Part 1 - My Approach to Digital Scrapbooking - Starting from the Project Life App

As you may remember from my last post, I mentioned making the Creative Team for The Digital Press - an organization that teams up with talented designers of digital scrapbooking products.

Part of my responsibilities as a Creative Team member is to pick one of their designer's products, kits, or collections, and then to make a scrapbook page layout with them.

This was a little bit of a challenge for me because I didn't have any digital (outside of the Project Life app) scrapbooking experience. But I'm learning. And believe me, if I can do, so can you!

I decided to walk you through my process show you how I go about creating a digital page, based on a Project Life page.

The first thing I do is to pick the photos I want to use, and pull them into a Project Life app template and position the photos in the pockets where I want them.

I knew I wanted some sort of journaling on this page, and for me personally, it's easier to journal within the Project Life app than to try and do it after I convert this into a digital page. So I needed to add a journaling card.

Now the nice thing about working outside of the Project Life app when it comes to card kits, is that there is a whole big, bright, new world of possibilities! A lot of the designers at The Digital Press create what they term "pocket cards" kits. Since the theme of my page is going to be about my favorite donut shop, I looked for a donut themed pocket card set, and found one called Hole Foods. It is a nice little kit with a few journal card options in it. So I purchased the kit, downloaded the files to my computer, saved them in a folder on Dropbox where I could access them through the PL app, and pulled one of the cards into the middle card slot as a photo.

Next, because this card is technically now a "photo" within the app, and not a true journaling card, if I want to write on it in the PL app, I need to use FFT. (Learn how to add FFT to photos HERE).

The final step I do in the Project Life app is to add a background color which will fill in all the empty photos slots when I save and export the page. For this page, I chose a yellow color which was distinct from all the other colors in the photos (that will come into play a little later on), and saved and exported the page to Dropbox, where I could access it from my computer.

On my computer, I have a folder set up with all of the digital supplies I'll need for the page. There are matching kits of Hole Foods digital scrapbook papers, and elements (basically digital 3D elements like stickers, word strips, washi tape, eyelets, etc) that I want to use, so I downloaded these files and saved them to my computer.

Then I went to an online photo editing website Photopea.com. I don't know if it's pronounced FOTO-PEE or FOE-TOPIA or FOTO-PEE-UH (I've heard it all three ways on the Youtube videos I've watched learning how to use it). But this website is like a free version of Photoshop--apparently it does a lot of the same kinds of things. I don't know how to use Photoshop, and don't have it on my computer anyway, so being told about Photopea was a happy little accident! :)

Disclaimer: I am in no way an expert on this program, nor am I probably going to call things the correct names when I'm explaining how I use it. I'll just try and explain it in a way that I hope makes sense.

So I just typed in Photopea.com in my Google search bar and pulled up the website. I start off by clicking New Project.

Next I choose a size for my "canvas" or work area. I always start off at 3000 Width x 3000 Height in pixels, which is a true 12 x 12 size. And I choose Background: Transparent. I don't know the reason for this, since I just cover it all up with my page layout anyway, but that's what the Youtube video I watched said to do. :)

That gives me a screen that looks like this. The checkered surface is my 12 x 12 page that I'm going to be building on. In the photo editing world, gray and white checkered = transparent.

There are a lot of menus and toolbars in this program, and rather than trying to explain what each one does up front, I'll just mention them as I use them in my page creating process.

The first thing I do is drag my exported, yellow PL page onto the checkered area and drop it there.
It will fill the page space and give me my canvas to work from.

Basically, Photopea is a digital editing program that is based on building layers upon layers. I want my photos and journaling card to a be a single layer of my page. So I want to get rid of all that yellow.  I have found that to do that, I first have to "rasterize" this whole image. How's that for learning new vocabulary?  From what I understand, when you rasterize an image, you convert it into pixels. What it was before it becomes pixels, I don't actually understand, but it's a necessary step, and an easy one.

On the left side toolbar, there is a Rectangle Select button.

See where it says "New Project.psd" ? That's the name of this project I'm working on. I'll need to keep coming back to this and clicking on that file's name to return to my "whole page" after I begin to add different layers.

I click the Rectangle Select tool to activate it and then draw a rectangle around my whole page, so it's outlined with a dotted line. Then I go to the Layer menu along the top of the page, and choose Rasterize.

This converts the image into pixels. The next step is to tell Photopea to remove all those yellow pixels. To do that, I'm going to select the Magic Wand tool from the left-side toolbar. Some of the tools on the left-side have a small arrow in the bottom right corner, meaning there are sub-options. The Magic Wand tool is a sub option of the Quick Selection tool.

Once I have this tool selected, I'm going to click on the yellow area of the page. Because I chose a yellow color that isn't found anywhere else on the page, the Magic Wand can detect that huge yellow area as one piece, and it outlines it all in a dotted line.

Once that yellow area is outlined, I tap the Delete key on my keyboard, and all of the yellow is deleted, leaving a "transparent" grey/white checkered layer in its place.

One area of the Photopea software I want to make sure you understand is the Layers panel. This area is on the bottom right corner of the screen and shows the individual layers that make up your page. The layers of my page are all listed individually.

In the image above, you can see that there are two layers currently in this project: a Background transparent layer, and the layer that's made up of my photos. There is a small thumbnail of what each layer looks like, but these in my opinion are really hard to see. You can double-click on the name of the layers and type in your own names if that will help you keep them straight. Believe me, once you get creating, you can have sometimes 20 or more layers, so that's a good idea. I'm going to rename my photos layer as Photos.

Now we are ready to start building the page (finally!).  The first thing I want to do is to replace the background layer with a digital patterned paper. To do that, I open the folder on my computer where those digital papers are stored, find the one I want, and click and drag it into what I call the "bits and pieces" toolbar. It's the small area directly above the "canvas" that is meant to hold all the pieces you want to add to your page. Currently the only thing in this area is my New Project.psd. I'm going to drag my patterned paper there next.

In the picture below, I'm dragging a patterned paper to that area.

Each new file I drag to this area opens up as it's own image on the screen.

So now you can see I have my New Project.psd and this new WWC_HoleFoods_Pattern. I can toggle back and forth between the two by clicking the file names within the "bits and pieces" area.

Ok. Here's where there may be a better or faster way to do things, but being self-taught, this is how I do it. I want this blue patterned paper to be the bottom layer of my page, with my photos on top of it. So I need take this whole patterned paper layer and copy it. To do that I use the Rectangle Select Tool again and draw a box around the whole patterned paper page until it has a dotted line around it.

Then I use the keyboard shortcut to Copy (Ctrl + C--the same shortcut as in a Word document). Then I switch back to my New Project file in the "bits and pieces" toolbar, so I'm looking at my photos and transparent background page, and then Paste the patterned paper on top it (Ctrl + V) on the keyboard.

Now if I look at my Layers panel, I can see I now have three layers for this page: Background, Photos, and Layer 1 (which is the patterned paper I just pasted).

I'm going to rename Layer 1 to be Patterned Background so I'll recognize it later.  I can always tell which layer I have selected in the panel, because it turns a darker color.

In this image, I have the Photos layer selected, you can see it's a darker color than the other layers in the list.

Now, the way the layers work, is that whichever layer is shown at the bottom of the list, is also the very bottom layer of your page. I can reorder the layers any way I want, by clicking the layer to select it, and then holding down my mouse and dragging it up or down in the list.  I wanted my photos to be on top of the Patterned Paper, so I did just that (see image above).

Now if I look at my New Project page, I can actually see that my patterned paper is underneath my photos.

Pretty snazzy, eh?

Now I can add as many other elements to the page as I want, layer upon layer, following the same steps as I did with the patterned background.

1. Drag and drop the digital item (paper, embellishment, etc) into the "bits and pieces" area.
2. Use the Rectangle Select tool to draw a box around the element.
3. Copy it, then switch back to the New Project version of the page, and Paste it there.

When I add elements that are smaller than the 12x12 canvas of the page, after I paste them onto the page, I'm going to have to move them around and position them where I want them.

I want to add a digital donut sticker element to the page. I have followed the steps above, and now after I did the Paste step, I have the donut sticker right in the middle of my page.....which is not where I want it!

Right now the donut sticker is right on top of my journaling and photos!

So, remember how I said that everything I add to the page is in layers? If I look at the Layers panel, the one that is selected is that donut sticker. When new layers are added to your page, they are named Layer 1, Layer 2, etc. That donut sticker actually came in and was named Layer 1, but I renamed it Donut Sticker. Now to move it where I want it.

I can see that the Donut Sticker layer is at the top of the list, so it's also the top layer on my page, meaning it's going to cover up whatever layer is beneath it.

To move that layer around, I make sure it's selected (dark in the Layers panel), and then I click the Move Tool from the left-side toolbar and then along the top, make sure that the Transform Controls box is checked.

Transform Controls puts a box around the selected layer (the donut sticker) and gives me the ability to move it around the screen to position it.

I can click and drag the object wherever I want it to go on the page. I can also rotate the item, enlarge, or shrink it by grabbing on to any of the square "handles" on the box around the image and clicking and dragging. If I want the object to enlarge or shrink proportionally, I'll need to hold down the Shift key on my keyboard when dragging it bigger or smaller. Otherwise, if I don't use the Shift key, I'll just squish or stretch the image. To rotate the image, I'll move my cursor to one of the corner handles and it will change to a rotation icon. I can then just drag my mouse in the direction I want the image to rotate.

You can see in this image that I'm in "rotation mode" because of the black double-ended, curved arrow icon.

I'll show you one more thing and then turn you loose to create something of your own. I'll show you how to put a new element under the Photos layer, but on top of the Patterned Background layer.

First, I'll drag and drop the new element into my "bits and pieces area". This new element happens to be another full sheet of patterned paper that I want to use just a strip of. So when I first drag and drop it into the "bits and pieces area, I can see the whole sheet.

Instead of using the Rectangle Select tool, I'm going to use the Crop tool (from the left-side toolbar) and draw a tall skinny shape on the patterned paper with my mouse.

When I've got the shape I want, I'll click the Checkmark button at the top of the screen (see above) and that will crop the shape from my full sheet of paper.

Then, I'll switch to the Rectangle Select tool, draw a box around the strip I just made, Copy it, and go back to my New Project page and Paste it there.

This new layer shows up in my Layers panel as Layer 1, so I'll rename it Strip, and then drag that whole layer in the panel until it's between my Photo and Patterned Background layers (see image below).

Then I'll make sure that Strip layer is selected in the panel, switch to my Move tool from the left-side toolbar, and use the mouse to drag that layer to where I want it on the page.

From here,  you just continue to add elements, position them on the page, & layer them like you want until you've got a finished page!

There are some more advanced things  I've done to this page, like adding drop-shadows and things, but you get the main point, right? Maybe I'll do another blog in the future about those advanced things, once I've experimented a bit more and get a process down.

Creative Team? Count Me In!

Hey there readers!

So, I branched out of my comfort zone a little bit and applied to be on the Creative Team for The Digital Press a few weeks ago......and made it!

It's official! I get to make and submit my pages using their products for the world to see! They sell digital scrapbook kits, papers, stickers, pocket cards, etc. in their Shop, and when I see products that will work well with the pages I'm already creating, I whip one up and feature their goodies on my pages!

Fun, huh!

I've already made a couple of pages, but it's been a little outside my comfort zone, since some of their products can be used in the Project Life app (like the pocket cards)-bringing them in as photos in the page pockets, but a lot of the products they sell are digital products which means I am taking a crash course in using a photo-editing program called Photopea to be able to add the different scrapbook elements to my pages in combination with what I'm doing in the PL app.

Once I get a better feel for just what this new process is, I'll post some how-to instructions like I have in the past. But don't worry, I'm still going to be making pages with the PL app, but now I'm not going to be limited to what is available with in the app, kit-wise!

I'm excited!

Here's an example of what I've made so far with The Digital Press products:

The large alphabet letters and black/white cards on this page are pieces from the digital designer ninigoesdigi. Super fun to work with these amazing products. Click the links to see these products up close!

Feel free to check out The Digital Press and all the different parts of their website: The Shop, The Forums, The Gallery of page examples, etc!  Plus they've got an amazing $1 sale going on ALL MONTH LONG for dozens of digital kits and embellishments!

Thanks friends!

Backing Up Finished Pages - Both JPG versions and Editable Backups

This blog post is about two things really: saving and backing up your Project Life app pages (both the JPG version of the page, and the editable backup version), and then how to bring an editable backup version back into the app after it's been saved, should you ever need to make corrections.

Saving and Backing Up PL App Pages

So, you've taken the time to create an awesome scrapbook page in the Project Life app--now what?

If you never plan to delete the page out of your Project Life app, then fine. You're done. Go on with your life. But eventually, you'r app is going to start running slower and slower because it's taking up so much "space" on your device.

But if you ever wanted to do anything in the future with your scrapbook pages (besides looking at them on your device) like print them, or email them, or save them permanently, or post them online; then you really should save them outside the app, and back them up.

I'm going to share what my process is. Is it the the only way to do it? Nope. Is it the best way to do it? Well, it works for me. Maybe you have additional ideas or ways that you like do things, but like I said, this is MY process, and I'm sharing it with you.

First, I create a page. (Sometimes easier said than done, as I often spend way too much time deciding on cards/fonts/colors)

My finished page. Nothing too fancy, just DONE! :)

Then, I export a 12 x 12 version of the page and save it in my Dropbox account.

On Dropbox, I have Project Life folder that I've subdivided into additional folders by year.  I also have an Unsorted folder that all my saved pages go into initially.

When I export the page to Dropbox, I take the time to name the page. The Project Life app automatically gives the page a name and the .JPG extension, but I always change that default name to include the year, then a hyphen, then a description of the page. In this example it's 2000-Easter Egg Hunt.jpg.

I pick my UNSORTED folder within Dropbox, change the file name, and then tap Save in the upper right corner.

And immediately after that, while I'm in that "saving mode", I also export an Editable Backup to the same UNSORTED Dropbox folder, with the name page name, but this time, since it's an editable backup, instead of the .jpg file extension, is has a .plpage extension. Applying the right extension is done automatically in the app depending on whether you are exporting a page or a editable backup.

Once both the page JPG and the editable backup are in Dropbox, when you view them through the Dropbox app (or on the computer in Dropbox) you can see a thumbnail version of the .jpg file, but not of the .plpage file.

Now, because I only use the free version of Dropbox, that doesn't have a ton of storage space (I think only like 5 GB or so), I don't keep the 12 x 12 .jpg versions of the page in Dropbox for very long. Image files tend to take up a lot of space, more so than the .plpage versions do at least.

I download the 12 x 12 .jpg versions from Dropbox to my computer, and then store them on Google Photos in albums organized by year. I've talked about my Google Photos organization process in a previous post.

Once I've uploaded the 12 x 12 .jpg versions to Google Photos, I delete the page from my PL app, and delete the .jpg version from my Dropbox. I only keep the editable backup copies in Dropbox.

Then I move those editable backup copies out of the Unsorted folder and into corresponding yearly folders I've made my Dropbox.

Here's an example of my 1983 folder on Dropbox. You can see that I have two editable backup files stored here.

But why do you need to keep an editable backup if you have already saved the .jpg version on Google Photos?

Good question. Maybe for you, you don't need or want to. That's fine. To each their own. But for me, it is inevitable that I will have a typo in my journaling on a page that I only see after the fact (even though I've read that journaling card like 235 times!)

Or maybe, in the newest Project Life app update, an amazing new card kit comes out that will work so much better than what I used originally. Basically, the ability to save an editable backup version of your pages is so that you can (if you want to) pull the page back into the Project Life app and make edits, WITHOUT having to recreate the whole page again from scratch. The editable backup preserves your card choices, your fonts, you photo editing--everything from when you made the page and exported it the first time.

Some people export their pages and then delete it off their app and are done. Good for you if your process includes just those steps. Me, I like to export and save a jpg version and an editable version---just in case I need to fix it later. I have the storage space to do that, and I'm just anal enough that typos would bug me too much if I didn't fix them!

Restoring an Editable Backup to the Project Life App

So, let's say that you do find a typo and want to go back and fix it after the fact. How do you do it?

To pull an editable backup page back into the Project Life app, you have to open the location where you have saved that backup, which for me is in Dropbox. I open the Dropbox app on the same device that I have the Project Life app on, and I go to the yearly folder where editable backup version is saved.

Let's say that I found a typo on this 1983 Let George Do It page. 

I tap the title of the page layout and it starts to try and open, but since Dropbox can't "read" the .plpage file extension, it can't show you a preview of what the page looks like, so it  just shows the name of the file.

Then I tap the three little dots icon on the top right corner of the Dropbox app, and choose Export.

Then I choose Copy to Project Life.

That opens up the Project Life app, and the PL app will ask if you'd like to save the page to your library.

I tap Yes, and the page is added to my Completed Pages library.

Depending on when you originally saved the page is where it will appear in your list of Completed Pages. In this case, the page was originally saved 49 weeks ago! So you may have to scroll to find your page.

Once the page is back in the PL app, you can open it and make changes to any part of the page: photos, journaling, card choices, fonts, etc.

Then, don't forget to re-save and re-export the corrected version as an jpg version and as an editable backup. If you want to use the same file name as you originally did, when you save it, it should ask you if you want to replace the old one (just like it does in other computer programs). Say Yes to that, and you won't have to worry about having two version, one with typos and one without!

So that's my process. If it works for you, great. Feel free to use it with my blessing! ;)  If you find a way that works for you, I couldn't be happier for you. Just sharing what work for me.