Fly Away With Me Album

As much as I love digital every so often I get the itch to make an an album you can touch and feel!  It's always fun to merge digital into the tangible such as here and here; and now I've done it again and it was so much fun!  I really enjoyed how my Fly Away With Me papers and elements turned out and thought they would be a fun set to use to make an album for my mom of the kiddos.  You can find them in my Etsy shop too!  This time, I was also excited to use my new Silhouette Cameo machine!  I've got several pictures in this post but now realize that I did not take a picture of the cute cover!  Oh well, I'll have to steal it from my mom sometime and update this post with it.  However, I do have plenty of fun features to show you that you can incorporate into your own handmade scrapbooks!

First, a little note about printing.  This photo is just to illustrate that when printing your digital files, it really does matter if you select the correct type of media you are printing on.  That helps your printer use the correct color profile and give you the best possible match to what you see on your screen.  Now if your monitor is not calibrated correctly, that is a whole other issue!

 I started by planning the entire book in Photoshop.  I chose the dimensions I would use and shapes for the covers and pages.  I then clipped papers from my Fly Away With Me paper collection to create the pages.  Some I left blank, but others I added stamps or embellishments to for dimension.  I saved all of the covers and pages as .PNG files so I could use them with my Silhouette. 

Next,  I looked through my photos to see what and how many I wanted to include and my goodness did I get a ton of them in!  I printed them in varying sizes - mostly 3x3 inches, 4x4 inches, and 4x6 inches. 

Finally, I decided to make some unique pages for which I would need to create some cutting files to use with my Silhouette.  I determined the measurements for those and created them, saving them to .PNG files as well.

And now it was time to open the files in my Silhouette software to print and cut!!  Oh, the planning is the hardest part but this next step is so cool!  It's so fun to see everything starting to take shape!  After taking care of all the items I had ready to go from Photoshop, I also opened the Fly Away With Me Elements (and a few various others created by myself and other designers) and dragged those .PNG files into my Silhouette document.  In order to create a cutting path in the software, I use the trace feature and under Trace Settings I uncheck all the boxes except for Threshhold and move the slider there up to 100%.  Then I often select "Trace Outer Edge" as this will cut all the way around your shape.  However, if there is a shape that you some of the inside cut out you need to select "Trace."  For example, in the picture below, I have the word "Cherish" (from Heidi Swapp) and wanted to the white part cut out of the loops from the "H" so I selected "Trace" to do so.

With all my pictures, pages, and embellishments cut and ready to go, it was time to put this thing together.  I used chipboard from a cereal box and spray adhesive to adhere the paper to the front and back covers so that it was nice and sturdy.  For the interior pages I used Epson Premium Presentation Paper Matte and adhered the alternating pages together.  This paper has a pretty good weight when you use it this way.  Once I had the pages organized but before embellishing, I used The Cinch to bind it together nicely.  The reason I say BEFORE embellishing is that inevitably, something always goes wrong when punching holes for me so if I have to redo a page, then there isn't a ton of wasted work and materials.  Also, it helps you put your embellishments in an area of the page that won't interfere with turning the book.  Now, here are a few of the details I'd like to share with you.

I created these stacked photo mats so I could put many pictures on one page.  These shapes I created and cut them with my Silhouette.  I used Heidi Swapp's No Limits Paper pack below.  The newsprint had a nice contrast to the papers.  You can put pictures on both sides and it was a fun way to group things together.

 Then I made these cute little divided pages.  They were tricky to bind but, in the end, it is fun to flip the half pages back and forth.  I did have to insert the pictures (front and back) before binding them.  Again, I cut these shapes onto The No Limits paper.  I added some fun tabs and embellishments here and there to spruce them up!

 Since the album was for the entire year, I had to have a special page documenting our sweet new addition.  The onesie cut shapes were from Deana Rutter and the cut words were from Karla Dudley.

 Just have to point out one "love" about the Silhouette again - look at that tiny kite string, cut perfectly! You really do need some of the tools to get that out and onto your page but it is awesome to have something so delicate and precise.

 We had a bunch of cute Christmas photos and I had thought to do a separate album but then I decided why not just put it all together.  So I made this envelope-type page and included these tabbed photo files with journaling that I cut onto red and green cardstock - tis the season right?

 I was able to fit four of these folded files on each side, each containing two 4x6 inch photos.

 And ta da! That's it.  I hope you found it inspirational and are getting ready to make your own album! 

When one door closes...

Well, I have to admit that I'm pretty sad to see Design House Digital close shop.  I have been at that site as a scrapper for a long time and was very excited to join on as a designer last December.  Alas, the shop owner has decided to close the virtual doors and I must determine the course of Little Birdie Digital Designs.

So what's next?  I don't want to stop designing but right now just isn't the right time for me to join another digital scrapbooking site.  I've got a lot of commitments at home with our two little ones and I'm just not the type to pull an all nighter!  So, in the mean time, I'm working on uploading many of my existing kits (but not all) to my new store on Etsy!  You can find it here.  At this moment everything in my store is available via instant download, so please, stop by and check it out.  Bookmark it and come back later too!

As for future plans, well, I've long wanted to do a few other types of design work so while I still will put together a scrapbooking kit here and there, you will also see my shop start to fill up with wall art, home decor, DIY printable projects, invitations, party printables, and who knows what!  I'm quite excited about being able to put everything together in one place.  I mean, I get excited thinking about downloading some party printables and then later scrapbooking about it with coordinating items, don't you? 

Well, I hope you will check back often to see what I'm up to. 

Sarah

Summertime! (And a special freebie)

Hi everyone!

Yes, summertime is finally here and so I've made a kit to celebrate it!  You can grab the papers, elements and the add on flair pack for 30% off today only at Design House Digital.
Perfect for all those fun summer memories!

 Plus I have a sale weekend coming up!  June 22nd and June 23rd my entire store will be 25% off so it's a great time to grab any items you have on your shopping list.

I will also have a special offer available.  You can grab these Summertime Journal cards FOR FREE during my sale weekend!  But don't forget because they will go back to full price once the weekend is over.

Additionally, one item in my shop will be available for only $1.  So take a look and see what will help inspire you to create a digital layout or any digi craft project.

And now a few layouts featuring Summertime:

LO by Heather Steed

I'm also excited to be releasing two template packs.  Sometimes when I'm stuck or just want to get a layout going fast, I reach for a template.  They are such a great starting or finishing point.  I love that you can follow the template exactly and make a knock-out layout fast but that you can also add onto it to make it your own.  You can flip and rotate them, add extra embellishments, add an extra photo or remove one, add or remove the journaling, and on and on I could go!  It's a great way to scrapbook when you just need a little inspiration.  In both of these template packs you will find layers to add your papers and elements to.  They also include layer shadow styles which you can use or turn off to create your own.  I give a few suggestions on what types of elements you may want to add but really it's all up to you.  For example, I you will see a layer called "Anchoring Element" and that simply means put something here that will hold it all together.  That could be a button, brad, staple, flower, ribbon, etc.  Anything that "anchors" the other layers into place and helps create some focus on your layout.  Well, enough about that, here they are:

 The Circle It Templates feature layouts that focus on using circles to draw your eye to the photos and create movement around the page. 

The Line It Up Templates use linear layouts with a little something extra to add some interest to your pages.  I hope you will find both fun to use and they are also 30% off today only!
And in case you missed it, I have a new and exclusive freebie on my Facebook page for my fans.

Hope you have some digi-fun!

Sarah

Facebook Freebie for Fans!

It's been on the to-do list for quite some time but I'm happy to say that it is finally here!  I have a Facebook freebie for Little Birdie Fans.  "Like" Little Birdie Digital Designs on Facebook and get a set of three digital scrapbooking templates that are exclusive to Facebook Fans.  These templates are a little sampler of some new releases I have coming up in the next few weeks and you can have them now, for FREE!  Click HERE
Enjoy!

DIY Alphabet Book (or Flashcards) for baby (or Toddler)

I had a lot of fun making my latest project and now you can too!  Every Tuesday at Design House Digital we are releasing fun, easy, printable projects!  Translation - fun, easy, quick project for you to make that doesn't require a lot of fancy software or tools.  How great is that?  Look for my new kit coming this Tuesday, June 4th!

I really enjoy flipping through picture books with my kiddos and teaching them objects.  It's fun to see my toddler point out things to my baby and say what they are too!  So I decided to make a little alphabet book that would be filled with things from our home, our life.  And you can do the same too!

This do-it-yourself kit contains all that you need - a PDF printable with alphabet letters, a PDF printable with a front and back cover, instructions, ideas, and extra letters in JPEG format so you can customize your book or flashcards further.  In short, you take picture of the objects in your home for each letter and then assemble them into a little book.  It also works great if you want to make some flashcards instead. 

This is also a great project to do with older siblings.  I had a fun time working with my toddler to find objects around our house (and people and pets too!) to photograph for the book.  The kit includes a listing of items for each letter to help you along.  Once I had my pictures, I opted to do a little photo editing and include the name of the object directly on the photo but you don't have to be that fancy at all.  No naming is required but you can always just use a sharpie or other permanent ink pen to write out the words as well if you wish.  For this project I decided to use a spray adhesive to mount the pictures onto the back of the alphabet cards.  It just seemed like a great way to ensure the corners were stuck down and it was pretty darn fast too.

I'm really excited about how the book turned out!  It's so cute to see my toddler in lots of the pages too and baby loves his older brother!  I opted to bind my book using some extra wire I had from a different project using my Cinch, but you can simply punch a hole (or several) and use binder rings to keep it together.  Either way will be easy for baby to turn pages and look at letters and objects.

And best yet, this cute project won't take up too much time!  It took me about an hour working with a toddler to take the pictures, editing aside it took only a few minutes to download them from the camera and send them to be printed.  I spent 20 minutes printing the PDFs and cutting them to size.  Another 20 minutes to paste them back to back and another 10 to use my binding machine.  All in all, this is a cute project to get done in under two hours.