Mighty Morphin Overlay Users...

I don't know how many of you are still reading this little blog of mine (I'm gonna let it shine!), but here's another example of a paper scrapbook page that I'd 90% finished with....except the journaling, and how I 100% finished it up as a Project Life app page.

Let's start off with the BEFORE:

Nothing fancy, just some matted photos and some room left for eventual journaling (we all know how that turned out!)

So the first thing I noticed was that there are three vertical photos. There wasn't any photo that I'd necessarily want on an app page that was bigger than the others, so that limited me to looking for a template that would have three same-sized vertical pockets.

Since there was three photos, I wanted to space them across the page, and I knew that I wanted the other three spaces for journaling. Template Design L fit the bill!

I knew that I wanted a dark green background for those journaling cards. So in a break from tradition, for this page I actually put in the blank green journaling cards (from the Soccer Edition set) first, and then added the photos.

The reason I chose the three blank green journaling cards was because I spent (probably too much) time going through all the card sets I owned looking for a card that I liked that had some kind of dark green element on it--a frame, some kind of design, etc. And I didn't like ANYTHING. So then I thought about just using a plain green card and then adding an overlay.

I found some white diagonal lines in the Just Add Color Photo Overlays set. So I added the overlay on top of the green card, and then typed my journaling. I had to left justify the text, and manually put in some hard returns to fill the space without overlapping the overlay.

I really liked how the diagonal lines were on the left side of the bottom picture, and wanted to mirror that on the other side. For this I had to save what I had so far on the page, and then recreate the green card using the Collage feature of the PL app. I don't know if you all have played around with this feature, so I'm just going to talk you through my process as if you haven't. :)

On the PL app homescreen, I tapped the orange section, and that brought up my default collage template. I knew that the slot on my page was a vertical 4x6 slot, so I tapped the grid button on the top left of the app to bring up the collage templates. I picked the 4x6 B template.

Then I put in the same blank green journaling card, and added the same diagonal line overlay on top of it. Then I exported that whole card as an image to my camera roll.

Next, I pulled up my page in progress again, and in the bottom right card slot I pulled in the collage I just created as an image. Once it was in the slot, I tapped the button on the top left (the button with the three slider bars--does this have an official name?) and that brought up the options for changing the brightness, saturation, etc--but most importantly, the option to rotate.

I rotated it two tap's worth (180 degrees) so that the diagonal lines were now on the left, closest to my photo.

A little snag at this point in the process. Since I brought in that card as a photo, I couldn't journal on it in the PL app. So I ventured out of the app entirely and opened up the photo from my camera roll in the LetterGlow app. I knew that the card would eventually be set on my finished page with the diagonal lines on the left, so if I were to add my journaling text, I'd have to do it upside down here in LetterGlow and then pull the card in as a photo again and rotate it. Whew, talk about outside the box thinking!

So I added my text (they have the Amatic font which I use in my PL pages, so that was a score for consistency!), and I turned it upside down using the tools in LetterGlow. Then I saved this new card to my camera roll, and went back into the PL app and pulled it in as a photo again.

Then it was another quick rotation for that card, and a few seconds to add larger text to the remaining journal card as a title, and BAM! Another paper scrapbook page completed as an app page!

Adding Text to Photos - Working Outside the PL app (...occasionally)

First of all, let me just share this little nugget. If you're one of the three people who actually read this blog (hi Mom!) you'll remember that I use Google Photos to store my pictures and scanned paper scrapbook pages before pulling them into the PL app. And I've talked about how I download the pictures I want to use from Google Photos to my camera roll, and then pull into the PL app from there because there wasn't a "direct route" to do so.

Well, take a gander at this youtube video my friend Steph Clay from Modern Photo Solutions made! There is a way to go straight from Google Photos to the PL app! Huzzah!



So, you'll have to try it out for yourself and see what you think. Personally it has been a little hit and miss for me, usually I can pull in the first photo, but it has trouble on any photos after that. I'll keep trying it though.

Anyway....now for the paper to digital page conversion this post is all about...
This one is a little bit different from the others I've shared so far, in that I'm going to use another app besides the PL app to add my journaling. You'll see why if you keep reading.

Firstly, here's the page I'm starting with:

Once again I had no journaling. But look at that piece of "Currency of the World" stationery I used as a background. If that doesn't scream late 1990s scrapbooking, I don't know what does! *Insert eye rolling emoji here* But I had some cute pictures, and that's what the page is mostly about, right?

So, I had this whole page scanned and saved into Google Photos, so I used the method in the video above and pulled the whole page into one of the large slots in the Big Shot 23 template.

Then I zoomed in until the picture of my son filled the space. And repeated that process for the other slot.

It was at this point that I knew there was no getting around that stationery that was going to show in the background. I had cut my photos too skinny, and if I tried to zoom in on the cutie in the pictures, by the time I "cropped" out the stationary, you couldn't see the outfit. So I decided to keep the photos as big as possible, and deal with the patterned paper.

I had those two empty card spots that I wanted to use for journaling, so I had the fantastic (if I do say so myself) idea of bringing in that patterned paper into those slots. So I went back to the original page and pulled a "blank" portion of the patterned paper into each of those slots.

I tried to use different parts of the patterned paper, so it wouldn't just look like the same "money" in both slots.

I liked the cadet blue coloring that I had matted my photos with originally, so I search through some of the PL app kits until I found one that matched pretty well (Baby Boy Edition), and added that as my page background.

Now, having done that I had pretty much made it impossible to add journaling via the PL app. I saved an editable backup copy of the page at this point so if I ever wanted to, I could come back to this version and remove the patterned paper slots and put in a PL journaling card (you know, in case a super cute new set gets released next week or something!)

But, having put those "photos" in the journaling slots, I can't add journaling with the PL app, so I'd have to go outside of the app to do it.

So I exported my page as a 12x12 and saved it to my phone's camera roll. Then I opened up the LetterGlow app (free version) and used it to add my journaling. (All I've learned to do in the LetterGlow app is from watching YouTube videos.)

This is what the app icon looks like if you searching in the App Store.

I opened the LetterGlow app and pulled in my picture from my camera roll, and added the text. I picked a size and font and color and then positioned it on the page (YouTube tutorials can show you all of this if you're interested--no use reinventing the wheel showing you here-plus I don't know how to make videos and I don't want to have you have to hear my voice on video! Ha!)

Once I had added my journaling, I saved the finished page onto my camera roll and then backed it up on Dropbox. So in total I had an editable backup of the page with the blue background and patterned paper in the journaling slots, a whole page image saved 12x12 of the page without any journaling, and then another saved 12x12 whole page image of the finished product:

Not too shabby for a few minutes work! So having learned this little trick about using the LetterGlow app to add text to photos, you can imagine the possibilities this opens up. I know that some people are "PL app ONLY" people, and that's perfectly fine. And for the most part, that's me. But every so often I want to do something that the PL app can't do, and so I branch out a little bit and use other apps.

Let me know in the comments which camp you fall into. PL app only, or sometimes combined with other apps. If so, what are your favorite other apps to use. I've tried LetterGlow and Over (similar functionality) but prefer LetterGlow.

Until next time....