Picture Perfect? Not Really...But That's OK!

People may have varying opinions on what I'm about to share, and that's okay. To each their own. So here's the question.

"Do you scrapbook photos that are unclear, blurry, grainy, half/overexposed (from back when you actually developed film), etc?"

I say yes....to an extent. I personally don't want a whole album full of pictures you can't really enjoy, but sometimes, those blurry, tip-of-the-finger-covering-up-half-the-frame photos are the ONLY ones you have!

Now this isn't such a problem nowadays. You take a quick look to see if the photo turned out on your phone or digital camera and retake a quick one if needed. But for those old photos in a box in the attic, or in my case, hastily glued on a paper page a dozen or so years ago, you need to make a decision about how and IF you'll used them.

Here's a two-page spread I had scrapbooked on paper, with less-than-stellar photos---but they are the only ones, AND (most importantly) they tell a story all their own.

My wife wrote a couple of cookbooks in the early 2000s, and did the whole local news and talkshow circuit promoting them. She'd take her digital camera with her to the set and snap a couple of pictures (as seen in the page above). And when she would appear on television, her cute little grandparents would watch and then take pictures of her while she was on TV. How freaking cute is that! (see page below)

So this is what prompted this whole blog post today. Are they professional quality photos? No. Do they tell a story and therefore worth preserving? I say, whole-heartedly, YES!

So here's how I took these two pages and made them into a PL app scrapbook page, because let's face it, the paper pages, even have remained in this partially finished, no-journaling added state for far to long! :)

I wanted a template with fairly large card slots, so I could feature the photos I have prominently. So I opted for the Design Q Template.

I placed the photos from the pages into the card slots, and found that I had two square slots and the top 4x6 slot available for filler/journaling cards.

I decided that I really like the "Every Picture Tells a Story" saying that was on one of the cards in the Capture Life Themed Cards kit---but I wanted to save that last 4x6 card slot for my journaling.

So I put the card in, and then tapped and dragged (drug?) it to one of the square slots. 

But it was now sideways. I quickly rotated it using the rotation button. 

Then I added another card from the same kit into the other square slot (using the square card options from that set), added a journaling card, and wrote my memories down! Then I changed the background color on the page to match the journaling cards, and called it a day! :)

Let me know in the comments how you incorporate less-than-perfect photos into you pages!

I added journaling to the camera card first, then used a FFT box to add the heart (from the UniChar keyboard).

Rub a Dub Dub - A Paper to Digital Conversion

It's been a while since I completed a paper-to-app scrapbook page conversion, so here's one I did recently.

Plus this conversion features some NEWLY AVAILABLE FEATURES in the PL app, so keep an eye out for those!

Here's how the page currently sits in a binder on my bookshelf:

Notice anything missing.....like in just about every other paper page in my albums....no journaling! I'm not saying that you need to have a "story" for every page, but at least some names, locations, dates--that sort of thing. But as simply as that would have been for me to add to the page...for some reason I didn't. And now, the kids in those tub pictures are 20 and 15 years old!  Time to make amends!!

The first thing I did was to scan the page and save the photos individually in Google Photos (click for a blog post all about how I use Google Photos), and then from there, save them on my phone's camera roll.

Then I pulled those photos into a PL app template with three photo slots down the middle of the page: Design O.

I added the photos to those middle slots, and then added a journaling card from the Baby Edition for Him card set, that kind of looked like bubbles. I wanted to use this journaling card, because the design element on the card was on the left border, and when I used that same card repeatedly in the slots on the right side of the page, it created kind of a border.

Then I added plain white filler cards from the Neutral Cards kit, and kept the background color white,so that the whole page had a white backdrop. *Note: I always use No Drop Shadows on my pages, so that when I do use the same color background color as my blank filler cards, they blend in seamlessly.

So when I got to this point, I knew that I wanted whatever kind of writing I would add to the page to span across card slot borders, so to do that, I had to save my page as it was, and export it as a 12x12 image to my camera roll...

...and then bring it back into the app as a 12x12 photo using the Collage section of the app.

Tap the orange section of the app to bring up the collage templates.

The first option is the 12x12 square template which will fit your page perfectly.

Then tap the photo icon and bring in your page from your camera roll.

From there, I used the Free Form Text feature to add my journaling. I knew I wanted to have the phrase "Rub-a-dub dub, two boys in a tub!" going up one side of the page and down the other, so I typed that into my Free Form Text box, changed the font color to match my "bubbles", and rotated the text box so my writing was sideways.  I repeated the phrase twice so that it would stretch the entire height of my page, and added a little bathtub emoji in between.

Now here's where a NEW PL APP FEATURE comes into play! I didn't really like the fonts available in the app for my writing, so....I uploaded my OWN FONT! Yep, that's a new feature in the latest update in the Project Life App. You can purchase the ability to add your own fonts to the app (for $4.99)! Mind-blowing, right? (*This feature available for Apple NOW, and coming soon for Android).

I just copied some the fonts I already had on my computer into Dropbox, and then followed the steps within the app to add them to Project Life.

Once my custom fonts were uploaded, I just changed the font on my "Rub-a-dub dub" like usual, and I was all set!.  Then I added a line of dashes (------) in another couple of Free Form Text boxes, and arranged them underneath my writing for an added visual, and then added my names and dates.

Here's how the page looks, all finished up!

Making the Most Out of Blank Space

If you are like me, when the time comes to choose a template for your PL scrapbook page, you'll most often skip by the Design G - Design J templates because "Why would I want all that blank space around my photos?"

But with a little outside-the-box thinking, these templates are GREAT to use! Here's how you can make the most out of all that blank space! (Shout out to a Simply Project Life Facebook group user, Annaliese Katharina for first demonstrating this idea on one of her pages).

First, put your photos and journaling cards into the template as you normally would, and then adjust the background color to your liking.

Then save the page and export it as a 12x12 image.

Then open up the orange Collage section of the app.

Select the 12x12 template option, and bring in your page as a photo.

Once you have your page brought it, you can use Free Form Text in the "blank spaces" and add your text there!

Rotate and position your text where you want it, choose your font color and size, and there you have it! A template you will actually USE now, with just a couple extra steps!