Paper

Today we are designing our own paper. I am using pictures of the gift I got my 5yo cousin for her birthday next week. We need to create a new Project choosing custom option under local printer. Clicking blank then next. Now we begin making our own paper. Our background is locked so we must unlock it and make it active by clicking on it. Using the tools tab the color icon should be active.

I want to use a color from my picture. (The picture needs to be on the page in order to sample it for use on the paper) To do that we go to the drop-down menu under Color icon. This brings up the Select color pallette. In order to get our custom color select Sample color this turns your mouse into a dropper with ink. Mouse over the spot of color you want to use. Watch the little swatch in the lower right corner of the pallette. When the bottom half of that swatch resembles the color you want click your mouse. this will lock it in as your choice. If this is a color you would choose Remember this color this button saves this selection in the drop-down menu on this pallette. You will find it in the upper left corner. Visible is Storybook Creator colors. Once saved you can go back to it again and again. I have trouble with browns, so I have a brown in my colors that I like so that I don't have to use my brain every time I want that shade.

Next, I have a Commercial Use overlay I got from Kim Broedelet at DSO. http://digiscrapobsession.net/team/?page_id=5

http://kimbsdesigns.blogspot.com/

I have loaded it into my Surfaces as previously explained

http://geezee-whoknew.blogspot.com/2009/02/textures-and-overlays-in-vista.html.

Selecting the one I want to use, I choose to leave the scale as it is.

Now my paper is the way I want it. I have added the picture to my paper and changed the opacity to make it see through. Notice that I cut around the pony? Want to learn how to do that in Storybook Creator Plus? I will work on that next.

I know I ramble, change tense and person. I try to use my good english, but this one didn't turn out very well, I'm afraid.

Font: Wide Latin

Calling for Response

I want to teach making our own paper, but I want to observe all Usage rules set up by Creative Memories. I do not want to inadvertently give misinformation. I know that using papers and embellishments would be copyright infringement. I do not intend to do that. If anyone knows of using Color or Gradient, frame or edges, shapes etc. are under the same terms of use. I will investigate further on my own. If anyone out there has the answer right away, please share. Thank you.

Participation

I am thrilled with the response this little blog is getting. I thank all of you for your input. Here are a couple that I think would be of interest in case someone isn't checking out our comments. I am learning blogger at the same time. Trying to figure out how to make a link say what I want it to say not the gobbledy gook and also link to the spot I want them to go. Case in point the previous post link did not work the way I wanted but I edited it 3 times so I need to give it and anyone who got it 3 times, a break.
Oh, on that note, I found a way to put your name of choice with out being logged into Blogger. When leaving a comment, choosing Name/url give you the oppurtunity to type in geezee in my case. Before I had a blog to paste into the url spot, I just left it blank. I have used this method in order to let my favorite designers have a way of knowing that I wasn't completely anonymous. Made me comfortable with the level of info I was leaving behind.


Just in case you hadn't figured it out yet, I type the way I talk. If anything needs to be clarified, feel free to let me know. :)


Kris said...
I haven't used snapfish, but I did just get a book from Winkflash and the quality is identical (to my eye) to my CM book. What I had to do was go to the winkflash site and find out the size of their "full page" template. It's a little off from 12x12. Then I created a new project in Storybook with pages that size. Then, I tested a few pages to see how much room to leave around the edges of the pages. I think I made sure that all of my pics and elements were at least 1/4" from the edges. It took quite a while to upload my 50 page album - winkflash only wants a few pages at a time at that large size. But, it was worth it when they had their "flat price" book sale!



Jewel said...
Hiya! I am happy to contribute to this as well as I work with SBC exclusively:)I have printed my jpegs on my home printer - but I always save as 'best' for printing. For posting to forums etc, I save as 'screen'.Also you can save multiple pages by choosing '1 selected page' then clicking 'view selected' and adding the pages you'd like. This is good if you want more than one page but not all of them.I want to try printing some 12x12 at places other than CM, so when I do I'll keep ya posted.

I am working on using a QP from Digitreats that I will try to walk you through. When using Storybook Creator Plus we cannot make the QP into the background. This would make it a solid paper. We need the png file to remain intact since it will have an opening to slide the picture behind. This leaves us with Dragging the (paper) QP onto our work surface. We may then need to resize it to fit our 12x12 page.* We can then put a picture onto the page by dragging it from the photos tab and positioning using the yellow + in the middle. If you have not already moved the picture to be on a layer below the QP, there are several ways to do that. I usually go to my layers(Found in the elements column on the left of your screen), click the picture layer and drag it below the layer I want to appear on top of it.

Now I have learned something today, I didn't realize the column our layers are located in was named elements. :)

*Nice surprise bonus for SBC+ users. You can open an 8x8 page and use a QP just as though it were 12x12. You will be resizing the paper to fit your page size anyway. This will be handy for home printing as an 8x8 will print beautifully on an 8 1/2X11 paper.I like to work in 12x12 because Creative Memories allows you to choose what size to print your page in once you upload it. 12x12 loses nothing in resizing. On the other hand 8x8 stretched to print 12x12 will lose clarity and definition. Check back later for hints on saving and resizing later. My head is spinning.

Textures and Overlays in Vista

I am working in Vista today and will use my husbands XP to confirm tomorrow. I am confident that all you creative people will be able to figure out as you go.
From your start menu choose Computer. When it opens choose OS(C:) . This is your hard drive that keeps and protects all the important stuff that makes your computer do all those things we can't understand. We tread lightly when allowed into this hallowed territory. You hear? We are looking for Program Files. In this folder we will go to Creative memories and open it. Remember this is where angels fear to tread, but we are doing well so far. Take a deep breath. Now we open StoryBook Creator 2, this opens the door to the program we are going to alter. Whew! Now in the Surfaces folder we will copy the texture or overlay of your choice into this file . Windows may ask you to approve this operation once or twice. You are
telling it to alter a program that is already in place. We made it now it is time to close this out and take another deep breath. It only hurt a little bit. I know, I am the one telling you to do it. I hope you kept your unlock code or install disk. lol

{Keep in mind that the more you put into this file the slower your program may load. You may consider keeping a seperate folder to pull from in order to keep the items easier to manage}

Now for the fun part. Open StoryBook Creator Plus. Go to your project. Open the page you are working on. Once you have selected the item you want to alter by clicking on it on your page, select the tools tab your Surfaces Icon is active when your element is selected. If your icon is not active, double check that you have activated the piece you want to work with. You should now be able to find your overlay or texture.

Lucky Me

Did you notice Pamela put a link to this little spot on the right side of her blog Digitreats? http://digitreats.typepad.com/creativeteam/2009/02/shout-february-themed-papers.html

WOW

I am working on a tutorial on using overlays and textures that we get from our FAVE designers in Storybook Creator Plus. Anyone interested?

Comments

Thank you everyone for your comments. I am finding that everyone has a little bit of knowledge to add to this. So glad you are willing to share. So be sure to read the posted comments for other tidbits. I will try to include some here in the posts also.

from Leslie B.

I always print my pages at Costco. I Save like you said, keep highest quality and then upload them from home to CostCo's site and pick them up whenever I make it to the store. I realize some people don't have that option. I'm curious if anyone uses snapfish for printing their books instead of creative memories to save money. I've never printed a book because I don't want to wait a whole year to print my stuff! I do books by the year.

I have only printed my books at Creative Memories so I won't be able to help with this. Maybe a reader will.

Oh, Leslie, I am glad you found me. I hope the original post answered your question from Digitreats. I tried emailing you and it came back.

Fabulous News

I have found someone else who is willing to help with this adventure. So when I get questions that Sharon can work on with me, I will be glad to have the input.

Saving as JPEG

I am still experimenting with this question. I think I would like to actually have pages printed to see how the end product is affected. I feel that I should walk through the process from the beginning to be of most use to other possible readers.

In order to save one page you would use The drop down menu under Save icon found on the Home tab. Select Save pages as... The dialog box that appears gives many options that can be confusing. For printing purposes we choose JPG for file type. PNG, TIFF, and PDF all have their uses, just using JPG for today.

Next, I am finding that Adjusting the Resolution to Good makes the file size much smaller without sacrificing quality.

The dialog box also includes a Page range choice. If you are working on saving one page out of a multi page Storybook, you can choose Current page or 1 selected page and it will work with the page you were on when selecting Save pages as...


My printing experience with other companies is limited. I will be glad to pass on any info that is offered here. If my info turns out to be inaccurate or lacking, let me know. I am willing to learn also.

Storybook Creator Plus

I have created this blog in order to help answer questions pertaining to software distributed by Creative Memories. I use Memory Manager and Storybook Creator Plus and would like to help anyone using these programs with any difficulties experienced in learning to use them. Have fun.

Hi

I go by geezee and follow Digitreats blog. This rough explanation uses Pamelas week one templates found herehttp://digitreats.typepad.com/creativeteam/monthly-templates.html

I have a couple hints for Storybook Creator Plus. Under my stuff in the Organize section you can load papers and embellishments. If you load your cropped* picture as a paper you can choose paper under the tools tab. When you have the png active on your page,(I enlarged the template in order to get as much of my picture as possible) then click the tools tab. Paper should be active. Click on the arrow under paper. All the papers you have loaded will become available to choose. Find your picture and select it. This makes it look like the png file I have attached. I am not a tutorial writer. Any questions left in the comment section will be my next effort to figure out and post.


*The template seems to chose to use different spots of the picture . I think this may be due to the original process of saving. I will investigate this further.