Scrapping by Design

Scrapbookers and paper crafters are often surprised to know that they can make their own stickers using a digital image, a software application such as MS Word or MS Publisher, and pre-purchased labels such as the popular Avery brand.

I made these stickers in MS Word using a photograph of a “dragon” greeting card that I made with embossing paste, glitter and a brass template.

I find it easier to lay out these stickers in MS Publisher, but I am providing the instructions for MS Word because more people use it then Publisher.

I used MS Word 2002. Other versions may have slight differences so you may need to experiment a bit.

1. Open MS Word and go to the menu item Tools>Letters and Mailings>Envelopes and Letters>Labels

2. Once you have clicked on Labels, select options to determine the size label you want to use.  If you are using an Avery label, you will of course base this on the size of that label.

3. Select New Document. A window opens with a label template.

4. Using your photo editing software, resize an image to the size of the labels that you have decided to use. Save it to your disk.

5. Click inside one of the label templates, then go to the menu item Insert>Picture>from File

6. Navigate to the picture you want, select it and click Okay. Your picture appears in the label box.

7. Right click on the picture to active a menu. Select Format Picture. chose Layout and select Tight.  Small handles now appear around the picture. This makes it easy for you to position it in the label box as desired, and also to stretch or shrink it somewhat if it is not the exact size of the layout box.

8. Click on your picture. Is you are using a Windows computer, use the keyboard command of Control-C to copy the image to the clipboard, then paste it (Control-V) into each remaining box. Mac users use Command-C to copy and Command-V to paste.

9. Print your labels.

If you have a Xyron crafting machine, you can print your labels onto card stock or any other paper then run them through the Xyron rather than using Avery or other labels.

If you are choosing to use Avery labels, their web site contains free downloadable templates that work in MS Word, Publisher, and in various other programs.

Imagine the possibilities here.

With this technique, you could make your own Christmas stickers for your envelopes or wrapped packages,  make stickers for use in your paper crafting projects, make small images of your favorite scrapbook layouts or greeting cards and convert them into mailing labels, or almost anything else that comes to mind.

Does your scrapbook layout represent fact or fiction? Has it become something like a scripted reality TV show — based on real life but heavily orchestrated to create special effects? And if it has, is this a good thing or a bad thing?

I’ve been providing tutorials lately for making things look better through photo editing and photo editing software. How much photo editing can you do before you’ve created a new reality, based more on how you wish things were than how they really are?

Sure, knocking off the five pounds that the camera added, whitening teeth a bit and removing the spot where the chocolate ice cream dribbled down on your t-shirt isn’t that big a deal.

But what about more extreme measures? Photo editing lets you make innumerable adjustments to a photo. Would that seascape look better if it had two sailboats instead of just one? It’s easy to make a duplicate. Would that new copper roof be more attractive if it had the greenish patina of aged copper? No sooner said than done with photo editing.

This raises the issue of whether we are scrapbooking to preserve memories, or whether we permit ourselves artistic license to make everything look bigger and better than the reality. If the latter, how much is too much?

I once made a scrapbook for a woman who wanted a certain person removed entirely from a group picture. Why? She didn’t like this person and didn’t want to be reminded of her each time she looked at the picture. I obliged, because that was what was asked of me.

If this were my own memory album, I would not have gone that route. I take the position that a scrapbook represents a memory of what happened and that should not be tampered with. To me, changing the odd detail like removing a blemish from the face is not a big deal. Removing an entire person distorts the truth of the event being preserved in the scrapbook.

I learned a lesson on this topic when I made my very first scrapbook, which was to be a gift for a family member. I wanted pictures of the farmlands where we grew up, but I had none. A friend living elsewhere offered to take pictures of the wheat fields in her location, pointing out that one wheat field looks much like another. I agreed, and used the bogus wheat field picture in the album. The recipient recognized the sham immediately. I was embarrassed to say the least. Through this little episode, I came to fully appreciate that scrapbooks are for preserving memories — accurate memories that reflect what actually happened in the story being depicted in a layout.

I recently received a package of heritage photos taken as early as the nineteen twenties. I love these pictures and I know they are authentic. Will future generations feel the same way when they look at pictures from this era? Or will they be left wondering how accurate the picture really is?

What’s your take on this issue? Leave me a comment and tell me where you stand on scrapbooking reality vs fantasy.

Lady MacBeth wouldn’t have had near as much trouble getting rid of those blood stains in her scrapbook photos if she’d had access to image editing software like Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Adobe Photoshop Elements 6

These graphic programs provide various way of removing unwanted areas of a photo. This means you can quickly remove wrinkles, bags under your eyes, strands of hair blowing in the wind, blemishes, pimples, scars, broccoli stuck in your teeth, the spaghetti stain on your jacket and even your EX standing beside you if you want to go that far.

In the “Before” picture to the right, the young boy (my grandson) had painted his top teeth green and red. I think it was for Halloween but who knows?  In the “After” picture, I have removed the green and red from the teeth and changed them back to a tooth color.

To do this, I used Adobe Photoshop’s Clone tool, which is found in the Tool Box. The Clone tool lets you “graft” over an area of a picture using the color and design found in another part of the picture.

Start by using the Zoom feature so you can get a better look at the area you’ll be working on. Next. click on the Clone tool to activate it.  With the Clone tool activated, decide which area of the picture you want to take the graft from. In this case, I decided to graft the colors from the bottom teeth to cover the top teeth.  Since I use a PC, I Alt-Clicked on the bottom teeth. Mac users would Option-Click.

Then, I clicked on the top teeth, moving the mouse around to color over the red and green areas with the colors from the bottom teeth.

If you try this, you will need to use caution to be sure you are grafting only from the teeth and not from the surrounding mouth area.  If you find you have grafted the wrong color, simply use the Undo feature or refer to the document’s history and delete the most recent changes. Then start again.

You may need a bit of practice to get the hang of this, but the technique works wonders once you learn to do it.

Image editing software has many uses for scrapbookers and photographers.  The ability to correct unwanted spots in a picture is only one of them.

Following along with more photo editing tips for scrapbookers (or for anyone else, for that matter), how about some digital dentistry to make your radiant smile even more radiant?    Even if your teeth are beautifully white in real life, they can appear yellowish in a photograph, especially if you were photographed in incandescent light.

It’s a simple matter to remove the yellow tones using your photo editing software. I expect any good graphics program could accomplish this task. The following instructions apply to Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Adobe Photoshop Elements 6

Here the the step by step instructions:

1. Open your photograph in your image editing software.

2. If necessary, zoom in to get a better view of the teeth.

3. Refer to your Tool Kit (or is it Tool Box?) and activate the Polygonal Lasso Tool.

4. Using this tool, select the teeth or any part of the teeth that you want to color correct.

5. While the teeth are selected, to to the Image Menu and choose Adjustments>Hue Saturation. An edit box appears.

6. In this edit box, select “Yellow.” Drag the saturation marker to the left to desaturate the selected area. Desaturate as much as appears beneficial.

7 Drag the lightness marker to the right to lighten the selected area (ie teeth).  Lighten as much as is beneficial to the picture.

8.  Click Okay to save.

Remember that the change is a subtle one. You want to avoid creating a look that screams “digitally altered.”

You can use this technique to remove an unwanted color cast from any part of a picture — or from the entire picture.

Digital photo manipulation is a valuable skill to scrapbook enthusiasts. This particular tip represents the most painless dentistry you will ever have.

Blog visitors, this blog is now “No Follow Free.” I have installed a No Follow Free Plug in .  Typically, WordPress blogs contain coding that instructs the  Google search engine not to “follow” or count links that appear in comments. Therefore, Google does not consider these links when it calculates your web site or blog’s search engine positioning.  People could still click on the link and it would work, provided you entered it correctly, but it would not count towards your site’s popularity.

WordPress made the comment links “no follow” because of the amount of comment spam that people were dealing with. It was a response to a significant problem. However, it also discouraged legitimate people from leaving comments.

By installing this plugin, I have removed the no follow coding. If you choose to leave a link, the search engines will now count it as a link to your site.

I’m hoping to see more people leaving comments now. Should there be a problem with comment spammers, I think I can blacklist them from the site.

Okay, so we all know that the camera adds five pounds, right? Therefore, its not really “cheating” to use photo editing software to remove the five pounds that really aren’t there in the first, place, right?

At least, that’s the way I see it.

The top picture is a “duck” taken at Vancouver’s Annual Sea Festival. We can all agree that the duck could stand to lose a few from his belly. in the bottom picture, I have taken several pounds off the duck’s belly. He now has a definitely slimmer look.

Sure, he could stand to lose more than that, but we have to keep this believable. I mean, let’s face it. If I knock thirty pounds off my hips, people are going to know its a fake. If I restrain myself and just remove a few, it’ll pass inspection.

So if you also would like to remove the five that the camera added, this is how to do it in Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Adobe Photoshop Elements 6

1. Open your photo in your software editing program.

2. Create a duplicate layer.

3. Working on the copy layer, activate the Polygonal Lasso Tool and select the area that you want to shrink. Be sure that the selection is closed completely.

4. Go to Edit>Transform>Distort. This puts a “box” with draggable handles around the selected area. With your mouse, select one of the corner handles and drag the selection to “shrink” the area you want to be smaller. When you are at the size you want, hit the Enter key.

5. Using the clone stamp, color in the areas where the larger image used to be. Voila!  You are suddenly sleek and trim.

If only it were this easy in real life.  Photo editing software is so much faster than Jenny Craig.

Want to add some special interest to your photographs? If you’re doing digital photo editing with a software program like Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 or Adobe Photoshop CS3, you can create the look of a colorized black and white photo quickly and easily.  Other digital editing software will probably have similar capabilities, but these are the only ones I have used personally.

The top picture to the left is a full color picture of a magnolia blossom. These wonderful trees grow in Vancouver and treat us to their blooms every spring. People call them “tulip trees” because the huge blossoms somewhat resemble a tulip.

To produce the spot coloring, first open the image in your software.

Next, click on Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Hue/Saturation. Click okay to create the layer.  A window with a slider appears. Move the Saturation slider to zero. This removes the color and gives you a black and white photo. Refer to the middle photo to the left.

Finally, select the Eraser Tool and move it over the parts of the picture that you want to colorize. The color returns as if by magic.  See the bottom photo.

This technique gives you an attractive effect for artistic purposes. The magnolia picture produces a subtle effect, since the original background of the tree is dark and the pink flowers are delicate in tone.  You can obtain a much more dramatic effect if your picture lends itself to it.

This technique is similarly  handy if you have a photograph with a central object, but a lot of “busyness” in the background.  Simply leave the “busyness” black and white and colorize the central object. The main object stands out and the busy background is minimized.

There are so many neat things you can do with digital editing software. Digital scrapbookers and hybrid scrapbookers truly have an array of tools at their disposal.

Pergamano Parchment Craft lends itself to so many uses. The two pictures shown here are both birthday cards. I made Girl in a Hat using a pattern from M22, one of Pergamano’s official pattern books.

I made Morning Glory from a free Pergamano pattern that I found somewhere on the Internet. Unfortunately, I have lost it. Too bad. I like this pattern a lot.

I do not claim expert status when it comes to this craft. At an advanced level, Pergamano Parchment craft is truly an art form.

I have discovered a few tips and techniques that make the work faster, simpler or more attractive.

1. Use varying force when embossing. Strong embossing gives you a lovely white color, as shown in the girl’s hat.  Less strong embossing gives a pleasant gray tone, perfect for shading. I have managed a little of this in the frill of the girl’s collar. You can also purchase special tools for shading, such as the Hockey Stick tool.

2. Handle the Tracing Pen and the Tinta Ink correctly.  I posted a question about this at the Pergamano Forum, because when I traced, the pen either did not release ink at all or else the ink came out in great blogs. Thanks to a helpful forum member, I now know the secret to good tracing.  First, when you purchase the pen, wash it well with hot, soapy water to remove grease. Dip the pen in the Tinta ink at a ninety degree angle (straight up and down). Do not dip it into the ink any further than the hole in the nib.  The pen should trace now, but if there are still problems, dip the very tip into a bowl of water to break the surface resistance. Also, wipe the pen each time before you dip it in the ink. Tinta White (and also the Tinta metallic colors) leave a chalky residue that can clog the pen.

3. When embossing, you usually emboss the outside edges first, and then fill in the center.

4. More advanced Pergamano patterns often call for an array of perforating tools in addition to the basic I tool. The I tool has one “needle” and therefore makes one hole when punched.  Other Perforating tools come with various numbers of needles, which may be shaped to form a cross, a circle, a semi -circle etc. Although having these tools is certainly a time saver, you can work all of these patterns with the I tool if you aren’t ready to invest in an extensive Pergamano tool collection.

5. Pergamano Parchment Craft is often colored in specified areas or completely, using Pergamano Dorso Crayons or Pastels, Pergamano Perla Ink, or other coloring products. I have found that you can also create lovely colored effects by using artist chalks or Brush Art Markers such as those produced by Marvy Uchida.

6. You can enlarge or shrink any Pergamano pattern to fit the project you want to work on. Use a photocopier to change the size, or edit your pattern digitally using Photoshop Elements or similar software.

7. You can modify a Pergamano Parchment Craft pattern to include or eliminate an element. If your pattern reads “Happy Birthday” but you want it to say “Get Well Soon”, simply open your word processor, write Get Well Soon using a script font, and print it on regular printer paper, at the size you want.  Position this where you want it on the pattern and trace in the usual way.

8. Skip the Tracing Pen completely and use a White Gel pen instead. It’s not “authentic”, but if it works for you, then go for it.

9. Use a Pergamano Easy Mesh Grid if you’re planning on doing any of the more complex patterns with intricate designs. You can skip using some of the tools and get acceptible results, but the mesh grid is not one of them.

10. Incorporate your Pergamano projects in your scrapbooks and mini albums. A beautifully done Pergamano project is a great stand-alone embellishment, but you can also make wonderful frames for your photos or journaling, fancy corners for your photos or small embellishments that you mat on colored cardstock or paper.

You can get supplies fromPergamano.com and of course, you can always get Pergamano Parchment Craft Supplies at eBay.

I made these two Pergamano Parchment Craft projects using Pergamano’s basic starter kit. These two items are included in the kit, which contains seven project patterns, parchment paper, a Dorso crayon, Tinta ink, a tracing pen, an embossing tool and an I tool used for both stippling and perforating.
The little gift box is tinted a lavender shade, decorated with embossed flowers front and back and tied with a ribbon. The Valentine Envelope has two perforated hearts that “seal” the envelope top as it folds downward.

I have heard people say that Pergamano requires many, many tools. This is a misconception. Although it is true that many tools are available, one does not need all of them to create a lovely project. In fact, you could make any number of projects with the tools in the kit. You would eventually have to replace the ink and the crayon, and of course, buy more parchment paper, but that is it.

You can often find free Pergamano patterns on the web. In fact, the official Pergamano Web Site has some available to people who join the My Pergamano area, which is also free to join.

Here is a video demonstration of me making the small gift box shown above.

You can get supplies for Pergamano Parchment Craft at Ebay

What do toilet paper, a rubber stamp and a scrapbook layout have in common?  Well, believe it or not, you can create unusual, attractive, and extremely economical scrapbook embellishments using a rubber stamp and a few squares of toilet paper.

The pictures show a toilet paper casting I made using a mushroom stamp. I have used it as a focal point in a hand made mini album.

How to Make a Toilet Paper Casting

1. Locate a deeply cut rubber stamp. This will not work well with a fine cut stamp.

2. Optionally, tap your stamp with an ink. Depending on how your ink reacts with water, this will give you various tints and shades of color.  This is arguably the cheapest embellishment you will ever make, so live it up. Experiment with lots of inks and colors. Alternatively, you can omit inking your stamp and opt for a pure white casting. (Or use colored toilet paper).

3. Tear or cut several squares of toilet paper. The squares should be larger than the stamp. You could also use tissue or perhaps even serviettes or napkins. I have not tried the latter, but I see no reason why they would not work.

4. Get a small bowl of water. Dip one toilet paper square into the water so you have a wet spot in the middle.   Place this wet paper in the stamp. Pat it down with your fingers or use a Q Tip.

5. Repeat with additional squares of toilet tissue. Continue layering until you have five or six layers. You will get differing results depending on the ply used.

6. Using a paper towel, squeeze down over the layers of toilet paper, blotting away excess water.

7.  Remove your wet casting from the stamp. Move carefully.

8. Allow to partially dry, then tear away excess toilet paper, leaving as wide a border as you wish.  Avoid tearing into the casting itself, as this is likely to cause it to pull apart.

9. When fully dry, color your casting or decorate in any way that comes to mind.  Attach to your scrapbook page or or project using a glue or adhesive.

Please understand that these toilet paper castings are not acid free or lignon free. Avoid using them in any proeject that you wantto be archival.

Other than that, have fun with these unique scrapbook embellishments made with rubber stamps.  I’d love to hear your experiences with this technique.