Digital Scrapbooking Effort

I haven't done this in a LONG time...I really love the convenience and efficiency of this way to scrapbook memories, but it's a heckuva learning curve teaching yourself. I did a few layouts a couple of years ago before I went on the road, and once I immersed myself in Photoshop Elements, I was starting to get the hang of it...

Then, I met my special guy, I retired and life changes the course of your passions! We hit the road full time in a 40 foot motorhome, and I left behind a HUGE stash of regular scrapbooking materials, paper, punches and all kinds of cool embellishments.

You can get all that stuff in digital form, and it's not as expensive as buying the real 3D stuff, in my opinion. So slowly, I have been accumulating a "stash" in digital form on my hard drive of my favorite designer, Katie Pertiert at Designer Digitals, and a few other favorites...Ali Edwards, Anna Aspnes, and more...But Katie is my favorite...Her designs are clean, simple, BUT.....it's not as easy as it looks to layer, drop things down on digital paper, using Photoshop Elements. I really need to get back to lessons offered online by different digital scrapbooking sites.

Here's a layout I did today....I used a template from Designer Digitals, called "Today" by Katie Pertiet. It took me quite awhile to figure out how to get the photos UNDER the frames...Here's the template what it looks like before I started....

You choose digital papers and your photos...all the embellishments you see on the template are already there in place. There's one part in the template that is called a photo mask. It's in the upper left corner of the original template. I think I was supposed to put a large photo there and then make it opaque, but couldn't figure out how to do that. And here's my attempt at putting something together that means something to me....What should have taken just a few minutes or maybe 45 minutes after gathering photos, papers off my hard drive folders, took me about an hour and a half, trying to figure out how to do it! But, it's my first attempt in a long time. I'm not happy with the colors so I will work on redoing the same template this week and see if I can improve. I know I need to recolor the butterflies, I think that will be my first change. Got to make the journaling more pronounced as well...Got lots to learn and relearn, I can see that!

One thing about digital supplies, unless you print out a preview of everything you have, which would involve a TON of paper, it's hard to see what you have except in mini thumbnails. It took me forever to open and close files, choosing, rejecting, and drawing it together for this project. But I have a memory saved of a very special day...It's a start...