the upper right corner of that page a button to subscribe to the RSS feed this category!  Now, whenever we update this category with new layouts,  it will come right to your reader or inbox too!

Note: I have added all of the past contributors for 2010 to our Team Inspiration category.  I had a minor glitch when posting them though, so they are not  necessarily in chronological order, but will be going forward.

New Newsletter

Did you see our last newsletter?  The email was really not anything special…just some text and a link to the actual newsletter on the site.  I received so much positive feedback about it though that we will be following that format  from now on.  Not only that, but now you can subscribe to our newsletters via RSS feed as well!!  So, now, you can get them in your inbox via the ‘old fashioned’ email registration form OR you can subscribe to the RSS feed and get them in your reader!  Whatever works for you, works for us!  You can check out a sample from a couple of weeks ago, as well as subscribe to the feed, by going to the Newsletter section of the site.

Go Ahead!  Search!

We upgraded our search feature on the site, so hopefully, you will be able to find what you are looking for more quickly!  If you type something in and don’t find it, check your spelling.  You may also need to broaden the topic a little more to get better results.

New Diggs

Did you see THE DIGI FILES’ new digs?  We launched TDF15 with new packaging…sometimes a fresh outfit is nice!

I think that’s all of the new features for now, but we always have something fun and exciting in the works behind the scenes!  We are also always open to suggestions and feedback from our readers, customers, and designers…this is YOUR HOME too!!

Yesterday, in Wendy’s contributor feature, I told you that she would be here today with a tutorial on installing and using her actions that are included in THE DIGI FILES this month.  This was something I requested from her, because I know actions can be intimidating at first, but once you give them a try, you will quickly become addicted.

If you purchased this month’s Digi Files, you may have noticed some of my actions in your download. For some of you, this may be the first time you’ve ever downloaded an action. Don’t let it intimidate you! We’re going to walk through one of the actions all the way from installing them to using them.

When you unzip your download, you will find several folders organized according to the version of Photoshop or Elements you use. Each folder contains all the files you need to install and run the actions. Let’s take a look at each version and go over how to install. (NOTE: Included with your download is a PDF file that goes over all the installation instructions for each version.)

PHOTOSHOP CS+

There are several ways to install actions in Photoshop. The easiest, however, is to double-click on the ATN file. (I recommend Photoshop be running before you do this.) The actions will be automatically loaded into your Action Palette. To view them, click WINDOW>ACTIONS and scroll to the bottom of the list where your new actions will appear. If the Action Set is collapsed, simply click the arrow to the left of the palette to expand the Set and view all the actions included.

To launch the action:

1. Cick on the action name (ie. WZ_ScrapIt10).

2. Press the play button on the bottom of the palette (the triangle).

PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS (PSE)

Installing actions in Elements is much more difficult, but once you get the hang of it for your version of PSE, you’ll be a pro! The tricky part is matching up your version of PSE with your operating system. In every version of PSE, you will install the action (ATN) and thumbnail (PSD or PNG). In newer versions of PSE (6-8), you can also install a file for placing the actions in categories (XML). Make a note of the files you’ll need from the list below and have them ready to copy into the correct locations.

PSE 4: ATN & PSD thumbnail (one for each action in the set)

PSE 5: ATN & thumbs.PSD thumbnail (one ATN for each action, only one thumbnail total)

PSE 6: ATN, PNG thumbnail, XML (one for each action in the set)

PSE 7 & 8: Classic Mode-ATN, PNG thumbnail, XML (one for each action in the set); Action Player-ATN (only)

1. Before you can install your actions, you must be sure to SHOW HIDDEN FILES AND FOLDERS. Actions should be installed using the Admin Account.

2. Quit Photoshop Elements.

3. Copy your ATN and thumbnails into the Photo Effects folder. (See the PDF tutorial for the exact location of this folder for your version of PSE and your operating system.

4. If you have PSE 6 or 7, you need to copy your XML file into the Metadata>Layer Styles folder.

5. Now that the files are in place, you need to delete your cache files to force Elements to rebuild the thumbnails. Delete the thumbdatabase.db3 file and the mediadatabase.db3 file. These will be recreated when PSE is started the next time. (To locate your cache files, see the PDF tutorial.)

6. Launch Elements. Click on your Effects Palette and you’ll see the following:

To launch the action:

1. Create a new document in any size.

2. Click on the Photo Effects button.

3. Select the Action Category name from the drop down menu (ie. WZ_ScrapIt).

4. Cick on the action thumbnail (ie. WZ_ScrapIt10). TIP: Hovering your mouse over the thumbnail will show the full action name.

5. Press the APPLY button on the bottom of the palette.

Now that we have loaded our actions and now how to play them, let’s walk through using one of them. We’ll we working with Scrap It {10} and using One Little Bird’s kit from The Digi Files #15. Are you ready? Let’s go!

Using Scrap It {10}

First, let’s talk a smidge about what Scrap It is going to do. Scrap It is a new way of using templates. Basically, the action will lead you through opening and placing each paper, element and photo. You can control the size, placement and shadows as you go. When we are done, we will have a layout based on the layout below.

supplies for layout in preview by ZigZagScrap (collab)

1. Prepare your files. Each Scrap It action comes with a tutorial that has a list of digi supplies you will need. Feel free to make minor substitutions. Scrap It 10 needs:

1 Background paper

1 Paper for upper matte

1 Paper for journaling

1 Paper or bottom matte

1 Frame

1 Element (bottom right of frame)

1 Hanging tag

1 Fastener

1 Element (next to tag)

1 Small Element (next to frame)

Title & Journaling

2. Launch the action. (PSE users be sure to have a blank file open first.) You will see several messages introduction the action. Press CONTINUE.

3. Eventually, you will be asked to select a background paper. Browse to the paper, select it and click OPEN. I choose a green paper. The action opened it, copied and pasted into my new file. (I realized at this point I meant to choose the plum paper. Instead of starting over, I will continue on, and just swap the paper out at the end.)

4. On the next screen, I’m asked for a second paper for the matte. Select one and watch as it’s added to your layout.

5. Next the action asks you to select a light colored paper to go behind the journaling.

6. On the next screen, you will be prompted to add your drop shadow. Adjust the settings to your liking and press OK.

7. Finally, you will be asked for a pattern paper for the bottom matte. Then, adjust the shadow settings again.

8. You will be asked for to select a frame and to add a drop shadow. Then, the action will move your frame. At this point, you can resize it by clicking the corner anchors, or reposition by clicking and dragging. When you are done, press ENTER (or in PSE, click the Green Check mark).

9. Next comes the photo. Select your photo, add the shadow when prompted, then position it under your frame. It’s okay if it sticks out. We’ll crop it later.

10. You will now be asked to crop your image under the frame by contracting the selection. Enter a number large enough to inset from your chosen frame but small enough that it doesn’t contract beyond the frame border. Usually 10-30 pixels works well.

11. Next we’ll start adding elements. Follow the instruction along, selecting the elements, adding shadows and positioning when prompted.

12. After you’ve placed the rest of the elements, the action will add text for the title. Position it. You can edit it when you are done.

13. The action now adds text for the journaling. Finally, you will see a message letting you know the action is complete. Press CONTINUE (PSE users should not press CANCEL or it will cancel the entire action and delete the file.)

14. Your layout is now complete. Edit your journaling and title. Adjust elements, or add additional ones. Or, swap some out if you change your mind. I decided to remove the Title word and use the word art included in the kit. And, I swapped my green background paper out for the plum one. I even moved my elements around a bit. I still might go back to this one and add some more finishing touches.

15. Save your file and you are done!

Actions can help save time and these Scrap It actions are great for creating quick layouts in just 10-15 minutes. If you have any questions, just post a comment and I’ll be back to help! I hope you enjoy these Scrap It actions! I’d love to see the layouts you create with them, so feel free to leave a comment with a link.

P.S. It’s Steph and I just wanted to let you know that our random winner for $10 in product from Studio Wendy is Sandy who said, “Wendy’s actions are amazing! There is only one set for PSE that I don’t have yet, and that is the Scrap It Collection 2. I will be adding that to my collection soon. If you haven’t tried any of her products, please take advantage of the coupon and give them a try. You won’t be disappointed! Her Cluster It and Scrap It sets are real timesavers. Her photo action sets are awesome. The photo book actions and templates are so helpful when you want to print your pages. {Can you tell that I am a huge fan?!!! ;~)} Thanks for the coupon, Wendy!”

I am so excited to welcome Wendy of Studio Wendy as a contributor to THE DIGI FILES this month!  You might remember her post she did not too long ago about printing an album/photobook. Wendy is not only knowledgeable and talented in all things printed, but in all things action related too!!  Here’s a closer look at her contributions to The Files this month:

These actions are based on layouts of mine (Steph) and they really do the work for you!  There are instructions included for installing and running the actions and they work in PSCS2-4 and PSE5-7.  I use CS and I literally dragged and dropped the actions into PS and then click play.  The action will run and then stop with instructions on what items you will be selecting next!  I really LOVE them!  I was able to create a layout that followed the action exactly in under 3 minutes.  I created another layout and changed and tweaked things, in under 10 minutes.  Not bad!

Wendy will be posting a tutorial tomorrow for us as well!

Here is what our team created using Wendy’s actions:

Layout by Karen, additional supplies: Jennifer Barrette Love Blooms kit; Laura Bratcher Once Fabulous frame; Fontologie Printing Primer font.

Layout by Karen, additional supplies: Cathy Zielske word art; Lauren Reid paper strip and staples.

Layout by Katie, additional supplies: Scrapbook Graphics Impressions of Friendship kit, font is Pea Jiawei.

Layout by Katie, additional supplies: Scrapbook Graphics Impressions of Mother Earth

Layout by Kellie, additional supplies: Paradise Found by One Little Bird (photos and placement altered after action completed).

A graphic designer for the printing industry by trade, I was creating rudimentary “digital” scrapbooks using inexpensive scrapbooking software and Photoshop in the mid 1990s. I even designed my first brag book using Quark Xpress and Photoshop a full year before I discovered the digital scrapbooking world in June of 2006. A whole new world of artistic expression was opened up to me and I was immediately taken with digiscrapping. I began designing templates based on my layouts and began selling my designs in early 2007.

In the course of my personal scrapping, I decided to try printing my layouts in a photo book. I found the resources a bit confusing and in the creation of my first books, I developed a set of tools including actions and templates to help make the process painless. Shortly thereafter, I began making those available to my customers as well. Since then, I’ve developed countless tools and time saving actions for both scrappers and designers. These tools help you get back to what you love to do, creating!

When I’m not at my computer scrapping or designing, I can be found enjoying a good book, movie or TV show, or spending time with my precious family.

WENDY’S STORE

I’m currently working on a digital art journal, inspired by Studio Tangie’s Art Journal Caravan. I’m well behind the scheduled itineraries, but you can view the work in progress in my gallery.

This is my favorite new tip! It’s called “scrubbing” and it has nothing at all to do with cleaning the house. In Photoshop and Elements, you can adjust most of the sliders by clicking on the text next to the drop down menu and dragging left or right. For example, adjust your opacity on the layers palette by clicking on the word “opacity” and drag left or right. So, start scrubbing!

My very first experience with digital scrapbooking was with a cheap little scrapbooking program that was clip art based. Although I did a few pages with it, I never did anything with them. And, they were not much better than what I could do paper-wise. When my son was born, I attempted paper scrapbooking. I got all of 3 pages done in a year and had to call my sister in to help finish the album, which was still, um, well, pretty bad! After that, I created my first digital brag book using Quark Xpress and Photoshop! It was a big step ahead from anything else I had done, but was very basic, using just solid blocks of color and photos. It wasn’t long after, that I discovered digital scrapbooking as we know it today. I was instantly hooked! I had finally found a way to preserve my memories. I was not limited by my lack of paper scrapping talent. I could use my 15 years of experience in graphic design and Photoshop to create things that I was proud of.

It wasn’t long before I started giving away templates based on my layouts, which led to my first design spot in early 2007. As I worked on my templates, I began to see the need to save time doing repetitive tasks, first with resizing my layouts for photobooks, and then for designing, and scrapping and anything related to both. And, so began my transformation from a template and kit designer to an action and tool designer. As passionate as I was about digital scrapbooking, I became even more passionate about both photobooks and saving time! Three years later, my shop at Scrapbookgraphics is stocked full of actions, templates and tools that help me (and you) be more productive, and back to doing what we love, creating!

Sometimes, my inspriation comes from an “a-ha” moment when I realize that I can automate that certain thing I’ve been doing over and over again. Other times, it comes from customers or fellow designers who wish for something specific to make their lives easier. Other times, I get an idea in my head that I need to work and massage and turn over until I can figure it out. I love a good challenge or puzzle, and love it when I get something to work perfectly. In my scrapping, I am equally inspired by my photos and memories as I am by the kits that I work with. Sometimes I see a kit and know exactly what I want to create. Other times, I start with a photo and build around it until it takes on a life of it’s own. I love that my job and hobby cross paths and allow me to express my creativity and my analytical side.

15″ MacBook Pro, 2.25 ghz, 4gb ram

Programs:  PSCS3, Illustrator CS3, PSE 6 and 8 for testing

Camera:  Canon T1i, a huge splurge this past year and it’s well worth the money compared to my old point and shoot.

Other tools:  I have an old Wacom Graphire 4 tablet, and a really bad scanner LOL

That’s a really hard question! My Trim It action and Shadows & Borders come to mind because I use them every day. Then, there are my photobook toolkits which I use to resize my layouts for printing. Those are huge times savers. But, going through my shop, I have to say I really love my Lift It Templates: The Collection. These are templates based off of the amazing pages designed by the Studio Crew. The help you create stunning pages in a short amount of time.

I had to look this up, but by far it is ACTION: Cut & Cluster.

Here are a few of my favorite products of Wendy’s:

Here’s some great inspiration created with Wendy’s products (images without credits are linked):

Layout by Steph, supplies: Scrap It 5 (included in collection 2), Papers and Elements from FireFly Lane by Amanda Heimann and Ziggle Scraps, “forever” signature series alpha 2 by Taylor Made, font Fontologie Printing Primer. Photo by Lisa Hysteck

Go have a look in Wendy’s Studio and come back and tell her what you like, we will randomly select a winner from those comments to win $10 in product from their store!  (Comments must be posted before midnight EST and must include a product name to qualify)!

As a THANK YOU, Wendy has a couple of things for us!!!

First is a coupon:

In addition to the contest WE are running here at TDD, Wendy has these two contests going on at Scrapbook Graphics:

I would like to thank Wendy for being here with us this month and sharing her knowledge and talents with us!!

Bit O’Green Popcorn at Skip To My Lou:

Muffin Tin Mom has some really fun lunch ideas:

Pot of Gold at Family Fun:

A sack of Gold from Make and Takes:

Rainbow Cookies at Make and Takes

Crafty Crow has a lot of St. Patrick’s Day craft projects including this cute rainbow:

Skip To My Lou has several ideas for snacks and crafts.  She also has a couple of posts where readers could contribute their own links to crafts and recipes here and here.

I know that I got lots of ideas on some fun things to do with my family, while looking at these sites and now, I have time to plan for it too.

Be sure to check back later in the week when Skip To My Lou and I will have some digital/hybrid St. Patrick’s Day goodies for you!

I (Katie) will admit that I’m a total flickr fanatic. I love it. A LOT!  I wrote an article last year on 20 Reasons Why You Should Be On Flickr if you are interested in learning more about all the ins and outs of what the site has to offer. Today, I want to show you how to quickly get started on flickr, and introduce an exciting new group on flickr called Digital Scrapbook Inspirations. This is a flickr community group and gallery for our fabulous Daily Digi readers and we can’t wait to see what YOU have to share with us!

If you want to join in the fun, you will need to have a flickr account and a basic understanding of how flickr works. Here are some quick tips to get you started:

FIVE FAST FLICKR TIPS

1. Yahoo owns flickr, so you will need a Yahoo account ID to create a flickr account. Chances are if you have been online for awhile, you might already have created one, but if not you will be prompted to do so when you sign up for flickr. Just follow the instructions on the home page at http://www.flickr.com/ to create your account. You will automatically be signed up for a Yahoo email account, but you don’t have to use it for anything if you don’t want to. I just changed the settings in my Yahoo account to have all mail sent to my existing email account. I never log in to my Yahoo email at all. Of course, you can use the email account if you need one.
2. Take the official flickr tour so you get a feel for what the site is all about. You will want to take a few minutes and set up your profile with a picture and a few details. You will want to decide if you want a free account or a pro account (or you can always upgrade to pro later). I would suggest a pro account because then you will have access to the full resolution files of all your images without any limits. Why is this important? Well, it’s like having a FULL online backup of all your photos and layouts at FULL resolution. I don’t know of any other site that offers that for only $24.95 a year! How do you access the full resolution files? It’s easy! . All you have to do is go to the photo on flickr and choose “all sizes” then select “download original size” and it is like you pulled the photo off of your hard drive or a cd. Perfect for when you are away from home or if you don’t want to carry thousands of photos with you at all times. I find it a lot easier to find one of my photos on flickr, then searching through years of archived photo files.
3. Customize your account and privacy settings to meet your needs. With each and every upload, you can control who sees your images. You can keep them all private, available only to selected family and friends, or share them with the entire flickr universe! You also can control the copyright allowed on your images. You can also control what size of image others can download from your photostream. All of this can be edited at anytime by going to your account settings page.
4. Make contacts and/or join groups if you want to connect with others on flickr. You can be as involved as you want to. You can mark someone as a contact and they may or may not return the favor, there is no rule for reciprocation. I would suggest having a least a few contacts so your home page is a little more fun. Your contacts photos will automatically show up on your home page. It’s also great to add family and/or friends who will want copies of your photos to your contact list. I used to have to burn several discs a year to share photos with my family, now they can just grab the ones they want off of my flickr photostream. Better for the environment and a lot less work for me!
5. Upload photos and/or layouts to your flickr photostream. It’s no fun if you don’t use it!

HOW TO UPLOAD PHOTOS AND LAYOUTS TO FLICKR

There are uploading tools you can use, or you can even upload by email, but I like to just use the standard uploader found on the flickr homepage.

Just go to the file that contains the images you want to upload. To select multiple images at once, hold down the shift key as you click on each one. There is no need to resize images before uploading. In fact, you want to upload the full size resolution so you can access them from your own account as an online backup.

You can set the privacy for the photos you are uploading. I chose “public”. I plan to share the layouts with  Digital Scrapbooking Inspiration group. You actually can add private photos to a group – If you share a photo that you marked as private with a group you are a member of, it’s as if other group members have full access to that photo. They can add comments, notes, and tags. The photo isn’t displayed for people who aren’t members of the group.

The next screen will take you to an area where you can edit tags, titles, and descriptions for each image. This is the place where you will want to add layout credits or details about the photo. If all the images being uploaded are going to the same set (like an album), you can designate that here. These won’t be since I’m uploading a photo and 2 layouts that are not related. You can also use the organizer to do these same steps at any time, and the organizer tool is a great way to move images around to different sets. Tagging is a great way to organize your photos so you can find something quickly by using the search box. I can find a photo in seconds on flickr because of the tags I have added while uploading.

Once your image is uploaded it will have it’s own page on flickr where you access several options. The top menu is where you can find the full size resolution by clicking “all sizes”. This is also the place where you can send an image to a group. Once you have joined a group, just select the drop down menu of “send to group” and pick where you want to send it. It’s that easy! You can also do this from the organizer screen as well.

Now that I have added my layouts to the Digital Scrapbooking Inspiration pool, all members of that group can see my pages and I can see theirs. This is fun because you can comment on each other’s pages (if you want to – not a requirement). I love it because you can mark your favorites and have your very own inspiration file!  Here’s one of Steph’s layouts that I just love:

I just click on “add to faves” and it’s saved in my favorites file. You can find your favorites by using the top drop down menu under “YOU”

Here are a few of my recent favorites:

…

Now that’s just a small sampling of  the fun you can have on flickr! I get most of my online inspiration from flickr these days and I love having my pictures stored safely online in case anything ever happened to my physical backups. I hope you will join us in our new Digital Scrapbooking Inspiration group. We would love to be inspired by YOU!

I made the above layout in 2006 when my daughter and I were both eleven years from being twenty years old.  She was on one side of twenty and I was on the other.  (This was one of the layouts I created when I was going through my, “I-must-create-everything-on-the-layout-from-scratch-for-it-to-truly-be-mine-phase, so I made all those papers and elements). Here’s what the journaling reads:

“Eleven years from being twenty, I am a mom of two great kids.  I have been a wife for eleven years.  I have learned that my parents were always right!  I still enjoy scrapbooking and traveling, just like I did back then.  I have learned a lot and survived much.  I am spiritual and faithful.  I like who I am!  During those eleven years, I graduated from college, just like I had planned.  Not everything has gone as I had decided it would, but I have learned that is life; it’s full of surprises and I can roll with it just fine!

Eleven years from being twenty, you are my sweet, innocent girl, everything is black and white to you.  You have lots of dreams about what you will do when you grow up.  You wrote in a report at school that the perosn you admire the most is your mom…ME!  Wow!!!  You are a very good friend to everyone.  You are very responsible and a big help!  You love to read and would rather do that than almost anything.  You love to play soccer and scored a goal this year.  You also love to play basketball.  You really want to learn to play the harp.  You are my girl and I love you!”

Supplies: Note To Self by Zoe Pearn, fonts are Weathered and Printing Primer by Fontologie (me)

I created this layout to document life changing events that occurred to both my Grandma and I when we were 31.  Journaling reads:

“You were 31 years old in 1941. You had three children and one on the way. Your husband had kidney disease, or what, in your journals you call, “acute nephritis”. On April 5, 1941, you gave birth to a baby boy, my uncle. You were at a hospital several  hours away from your husband who lay in bed, too sick to travel. At that time, there was not much they could do for him. On April 18, 1941 your husband passed away and left you alone, a widow with three children and a brand new baby.

I have known this story about you my whole life. I knew it was hard for you and I knew you were heart broken to lose your husband that you loved so much.

When I was 31, my husband was diagnosed with nephritis…or advanced kidney failure. I had two children at the time and five months after his diagnosis, we found out we were expecting our third.  It was so hard and he was really, really sick.  I couldn’t help but think of you and how similar our situations were.

Six months after diagnosis, my husband started dialysis, an option not available in 1941 and I know it saved his life. Seven months after diagnosis, he received a new kidney from his younger brother. We were able to bring our new baby home from the hospital together. He is now very healthy.

Such similar stories…yet such different endings.”

(You can read more information on this in the post script below).

During that time in my life, I found a lot of comfort and strength in what my Grandma had been through before me.

I asked our team to share with us some of their layouts where they were able to relate to their relatives and it has been fun to see the results!

Layout by Ana, layout linked to supplies.

“This is a page about my mom, when she was pregnant with me. In the journaling I write about her age, which was the same as mine when I was pregnant with my first child. I journal about her life and all the things that happened and that she probably didn’t have a clue at the time of the pictures. As I am also pregnant (at the time I did the layout) I wonder about what life will store for me in the future and the surprises and I will probably have when I’m also a grandmother.”

Layout by Kelley, supplies: One Love Charity Collab; Worn Up In You by Penny Springmann & Lauren Grier; Tiny Type Alpha by Zoe Pearn; Pea Remi Font.

Layout by NeeNee

Layout by Janet

Layout by Janet, click on layout for credits

If you have some layouts where you were able to relate to your relatives, we would love to see them, so link us up in the comments!  If you don’t have any YET, we hope we gave you some ideas!

P.S., First up, I want to announce the winner from yesterday’s post…… Leslie was the random winner chosen from yesterday’s comments, this is what she said:  “I have known and loved Peppermint’s scrapbooking LO’s and now to see her doing designing is amazing!!  I really love her kit Unconditionally with its bold red and elegant patterns.”

P.S.S  I just wanted to give you a little update about my husband, because I’m sure many of you don’t know about our experience I shared in the layout today.  He is doing AWESOME and is very healthy!  Tomorrow, we will be celebrating what we affectionately call “Kidney Day” at our house, it will 4 years since he received a new kidney from his younger brother!  There really isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t think about it in one way or another.  It’s amazing when you are forced to stare death in the face, how life changes and we will never be the same!

P.S.S.S If you are on Twitter, you know that I love Paperclipping Roundtable!!  They are looking for an “average scrapper” (someone not in the industry) to join them for a discussion!  You can find out more about it here as well as subscribe and listen to the podcasts.  Read the instructions carefully and give it a shot!!  I would love for one of our readers to be on the show!! ***Today is the LAST day***

I am really excited to welcome Peppermint of One Little Bird to THE DIGI FILES and THE DAILY DIGI this month.  I discovered her soon after she opened her store and instantly fell in love with her products!  She is a very talented designer and I am excited to share her products with you!  Here’s a closer look at her contribution to THE DIGI FILES:

This is just ONE of the collections inside THE DIGI FILES #15 this month.  Here are some gorgeous layouts created by our team with For The Birds:

Layout by Katie

Layout by Karen, additional supplies: One Little Bird Tranquil template; My Four Hens photo action; Pea Jokilyn font

Layout by Melissa, additional supplies: Fizzy Pop template, Font is DJB Renee Script

Layout by Kelley, additional supplies: Template by Crystal Livesay; Pea Hanzel and Gretel Font

Layout by Jacki

Hybrid project by Sunghee, she created the template based on the birdhouse element in the kit.

My name is Peppermint Granberg, although most of the time I get a lot of “No really, what’s your name?” or “Nuh uh, you’re making that up!” I’m a member of what I’m sure is a pretty small population of people who routinely have to show their driver’s license to people in order to get them to stop calling me a liar. My fiancé, Tom, and I live in west central Wisconsin with my 9 year old son and two thoroughly spoiled cats, Mo and Sisko. I’m the only female in the house! I work full-time for my family’s business distributing building materials to contractors – a job that will not land you a gig on Career Day, let me tell you, because it’s BO-ring and no one wants to hear about it. Then at night I come home and trip the night fantastic watching Reality TV and scrapbooking. And occasionally cooking dinner!

STORE

BLOG

NEWSLETTER

FACEBOOK

TWITTER

Innovative by One Little Bird, Font is Pea Devon from www.kevinandamanda.com

I’m a big keyboard shortcut user – the less I need to use my mouse, the better! So I move all over Photoshop without touching my mouse. It has its drawbacks because it makes it really hard to teach someone how to use Photoshop sometimes because I’ve actually forgotten where things are. I have a lot of favorites, but I just learned about this one a few weeks ago.

I am an avid user of layer blend modes in every aspect of scrapbooking, photo processing and designing. It has pained me for a long time to have to use that little drop down in the layer palette. You can Alt+shift”+” and Alt+Shift+”-“ to toggle through the entire list, which isn’t a much better option (but eliminates the mouse) so that’s what I had been using. Then I found out that there are key associations for each one and it freaked my freak out! I tend to abuse the same ones over and over, so I only need to memorize a handful of them. (Note: you need to have the Move Tool (V) activated for these to work)

Overlay = Alt+Shift+O
Multiply = Alt+Shift+M
Linear Burn = Alt+Shift+L
Screen = Alt+Shift+S
Soft Light = Alt+Shift+F
Normal = Alt+Shift+N

Also for text alignment, another one that required me to travel up to the toolbar with my mouse, you just highlight your text within the text box and:

Left Align = CTRL+Shift+L
Center Align = CTRL+Shift+C
Right Align = CTRL+Shift+R

Also you can increase and decrease your text size in 2pt increments using CTRL+Shift+”>” and CTRL+Shift+”<” (If you add the Alt key to that formula, you can jump in 10pt increments)

It seems as though it would be a lot to remember, but the shortcuts become habit. When I first started using Photoshop I kept a cheat sheet around to remind me, but now I fly around and if Tom is looking over my shoulder he’s lost within 15 seconds. Things are just flying and changing everywhere!

I tried paper scrapping shortly after my son was born and have a few pages in his album, nothing too impressive. I’m not a good paper scrapper, and if you don’t believe me I’ll show you my album. I started scrapbooking digitally in 2005 when 2Peas first opened their Digital community. Digital scrapbooking was right up my alley because I didn’t have to pack up a bunch of supplies whenever I quit working for the night. And there was no commitment; I could move things around as much as I wanted. I did stop scrapping in 2006 when my personal life got really busy. I didn’t pick it back up again until January 2008 when I tried (and failed at) Project 365. Mine was more like Project 22 and then I ran out of ideas for photos. For scrapbooking, though, I knew I should try to get on a couple of creative teams because if I made commitments to designers I wouldn’t abandon the hobby again. Know thyself!

I opened my shop at CatScrap in January of this year, so just a month and a half ago really. I was hesitant to try it because most designers say they don’t get to scrap anymore and I *really* enjoy scrapbooking. Plus I work full-time and I was pretty sure I was fooling myself thinking I could find more time in any one of my days. But what’s life without challenges, right? I’m hoping I’ll always find a way to balance it all out, but I really do enjoy designing products and it’s the same sort of creative outlet for me as scrapbooking. CatScrap was already my home away from home, so it’s a very laid back, comfortable and relaxing place to sell my products. All the pieces fit nicely together to make it a smooth transition for me. I’m a work in progress.

The Internet. Haha. I won’t even pretend I find inspiration in other places because they’re too inconsistent to count. I’m always jotting down little notes on things I saw on the internet, or saving color palette ideas to a folder on my hard drive. Wedding blogs, especially, will keep me enthralled for hours. Everything is so beautiful and the color palettes are genius! I also have a lot of home decorating blogs and random paper craft blogs in my Google Reader. Even the so-called “junk mail” that I receive from online retailers can set my wheels spinning. The Internet is a wonderful thing.

I work, scrap and design on a Toshiba laptop, and I put this thing through a lot! It comes back and forth to the office with me every single day, and I’ve sworn I’ll only buy Toshibas from now on because it has far outperformed my wildest expectations with the amount of abuse it takes. It’s nothing too outrageous, it’s a Dual Core 1.67Ghz with 4GB of RAM in it (originally 2GB of RAM, we upgraded it about a year ago). It’s on its second keyboard, I replaced it myself even. I actually wore through about five of the keys – I told you I abuse it! I have a 250GB hard drive in the machine and I keep a 500GB Seagate FreeAgent portable drive on it pretty much around the clock. I keep all my scrapbooking supplies, designs, music and photos on the external drive.

I use Photoshop CS4, Lightroom 2 and Illustrator CS3 – and I organize all my supplies in ACDSee 10.

My camera is all old-school, it’s a Nikon D50 which they don’t make anymore. I keep a 50mm/f1.8 lens on it almost exclusively and an SB-600 speedlight. That’s my ‘every day’ camera around the house. Some people hate their speedlights, but I love mine.

My graphic tablet is also old school, it’s a WACOM Graphire3, the predecessor to all the fun funky ones they make now. It’s also always in my computer bag.

I probably lug 30lbs worth of computer bag back and forth to work every day. LOL You’d think I’d be in better shape, but no!

Has to be Innovative.  I had so much fun creating it, I’m in love with my little robot and the pennant alpha.

Here are some of my favorite One Little Bird digital scrapbooking products:

And some inspiration layouts to get your mojo flowing (layouts without credits are linked to originals):

Layout by Katie, supplies: Paradise Found by One Little Bird, Template by Janet Phillips (modified), photo by istock, font is CK elusive.

Thanks so much to Peppermint for being with us this month in THE DIGI FILES and sharing your talents, tips, and life with us!

Go have a look in One Little Bird’s store and come back and tell her what you like, we will randomly select a winner from those comments to win $10 in product from her store!  (Comments must be posted before midnight EST and must include a product name to qualify)!

As a THANK YOU to our readers, Peppermint has this coupon for us:

I (Katie) have been a digital scrapbooker for almost 5 years now and I quickly learned once I started collecting supplies on my computer that I would need to have a good organization system in place. I tried several different methods before I settled on a folder based approach back in 2007.

I love the system that I use, but I also realize that there are many other ways to effectively organize digital scrapbook supplies so I thought it would be fun to show you 3 different ways to organize so you can find the approach that works best for you!

KATIE’S SYSTEM:

I’m a very visual person, so for me it is nice to have folders set up with preview images. When I open each folder I can quickly glance at what I have stored inside without having to open each individual sub-folder. I store my entire system on an external hard drive to keep my laptop working at top speed. When I’m working on a project (such as all the digi files for the month) I make a copy of that file for my laptop and work from that copy so I don’t have to always have my EHD with me.

My system is probably most useful for the digital scrapbooker that has a BIG collection of supplies from a wide variety of sources. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I have more than 142 GB of digital scrapbooking goodies (not photos or anything else) stored on my EHD – and that’s after I cleaned off tons of older files I wasn’t using! I may or may not have a bit of an addiction. lol!

click to enlarge

Here’s a list of my folder categories:

The numbers in front of each file are to keep them in a certain order since windows likes to organize the folders in numerical and alphabetical order automatically. I wanted the first folders to be related to the months of the year (holidays) so I numbered them that way. I decided to put Birthdays at the beginning of the year.

• 1 Birthday
• 1 Winter
• 2 Valentines and Hearts
• 3 St. Pats
• 4 Easter (even though sometimes Easter is in the 3rd month)
• 6 Summer and Beach (June is the first month of summer)
• 6 Travel and Camping (This just seemed to fit next to the summer and beach file)
• 7 Independence Day
• 8 School/Art/Music (August is back to school month for us)
• 9 Fall
• 10 Halloween
• 11 Thanksgiving
• 12 Xmas

Next I have files of individual elements. I put a 13 in front of all of these so they stay in alphabetical order based on subject; alphas, buttons, frames, etc. So continuing on with my list of files:

• 13 alphabets/numbers/dates
• 13 buttons and brads
• 13 flowers
• 13 frames
• 13 journaling/quotes/tags
• 13 misc. elements (the ones that just don’t fit anywhere else)
• 13 overlays and masks
• 13 ribbons/trims and bows
• 13 shapes and borders
• 13 staples and fasteners
• 13 stitches

My paper and kit files all have a 14 in front of them to keep them nicely in place behind the element files.

• 14 misc. kits  – (for all the kits that didn’t fit into other categories and yes, it’s a big file, but that’s ok!)
• 14 paper prints and packs
• 14 paper solids

And a few more misc. categories

• 15 templates more on this file below *
• 16 albums, calendars, and quick pages
• 17 actions (even after you load them, it’s helpful to have a place for the instructions)
• 18 CU (commercial use stuff from my designing days)
• 19 TDD – The Daily Digi I keep all the past Digi Files in here rather than separate them out. They could also be filed under 14 Misc. Kits, but I like quick access to TDD stuff since I’m part of the team here.

*A further explanation of my template folder:

This is probably the area that took me the longest to organize but it is the one that has had the biggest payoff for me! If you read my Power Scrapping Secrets article you will see how having templates sorted by number of pictures they hold can save you oodles of time. I will give you a peek into my template folder so you can see what I’m talking about.

click to enlarge

I have filed all of my templates by the amount of photos they are designed for. I realize that some templates might fit in more than one file depending on how you use them but I just tried to stay basic with my filing system. No need to over-think this and you can easily browse through a few folders in just minutes. I can’t tell you how useful this system has been. Even if you think the rest of my digi organization is bunk, I bet you will find this part useful.

These folders are not pretty when organized this way, but they are very functional! When I go to create a page that needs to have 3 photos on it, I just open up that folder and start browsing. Even if I don’t use a template, it at least gets my creativity working.

I don’t use subfolders here and all I keep is the preview of the template and the actual template file right next to. Sometimes I have to rename them to get them to stay next to each other in the file. Every once in a while I have to make a jpeg image so I have a preview of the template so if you are a template designer – PLEASE include a preview of each template! My very favorite templates are in TIFF format because you only need that one file to serve as a preview and the actual template. This really isn’t as complicated as it sounds – basically, I just like to see what each template looks like at one glance through the folder it relates to.

If you are interested in how I organize my digital photos you might want to check out this blog post.

As I download digital scrapbooking goodies, I unzip them to be sure I have everything included in the purchase (a good idea in case you need to contact the store because of a mistake). Then I leave all my downloaded kits in that same folder for about a week, or until I have a little bit of time to file them in the right folders. When I have some time I just move them all the appropriate places. It doesn’t take long and it’s a task I can do while I’m talking on the phone or even watching television.

…

ALI’S SYSTEM:

In Ali Edwards’ Scrapbooking With Your Computer series she shared her own organizing system that is also folder-based. (She also has some step by step instructions on how to download and unzip files and even has something fun for you to download!) I asked Ali if I could show you her system here and she was happy to share it with all of us.

Ali uses a MAC and her folder system is not too different than my own, but she displays hers in a list format instead of a folder view. She also keeps her folder system on an External Hard Drive and backs it up to another drive as well.

Click to enlarge

Here’s the list of her folder categories:

Actions
Albums
Alphabets
Brads, Etc
Christmas
Embellishments (includes subfolders: Butterflies, Circles, Clocks/Time, Dates, Element Combination Packs, Hearts, Metals (no words), Ribbons/Strips, Stars, Tags, Words)
Journal Templates
Layered Templates
Masks
Negative Sleeves
Overlays
Paper_Patterns
Paper_Solids
Photo or Frame Clusters
Stitched

For a full explanation of her system, be sure to read her blog post because she does a great job of keeping it simple and to the point.

Ali is still fairly new to digital scrapbooking and probably doesn’t scrap with such a wide variety of designers like I do, so her more simplified approach is probably more than adequate for her needs. Her system is best suited for someone with a smaller stash or one who prefers a minimalist approach.

…

STEPH’S SYSTEM:

I (Steph) tried many different approaches to organizing until I found one that worked for me.  I tried similar systems to both Katie’s and Ali’s, but they didn’t work for me.  I think that’s one important things to know, not every system works for everyone!  You may need to try a few different things until you find one that works for you.

One thing I realized early on, was that when I wanted a certain product, I could often remember WHO designed it (that’s why putting my kits in files by theme didn’t work for me, nor did breaking up the kits by product type).  I also found that I usually always start a layout with photos and/or a story THEN come the supplies.  When I start adding supplies to a layout, I am usually looking for certain colors that will coordinate with the photos that I am about to scrap.  Those things are what helped me figure out a way to organize that works well for me.

I keep everything (scrap supplies or not) on an EHD.  On my EHD I have different folders for: Actions, Fonts, Styles, commercial use, and Scrabook Downloads.  My Scrapbook Downloads folder is where pretty much everything goes (all kits, papers, elements, etc.).  Inside that folder, I have folders by designer name, because when I am looking for a specific product, that is what usually comes to mind first…the person that created it (there have been a few instances when I put things in a store folder, but that was before I started my “New Downloads” folder…more on that in a minute).  Here’s what that looks like (this is not my entire collection….shhhhh don’t tell):

Anything I buy that is created by that designer goes in their folder with their name on it.  If it is a collab., then I usually just pick one designer’s folder to throw it in.

When I download new products, they go into my “New Downloads” folder. Once everything is downloaded, I use UnZipThemAll to unzip all of the zips at once.  Then, I keep the products in there until I have time to go through my steps of organization.  Here’s what that folder looks like right now:

When I am ready to download, I simply go into each folder, right click on the preview, copy it and then go to my {Digital Supplies Previews} folder and past them there (this is why I love designers that include BOTH a FOLDER preview AND a preview with their name and the kit name on it). I also copy all of these kits to my network drive, so I know they are there as well (two in house copies and an online back up as well).

This is easiest to do if you have TWO windows open, one in the New Downloads Folder and one in the Preview folder.  You can see from the above image that I also have a {Hawaiian Theme} folder.  I have a Hawaii vacation album that I have been working on FOREVER, so I also put previews that are tropical related OR have colors I know I can use, in that folder.  This is what part of my {Hawaiian Theme} folder looks like:

Here you can see part of my other previews folder:

This makes it really easy to just scroll through my previews looking for the colors that will work with my photos!  It also makes it easier to SEE what I have!  When I find what I want to use, the designer and kit name are included in the preview (sometimes I do have to rename after pasting).

There are many different organizing options, the trick is to find what works for you, your personality, and your scrapping style.

TO TAG OR NOT TO TAG… THAT IS THE QUESTON:

It might surprise some of you to see that all 3 digital scrapbooking systems I’ve shown you here don’t involve any tagging. When Steph and I were discussing this in preparation for today’s post, we both made the comment that we would just rather spend the time it would take to tag our supplies for other things like scrapping. I believe that tagging photos is worthwhile (so you can find pictures of a certain family member), but for me it just isn’t worth the time investment to worry about it for my supplies.

My own collection of digital supplies is probably one of the biggest out there (not to brag lol it’s just that I’ve been doing this for a long time and I’m a HUGE junkie!) and I honestly don’t spend more than a few minutes looking through my stash before I find what I was looking for – or something even better. My files are organized and I can easily see what I have to work with. (See Steph’s P.S. below)

Finally, I want to emphasize that there is no “right’ or “wrong” way to organize your supplies. Spend some time thinking what your digital scrapbooking process is and what kind of workflow you prefer. It’s important to set up a system that is easy to maintain so you don’t have to spend all your creative time filing supplies. The goal is to find what you are looking and get to the fun part of creating!

P.S. It’s Steph again and I just wanted to add a note that I had a conference call with the folks at ACDSee yesterday and they assure me that tagging doesn’t take that long (I remain a little skeptical though).  I bought and downloaded their software and you can rest assured that IF it is fast and works well for organization, you will hear about it from me.  Honestly, having my digi supplies all organized and tagged in a program like ACDSee is a dream, but I don’t want to spend a lot of time doing it.  I will keep you posted!

We would love you to share your method of organizing that works best for you!

Last month, we introduced you to Songbird Avenue and the wonderful charity work they are involved in.  We want to do our part to support them and will be featuring their new collaborations and charities each month her at THE DAILY DIGI!  Songbird Ave. has done some amazing things and we are so excited to be a little part of that!

This month Songbird teamed up with Kellie Mize with proceeds going to benefit The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.  Here’s what Songbird says about it:

“The mission of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS): Cure leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease and myeloma, and improve the quality of life of patients and their families. LLS has dedicated itself to being one of the top-rated voluntary health agencies in terms of dollars that directly fund our mission.”

Included in this kit are: 24 patterned papers, 2 fabric flowers, 1 hanging star, painted circles, painted dot border, photo overlay,1 star, scattered stars, 2 decorative borders, 2 decorative frames, flourish photo overlay, 3 layered paper flowers, 4 coordinating labels, “perfect light” word art, “light the night” word art, 3 photo painted frame, 2 scattered star page borders, 4 glittered swirls, 2 rhinestone buttons, 1 book page frame, 1 sunburst stamp, 1 glitter dot alpha (a-z, A-Z, ?!) and two 12×12 inch PSD, 300 DPI layered templates.

Here’s some inspiration from our teams for you:

Layout by Jacki

Layout by Katie

Layout by Claire

Layout by Lynette

Layout by Samantha

So many great layouts that can be scrapped, be sure to grab this kit at Songbird Avenue and help a good cause!

P.S. If you purchased The Digi Files yesterday, there was a small error in one of the files.  It has been corrected and you can grab it here (just right click on image and then select ’save image as’ OR ’save as’.