Adding Perfectly Placed Photo Mats

One feature that I love using in the My Memories Suite software is adding Photos “Mats” to some of the photographs. You can determine the thickness of the mat and then color match it perfectly with a color from your layout or even the photograph. Here’s how to add mats to your photographs:

1. Simply select the photograph you want to add a color mat to and click on the “Mat” button and a Mat Properties box will appear.

2. First select the thickness of your mat. Default is 10, but for this example we changed it to 4.

Designer Spotlight: Emily Taylor

All of us here at My Memories Suite are very excited to introduce to you our first professional illustrator, Emily Taylor. We wanted to get to know her a little better, so here's her bio:



Since 1993, I’ve been working at being an artist—I’ve had a successful mural-painting business that gave me the opportunity to work in some of the finest homes and businesses in the West. I’ve designed rubber stamps, and wallpaper designs. I’ve even sold my prints on QVC!

However, it wasn’t until I became a mother that my focus shifted and I found my niche in painting illustrations of women and children in daily domestic life. Today, I’m a diet-coke-drinking, PTA-participating wife & mama of three!

I cook, clean, do laundry and care for my family, so the inspiration for my work is always around when I take off my apron and get ready to paint! Here's an idea of what you can do with my artwork. I printed these out on iron-on transfers and transferred them to these dishtowels.

Good Food & Great Talent

It was so much fun to go to lunch with some of our very talented designers, The Ettes & Company. Fayette & Annette joined Sandy (our talented in-house designer) and the rest of our team for a great lunch and to talk about their creative ideas for My Memories Suite. But of course we had to discuss the previous night's American Idol performances before we could get to business. If you haven't checked out the darling designs we offer by Ettes & Company, you should!!

Taking Country Chic for a Ride

I love the textures and depth of these beautiful papers designed by Traci Murphy in this new Country Chic collection.

The natural, sort of earthy colors worked well for some pictures of my daughter. So I picked one of the rich background papers and brought in the coordinating blue paper as a photo to create a coordinating photo mat. Then I topped off my layout with a great title that I created using a yummy font from  Lettering Delights called LD Antique.

Sometimes less is more...remember a beautiful background paper is all you need to create a stunning layout.

I say all the important stuff on Facebook . . .

 I was on Cathy Zielske's blog and she had the greatest idea on how to use your Facebook or Twitter posts.

If you feel like you are the only person who doesn't have a Facebook account it is because you are. Seriously, it is time, sign up, it won't hurt.

Once you have your account you will find yourself breaking your whole life down to little "posts" or "tweets". These are basically little journal entries about what you are doing every day and they make a great album. I pulled my favorite posts to create a "Facebook Fav's" album.  Now, I just drop my favorite posts and the picture into the album and at the end of the year I am going to have it printed into a 6x6 book, or maybe a tear off calendar - then when it's January 15, 2010 I can look back and see what I was doing on that day last year!

To create the album I started with a blank page, added a square shape, made it black, added another square on top of that, made it white.  Finally I added the title and year.  I didn't want to have to remake the page for each entry so I right clicked next to the thumbnail of the page at the bottom of the page and chose "duplicate page".  Now I can just go in and add photos, text etc - super easy!  Thanks Cathy!

Font Fascination: Lettering Delights

If you've never checked out our favorite font website, Lettering Delights you may want to soon.

They're offering up some freebies and a discount on your purchase until the end of March. Click here to learn more.

Remember any fonts you install to your computer/system will appear in My Memories Suite. So if you need a font face-lift then check out Lettering Delights.

New Designer: Jill Means

Also known as Legacy Digital Design, Jill Means graduated from Brigham Young University in Graphic Design in 1997. She has been the owner/designer of her own business since then.

She has had opportunities to work with a variety of corporations and organizations providing creative design solutions. As a mother of five children, she has always had a passion for creating and preserving family memories. She started creating her own photo books and projects, but couldn't easily find artwork that reflected her clean, simple style. So, only a few months ago Jill launched Legacy Digital Design using her own signature style and is now excited to share her designs with My Memories Suite by Polaroid.

You can find Jill's designs in the MMS Design Shop. But check back often, many more designs will be released in the next couple months, so stay tuned....

Save, Save & Save Again

This may seem like something you should already know, but after walking away from unfinished projects a couple of times, I have learned to continually hit the “Save” button. Make it a habit to save whenever you complete a page or journaling. And always save before you leave your computer. You’ll never regret saving too much!

You’re the One - Single Page Layouts from Templates

Have you ever wanted to create just one page from the cute templates available? Many times I only want to create a one page layout and not an entire template or album using one theme. It’s quick and easy with only a couple of simple steps:

1. Launch the MMS program and select the Create Album from Designer Template .

2. Select the template set you want to pull a page from and then click on “Custom Page Arrangement”.

3.  A new window will open and reveal all the pages within that particular template set. Select the page you want and drag it into the bottom are under “Custom Page Arrangement”. Click on “Continue” and name your Album and start creating.

My Memories Suite Newsletter - March 2009

Download Free Upgrade to My Memories Suite

Have you all updated you’re My Memories Suite software to version 1.1?  If you haven’t, it’s quick, easy and you’ll love it!  Just click here and choose the Windows or Mac download.  The new version has an added calendar option under the “Share” menu that includes a Calendar Wizard to walk you through creating a calendar.  It really makes it so easy!  Despite my reliance on my electronic calendar I still love looking up every day at a beautiful printed calendar.  I just created a birthday calendar for my extended family.  I used “Lovable You” from the Ettes for the background and grabbed the calendar from the embellishment folder from “Vintage Calendar.”  Every month lists the birthdays for the month and has a picture of the birthday boy or girl.  I never forget a birthday, I get to see my cute family every day and I scored some points with my siblings, can’t beat that!

Do something with your photos!

Have you ever wondered what you were going to do with all the digital photographs you have sitting on your computer? Scrapbooking with paper and glue is not your thing, but you feel guilty that all your memories are stuff away in files or boxes and your family doesn't get to enjoy them?

Quick & Easy Invitations

One of our users sent us this idea from her blog. Thanks for sharing!!

http://allreddesign.blogspot.com - I needed some quick invitations for church last week. I started by creating a landscape page from scratch. I dropped in a new paper design from the Be My Guest Pack by Ettes & Company and then added ONLY text. It's amazing what you can do with beautiful fonts!



I exported (share button) my page out as a JPG. And then I printed it out on white cardstock. From most PCs you can print 4-up to a page from your preview screen. But I dropped it into Word and pasted a few copies so I had four to a page. I then trimmed them with my paper trimmer.