Overlays - Getting Around the Little White Lines

I've you've been creating Project Life pages in the last year or so, you've seen that some of the card kits have corresponding overlays--clear cards that go over a pocket and have either a black or white design that is meant to show over the top of a photo or a filler card.

They are super fun to use, and you can get a whole new look to your page when you use them.

But, if you try and use them over a blank color card, and combine that with the same color of a background for your page, you can see a thin white line around the edge of your pocket.

For example, I made this page today using the Big Shot 10 template....

...and added my photo in the big pocket. Then I added plain yellow cards from the new Gratitude Edition, and then added Gratitude Edition Photo Overlays over the top of them. Those confetti looking cards on the left and right, and even the "Count Your Blessings" artwork are overlays--colored and white designs placed over a plain yellow card.

Pretty nifty finished product, right? Well, it didn't start out that way. There was a little monkeying around with it first.

Here's what it actually looked like at first, after adding the overlays to the yellow cards:

(You may have to actually click on the above photo, so that it enlarges on your screen to see the little, thin white lines that are part of the overlay--all around the edge of that card slot.)

Normally this isn't an issue if you are just using an overlay over a photo or a filler card---unless, you also are using the same color background as you are for your plain cards.

It's a fairly easy fix, just takes a little extra work.
Here's how I fixed it.

First, I went into the Collage section of the app (the orange segment on the opening screen when you start the app). And I pulled up a blank card that matched the orientation of the card I wanted to use.
In this case, I chose the verticle 4x6 card option and put my plain yellow card from the Gratitude Edition in, and then added the Overlay over the top.

Then I exported that "page" and saved it to my phone camera roll. I did the same thing with the "Count Your Blessings" overlay over another blank yellow card, using the collage that had two, 3x4 card slots. I just made both card slots the same.

I exported this "page" to my camera roll as well. Then I went back to my full scrapbook page and in the large left and right pockets, I imported my collage as a photo from my camera roll. For the right-side card slot, I just rotated the confetti card so that I had a balanced look to the left card. And then I brought in the "Count Your Blessings" card as well.

At this point, all three of these cards I brought it still had that little, thin line. But since these cards were now "photos", I could slightly pinch and zoom on each of them just a teeny bit, so that they enlarged enough for the thin, white line to be cropped off. Now all three cards, with their yellow backgrounds, flowed seamlessly with the yellow background of the page.

So like I said, it takes a couple of extra steps, but can really make a visual difference to your pages, if you are going for that seamless look.

Try it out, see what you think, and let me know how it went in the comments!

CAUTION....Page conversion ahead!

Ok, who's ready for another page transformation? Well, I don't think you are here reading this for your health, so let's jump right in.

Here's the old paper page. I thought it was a cute, original idea, and a nice play on words. It was fairly easy to create, just some big pieces of scrapbook paper trimmed to squares and rectangles, some rubber stamped letters, and a little magic marker action to frame the sign. Oh, and adding the picture of that cute curly-haired kid in the corner. 

But what's missing, folks? Say it with me: THE JOURNALING!  And I'm kind of wishing that my picture was the focus and not the (albeit super creative if-I-do-say-so-myself) road sign.

So, let's walk through the process of how I transformed this page. First of all, let me just say this now, so that you Android users don't have to read on if you don't want to. I used the Free Form Text feature for most of this. Plus I used another app...kind of.  I added a new keyboard to my phone. First I downloaded the UniChar app. It is an app that let's you add a new keyboard to your phone (duh). It has a LOT of different kinds of characters (money symbols from other countries, shapes, arrows, etc.) Some of the shapes sets available in the app cost an extra fee, but the app itself is free and so are a bunch on useful shapes. I haven't paid for the extras......yet. I'm trying to make due with what's free.

Once you add the app and keyboard to your phone, when you click the little grid circle button on your phone keyboard (like you do to get to the emojis), it will cycle through your added keyboards and UniChar will be one of them.

So I started off with a card pocket that I pulled the road-looking card from the Textures Themed Kit into. Then I used the FFT feature to add the road sign "pole" using an enlarged capital "I" using the Raleway font (because in that font, the "I" is just a straight line), changed it a grey color, and positioned it on the bottom of my card.

Then, I used the UniChar keyboard to add in my "sign" shapes. First I pulled in a solid diamond shape, enlarged it, positioned it on my "pole" and changed it yellow. 

Then I added the diamond outline, changed it black, and enlarged it just smaller than the yellow background I was placing it on. Now, You'll notice in the image below, that the black line is rather thick for the sign. I wanted just a thin black border on the sign, so I had to add another, slightly smaller yellow diamond on top, and enlarge it little by little (and boy was that tricky with my fat fingers and my small phone screen) so that I covered up that thick black border until it was thin. (You'll see what I mean when we get to the end and the final product image below).

Then, I added my curly-haired boy pic. I wanted that to be the focus, so I chose to use the Big Shot 14 Template.  I also then added a plain yellow card (from the Textures Themed Kit, also) into the bottom slot, and added my text. I wanted to kind of mimic the black border on my homemade road sign, so I looked through the different Overlays kits in the PL app, for ones that had a black option, and finally found one I liked in the Little Picasso Overlays kit......with one little hiccup.

The overlay that I really liked, had the text "this is my favorite weather" on the bottom of the card (see above).  But I just used another FFT trick, which I've called "the masking technique" and pulled in another capital "I", rotated it horizontally, changed it yellow to match the card, and just covered up that unwanted overlay text!

Then I used FFT to add text to my road sign (I used two different font sizes, bigger for CAUTION and smaller for the rest), then added 2001 to the bottom of my journaling card, and whamm-o! Done.

Hope you found some little tid-bits you can use in your future PL pages. Tell me what you think in the comments. Seriously, lots of lookers and readers, but hardly ever any comments!

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!