Let's Talk Storage....for your Digital Scrapbook Supplies

I've already written some blog post about how I store and organize my photographs using Google Photos, and about how I store and editable version of my finished Project Life pages on Dropbox.

Today I want to talk about storage of digital scrapbook supplies. These are the different digital papers, elements, alphabets, pocket cards, etc. that are available for purchase from places like The Digital Press, The Lily Pad, Pickleberry Pop, or any other of the bazillion or so design shops that are out there.

Typically when you buy digital supplies, you are given a download link and then you have to store the supplies you just bought somewhere. That place might just be on your desktop in a folder, or in Dropbox, or on an external hard drive. I'm not here to tell you which location is the best, or the most safe. I'm just hear to tell you what I've found to work for me.

Personally, I do have a folder on my desktop, but wanted a "cloud" location as well. I could use Dropbox, but I'm cheap and don't want to fork out the extra dough for more storage capability there. But I do have several Google accounts, and part of having a Google account is getting a gmail email address, and a host of other Google services, like Google Photos and Google Drive. Google Drive is what I want to talk about!

Google Drive gives you 15 GB of free (without having to pay to upgrade) storage with each Google account you create. (So, like I have four different Gmail email addresses--so that means I have four different Google Drive accounts--each with 15 GB of free storage!) That's a TON of space you can use for storing your digital scrapbook supplies, and it's in the cloud, so it's accessible and shareable from anywhere there's an internet connection!

It's really easy to set up folders (and sub-folders) to save your digital supplies. Here's how I do it.

First I purchase and download the supplies onto my computer. Then I open up Google Drive on the computer. If you have a Google account it's one of the options when you click on the "nine dots button" next to your account photo.

That will open the Google Drive window. From here, click on My Drive and under the down arrow are some options. Click New Folder to create a folder to store your supplies in.

Give the new folder a name. I tend to name the folders after the designer, knowing that I'm going to have further sub-folders that I will name after collections. But name them however makes sense to you!

Once you have created a main folder, you can click on the down arrow next to the folder name and create a New Folder with that one the same way you did above.

In this example, you can see I made a main folder called Digital Press (to represent the website I get kits from), then have a further sub-folder for the designer, Rachel Etrog, and then below that are the different sub-sub folders for the collections from that designer.

Once you have your folders and sub-folders created, double-click on the one you want to start adding your supplies into.

For this example I further created a collection sub-folder within the designer's folder (Twinkle Twinkle) and within that have separated the digital supplies into "elements", "journal cards", and "papers". I'm going to add items to the elements folder.

Now, all I have to do is drag and drop the files from my computer, into the middle of this opened folder.

The files will begin to download and appear within the folder. Depending on your internet connection, and how many files you are uploading, it can take a few minutes.

And that's it! Now you have your digital supplies stored in the cloud!

Stay tuned for the next blog post about how you can use some of these digital elements (pocket and journal cards, specifically) in the Project Life app---directly from Google Drive!

Part 2 - My Approach to Digital Scrapbooking - Starting from the Project Life App

In my last tutorial post, I talked about and showed the steps of how to take a photos from a Project Life app page and turn them into a digital page outside of the app, using Photopea.com. If you haven't read that post, click the link above and go read it first, and then come back to this one.

In this post I'm going to show you how I do a couple of more advanced things, like add drop shadows to my digital pages, for that extra little visual something.

For this page, I'm going to start off by placing some photos into pockets in the a Project Life app template, and leaving the rest of the pockets blank.

For this page I used template Design A in the PL app.

Then I export this page as is and save it to my phone's camera roll. It's okay that some of the pockets are blank, and you'll even get a warning message when you try to export, but just click Yes.

Those blank pockets will get auto-filled with your chosen page background color (in this case, white). So now I have this image to work with:

Take that image and save it somewhere where you can upload it to your computer. I use Dropbox, but whatever works for you. Once you have the page on your computer, you can begin to work to finish the page digitally.

Now that I've got everything on my computer,  I open up Photopea.com, and start a new project sized 3000 x 3000.

Once I have my 3000 x 3000 canvas to work on in Photopea, I drag my page onto the canvas.

I want to get rid of that white background, so that I'm just left with the photos as my layer. Look back at my last post for the steps to rasterizing the page, and then eliminating all that blank white space.

Next I want to bring into my project a background "paper". For this project, I'm actually going to use a white digital cardstock, that has a linen look to it. I add that to my project, so that now I have two layers visible in my Layers toolbar.

Remember that the item at the top of the Layers list, is the layer of your project that is "on top." So I  want my PL page with the photos to be on top of the white cardstock, so I made sure I drag the layers in that order.

So now that my "photos" are on top of the cardstock, I want to add a drop shadow, to give the whole page a sense of depth. To do that, I select the PL Page layer, and then at the bottom of the page, click the eff button (stands for Effects) and select Drop Shadow.

This will bring up a set of options to choose from when setting up your drop shadow. There are lots of options, and I don't know exactly what all of them do, but I'll show you what I know! (Remember I just stumbled across this process myself not too long ago, and have just been learning by trying things out!)

Drag this whole options box somewhere on the screen where you can see your page underneath, because as you change the options, you'll see those effects take place on your page and you can get an idea of how the change you make here will look on your page.

I have really only experimented with some of the options here in this section. I'll explain what they do.

Angle: This little circle icon with the small blue dot and the corresponding number in the black box represent where the "light" is coming from, which causes the drop shadow on your page. In this example, it's set at 30, which means that if your page was in the center of this circle, the light would be shining from the direction of the blue dot.  Try entering a number between 1-360 to try out shadows from different angles. It's a personal preference.

This is what the Angle set at 30 produces: a shadow on the left and bottom of the photos.

Distance - This lets you specify the distance your shadow will extend. The bigger the number, the longer the shadow stretches. Try changing this number and then watching your page underneath and how it changes. I tend to like just a subtle shadow, so I usually keep this number between 10-15.

Spread - From what I can tell, this adjusts how far the shadow spreads. I don't really mess with this one, and just leave this setting at 0%. But again, experiment, see what different number values do to your page.

Size - This one determines the size for the shadow. Again, I like a barely noticeable shadow, so keep this number 10 or less.

Once you like how these settings look, click OK to apply them to your layer. You will now see that in your Layers panel, you can see that this layer has effects applied. You can click the arrow next to eff and see a drop-down list of the effects you have applied.

Now here's what I think is cool. Once you've figured out how you want your drop shadows to look, you can save that layer style, and use it over and over again on the other elements you add to your page! If you add a button or a digital sticker to the page, it can have the same shadow effect as your photos! To save your layer effects, right-click the layer that has the drop shadow applied, and select Layer Style from the list that appears. Then click Copy.

Then add your next element to your page, and place it where you want. Then right click that layer in the Layers panel, choose Layer Style again, and click Paste. The drop shadow with the exact same settings will be applied, creating a uniform look to all your layers!

That's what I did her for the remaining elements I added to the page (the pennant banner, the YETI letters, and the baseball bat/ball digital stickers.

This page I actually put a piece of black digital cardstock under each of the photos, but still had the drop shadows applied.  But hopefully you can see how adding drop shadows adds a bit of depth to the whole thing.

Try it out and see how you like it!

I Made Another Team!

For those of you who didn't already know, I am part of ANOTHER digital scrapbooking Creative Team--this time working with Rachel Etrog Designs!

Rachel's products are sold through The Digital Press as well as through her own website, and feature fun colors, and unique patterns and digital elements.

Here's a couple of pages I've created using her products. I generally start off the pages in the Project Life app, placing the photos and Rachel Etrog's journal cards, and then digitally adding the 3D-looking elements afterward using Photopea (see THIS POST for how I do that).

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.