Saturday, March 13, 2021

Designer Tip by A Giving Heart Studio


A friendly "Hi" to everyone in the MyMemories community! I'm Tricia of A Giving Heart Studio, and today I thought we could look at some different ways to use cropping in our layouts. Did you know that you can crop not only photos, but also papers and embellishments? And you can crop in fun shapes in addition to the standard squares, rectangles and circles? Even if you do already know this, I hope that this post will still contain something new and interesting for you to try.


In this first example, I'll be starting with the word art and extra paper packs from my No Greater Love collection (shown below).








When I was making this layout, I decided to use the border that’s included in the word art pack as a vertical page border instead of using it horizontally to border the word art (whether from the pack, or something custom). So after choosing my background paper, I opened the word art border and rotated it sideways by clicking on the left arrow button in the right side panel. 




However, I only needed one side or the other for my page border, so I needed to crop the border so that the other half of it wouldn’t show. To do this, I made sure that the border was selected, then clicked on the crop tool and dragged the guide so that it showed the part I wanted to crop out in shadow. I didn’t want it cropped vertically, so I dragged the top and bottom guides as tall as they would go.



Then I clicked okay and positioned the border where I wanted it on my page.



Before we add our embellishments, let’s crop a photo into a shape and also place a paper cropped to a shape behind the photo as a mat. First I clicked on the camera icon in the gallery section near the top left, then I navigated to my photo and double-clicked it. 




Then I clicked on the shape icon in the right panel and picked the rounder of the two heart shape choices for my photo.





Now for the shaped mat underneath, using a paper from my kit, No Greater Love. 




Remember, you don’t want to choose this as a background, or it will replace what you already picked for that. Navigate to the paper you want to use for the mat as though it were a photo and double-click on it. Then size it large enough to show once your place it under your photo, and click on that same shape icon. I chose the scalloped mat shape.




To place the mat behind your photo, you can right-click on it and choose send backward, or press ctrl+shift+down (arrow). You can also choose the layers option in the gallery section of the upper left area and then select the thumbnail of the layer you want to move in the page layers section right below the gallery section and drag it.


So now we’ve used three different crops in the same layout – fun! All we need to do to complete this page is to add some embellishments (and shadows). I’ll be using the ones in my kit – you guessed it – No Greater Love.


So here’s my finished page (although if you’re like me, you may revisit it a time or two before you’re satisfied that it’s really done – LOL). You could continue on by adding a title, the date, some journaling, etc., too. I saved my layout by clicking on share and then export, jpg.

 



My hubby and I had fun taking this photo of our daughter as a baby. You can’t even tell that he’s crunched behind the rocking chair (covered by a baby blanket) holding on to her outfit so that she doesn’t fall while I quickly take the photo, can you? LOL The things our guys do for us, right? Seriously! But it did turn out cute, if I do say so myself. ;) This was before digital, so we had to wait to get the film developed to find out if we actually got the shot we were hoping for or not.


That’s all I have in the way of tips today, but I’d like to invite you to participate in my forum challenge, “I This.” If you choose to do so, there is a little twist this month! You’ll get to pick from the packs in my new collection, No Greater Love, which one you would like for your reward. 


The March blog train will begin soon, so that’s exciting. In addition to the regular mini, I’ve created a few extra surprises for you – so be sure to look for those when you visit my stop! And in case you missed it, there was a coordinating quickpage freebie in the MyMemories newsletter this past Wednesday, March 10. If you deleted that email without grabbing my freebie {gasp!}, you can find the link to the online version of that newsletter on my blog (link below).


Thanks for reading all of the way to the end! If you’d like to get in touch with me or just stay in the loop on my designs and such, you can find me in these locations:


Blog: https://www.agivingheartstudio.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/agivingheartstudio

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/303551464007332

Pinterest (MyMemories): https://www.pinterest.com/mymemories/a-giving-heart-studio-mymemoriescom/

Forum challenge: https://forums.mymemories.com/?forum=836705


Happy scrapping, and I probably won’t “chat” with you again until after Easter (which is the first Sunday in April this year), so I’ll say now that I hope that yours is blessed!

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