A Digital Scrapbooking Journal - Part Six

How to Design and Create Original Elements

Friday, June 8, 2007: t.g.i.f.

I created the letters you see above (actually the whole alphabet). It was kind of labor intensive because each letter must be created individually, but once I figured out my design, it went pretty quickly. I call this alphabet set EMB_TropicalFever_Alpha for the tropical flower motif layered over the letters.

For the alphabets, all you need is a patterned paper and a chunky font to fill with the pattern. It's really cool the way you can fill a shape (or font in this case) with the pattern of your choice.

The technique is kind of a software version of QuikKutz paper punches. The letter is your paper punch.

Lay the paper over it and punch. In software-speak, that's Create Clipping Mask. Like magic, all the excess paper is cut away and falls to the floor.

I keep thinking I should open my monitor to sweep up all the scraps.

Oh, and of course you need a graphics software program like Photoshop CS or Photoshop Elements.

Saturday, June 9, 2007: Now I Know My ABCs

... tell me what you think of me.

I can't believe how easy it is to create your own unique digital patterned alphas.

Basically, on an 8 ½ x 11-inch page, you type out the alphabet on separate layers using a chunky font. You want one that has enough "real estate" to show off the pattern fill.

The letters should be as large as possible and still fit on the page. Don't forget any special characters you might want, like punctuation marks.

Next you select or create a pretty patterned paper to layer over and clip onto each letter. In my example yesterday, I created a large-pattern tropical flower paper to layer over my alphas. Today I'm using another one of my own papers: EMB_Seafoam_Paper.

Find detailed directions for patterned digital letters in my article How to Create Your Own Unique Digital Patterned Alphabet.

Sunday, June 10, 2007: Transitioning from Paper to Digital Scrapbooking

When one transitions from paper to digital scrapping, there are a lot of new terms and concepts to get your mind around. It took me quite a while to understand exactly what a clipping mask is or the versatility of digital brushes.

I found myself looking for analogies to paper scrapping that would help me grasp the concepts. Here you'll find tutorials on the following paper-to-digital analogies.