Digital Scrapbooking–My First Layout!

At last I’ve managed to get going on my new Serif Craft Artist Platinum software for digital scrapbooking. My friend Wendy is absolutely brilliant at this, and has encouraged me no end, and been very helpful, and when this new software was launched at the end of January I decided to get it, and it’s certainly very powerful.

Last night I used one of their existing backgrounds and added a repeating pattern of tiny hearts, to created a background paper to print out for the ATCs I’m making (more on that when they are finished).

This evening, after coming down from my ARTHaven, I thought I’d have a go at working through some of the video tutorials for the software, and did the first one on Basic Skills, in about 6 parts, and made my first layout! It’s a picture of my parents a few years ago, at our local Pick Your Own fruit picking place.

I love the way you can make part of a picture project outside the frame! It’s really cool. Also, the shadow tool is awesome. All you do is select your object or group of objects, click on the shadow tool, and drag and drop the selected object in the direction you want the shadow, and as far from the object as you want it, and then drop, and lo and behold, a perfect shadow! Easy peasy.

The frames are really smart, too – you just drag a photo into the frame and it automatically crops the photo to fit. If you don’t like how it’s placed or how big it is, you can zoom and pan until it’s just right.

The scissors tool will cut out objects (like the “paper” with the text on it – this was using a square shaped cut) and you can make it as big or small as you like, and there’s an edge tool to make loads of different fancy edges, like a frayed edge to a piece of fabric, and the brushes are amazing too – you get all the usual things like charcoal lines etc. but also there’s stitching and other effects – all with full photo realism.

There is just so much to explore and to learn with this software, which is very powerful. It’s going to take me ages to work through all the tutorials and get the knowledge under my belt so that it becomes second nature.

It’s a lovely thing to be able to do when I feel the creative buzz but don’t have the energy to sit at my table in my ARTHaven and do “real” stuff.