By Barbara Eastwick

This tutorial is available as a short video and as a written text with screen shots.

There are many ‘graphics’ programs on the market today that work beautifully with any ‘digi kit’ to create wonderful digital scrapbooking layouts (digi pages).  And there are many fantastic ‘digi kits’ out there on the internet. You’ll want to download them, and then since almost all of them are saved as a ‘zipped’ file, you’ll need to ‘unzip’ them first before using them. There are so many advantages to ‘digi scrapping’, for one thing, there’s no glue! Since your digital photos already exist on your computer (either from your digital camera or from having your photos developed and put on disk), why print them all out? Why not use the photos you really want to show, and create digital scrapbook pages - all on your computer? These pages can then be saved as a .jpg or photo file and can be sent by email, burned onto CD or DVD for safe keeping, mailing, and viewing on the TV, or they can be uploaded to an online photo sharing site – like ScrapWOW.

To begin using Creating Keepsakes™ Scrapbook Designer, first you’ll need to install it on your computer, and load the program up. Your first screen is the tutorials page, click “Close”. The next page asks what you want to make. For this tutorial choose ‘Create a Blank Scrapbook Page’. Choose ‘12” x 12”’ and ‘Finish”.

Our digital kits have beautiful coordinating papers and embellishments, for this tutorial we will be using those. You could, of course, choose the papers or elements from the large selection with in Scrapbook Designer. You can also mix and match elements from a digi kit and from your graphics program. For this tutorial, though, we will use the items from a digi kit. I am using “In the Park” by Michelle Underwood. To add a background paper, embellishment, or photo, the steps will be the same. First click on “Add”-“Graphic”-“From Disk”, as shown below.

Then you’ll go to the drop down menu “Look In” and find your unzipped digital kit. Click on it, and you’ll be offered to choose from ‘backs’ or ‘elements’. The wording for each kit may vary slightly. ‘Backs’ refers to background papers, and ‘elements’ refers to embellishments. Sometimes a kit may also contain an alphabet. Choose ‘backs’, and let’s begin.

I chose the blue solid paper, and clicked “Open”. The blue paper is now on my layout. I wish it to be the foundation, or bottom-most layer, so I’ll click on a square on one of the corners and stretch it the full 12” x 12” size.

My newest personal style is to add another full sheet of foundation paper, but centered and slightly smaller than the first. To add another foundation paper, I’ll repeat the steps, click on “Add” – “Graphic” – “From Disk” and choose another ‘back’ or paper. This time I chose ‘flowers’ and clicked “Open”. The flowered paper appears on my layout. Now I need to stretch and center it. The easiest way I find to do this, is to move (click and drag) the paper into the top left corner, and then click and drag the bottom right corner into place. As seen in the photo below.

By pulling on the bottom corner at an angle towards the outer corner, the papers will stretch evenly, and remain square.

Let’s create some small decorative matting squares. To do this we will again, go to “Add” – “Graphic” – “From Disk”, and choose another ‘back’ or paper. This time I chose the ‘stripes-bluegreen’ and clicked “Open”. The paper is now larger than I wish it to be, so I will ‘shrink’ it by doing the reverse action of ‘stretching’. By clicking on a corner square and dragging inward, the paper will become a smaller swatch. I wish now to make two more identical ones of this smaller mat. With the blue green striped paper highlighted, click on “Ctrl” (the control key on the bottom left of your keyboard) and the “D” key and a menu will appear. 

I wish my image to be a ‘single duplicate’ so I click “OK”. Then to create another small mat, I’ll repeat this process (“Ctrl” + “D” then “OK”). I will move them in a line over to the left. 

Now I need a mat for my photo. I’ll choose another paper from the ‘backs’ (“Add” – “Graphic” – “From Disk”), this time choosing the green. I will stretch it out to create a mat for my photo. But since I like double matting photos, I’ll do this process again (“Add” - “Graphic” – “From Disk”) and choose yet another paper – striped blue, and size and place on top.

Now let’s add some embellishments. Those three small squares could use some decoration. Let’s put in a flower on each one. Again, we’ll go to “Add” – “Graphic” – “From Disk”, but this time we’ll need to choose “Elements” instead of “backs”. I chose the ‘flower orange’ one, and clicked “Open”. It appears to large for my square, so I ‘shrink’ it (using the same method as before), and place it on the top blue green striped square mat. I want to duplicate that exact one twice, since it is already the correct size, so, again, I hit the “Ctrl” + “D” and “OK”, and repeat it again. 

Now I’ll just move these flowers to the center of each square. They look nice, but the centers of those flowers seem to be missing something. Let’s add a smaller blue flower to the middle of each one. Repeating the process for acquiring the orange flowers, let’s choose the blue flower. I’ll size it and center into the middle of the top orange flower. When I like the size, I’ll ‘duplicate’ it twice, again using the “Ctrl” + “D”. Then move the two new blue flowers into position.

All we need now is a journaling block. By clicking “Add” – “Graphics” – “From Disk”, and then choosing from the “journaling strips” – I chose ‘journaling strip 8’ and clicked “Open”. I then stretched it to the length under the small mat squares and the photo mat.

Almost done, it still looks like it needs something to me. How about a ribbon between the small mats with the flowers and the photo mat?  Yes, it will ‘run over’ the journaling strip, but we can fix that. Go back into “Add” - “Graphics” – “From Disk” and choose a ‘ribbon’. I chose “whitetwill2”. After I had moved it, I didn’t think it would work. I hit “delete”, and went back in and opened the ‘red dots’ ribbon. 

I mention my error, because I want you see how easy it is to change out one element or paper for another. 

To move this ribbon to the right spot, I ‘turned’ it, by dragging upward on that square extending from the bar at the end of the ribbon. (See picture above). This will allow you to angle any object. Once the ribbon is sized and in place, it covers the journaling block. We’ll need to get the green journaling strip to the front. You can do this two ways. Click on “Layout” – “Layer” – “Bring to Front” or right click on the journaling strip and then click “Layer” – “Bring to Front”.

The green journaling strip will now be on top. 

I wish to keep my layout as a “quick page” or a “power layout”, so I will save it now. You could, of course, add your journaling and your photo first before saving. To add journaling, click on “Text Tools” and type in your journaling. You can choose your fonts, size and color of your text. Click “OK” and position your text block over the green journaling strip. To add your photo, go to “Add” – “Graphic” – “From Disk”, and in the “Look In” menu, find your photo you wish to use. Mine are usually in “My Pictures”.

So whether you save your layout with the journaling and photos on, or whether you save it as a power layout, the procedure will be the same. We’ll be saving it twice. Once as a .jpg file (common picture file) and again as a file that is only workable within Scrapbook Designer. We want to save it as a .jpg because that will allow us to view it on line, to send in an email, and to burn onto a CD or DVD. We want to save it as a Scrapbook Designer file (*.sbk) because that will allow it to be edited at any time in the future – but only using Scrapbook Designer.

To save this file as a .jpg file, click on “File” – “Export As”

You’ll want to choose your “Save In” file location, as well as the project name (File name”). Then in the drop down menu “Save as type” – choose “JPEG – Joint Photographic Expert Group”. (See photo below - “Save in”, “File name” and “Save as type” boxes have been highlighted).

Click on “Save”.

To save your layout as a workable file within Scrapbook Designer, simply click “File”- “Save Project”. Name your project and click “Save”. This project is now saved as a *.sbk file extension and available to you when you are working in Scrapbook Designer.

You'll find more tutorials by clicking on this link: free scrapbook tutorials or by looking inside the member area. You can also learn more by visiting Jessica's Scrapbook Blog.