Episode Four - Doing The Splits

"Patchwork of My Life" - Meredith Cardall

Welcome to Work-Out Episode Four. If you're still here, it means I haven't killed you yet - but still have two more chances to try!! Whoohoo!! Come on, I'll be your Biggest (Scrappy) Loser "Jillian"... with a lot less yelling and basically no psychological harassment. Today was cleverly titled "Doing The Splits" because we are going to lift a layout that spans two pages and connects a cluster from one page to the other. Turn up the thermostat and forget the Hot Yoga - it's Hot Layout Lifting! *grunt grunt grunt grunt* (If you don't wanna feel like a wish bone on Thanksgiving, you could just lift one page or the other!)

 

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Step #1 - Select a bold patterned paper. Then create 2-3 light colored rectangle shapes (or use photo boxes and papers). Place accordingly. You can always adjust where the gaps are later to better suit your layout. Or just start with a solid square and then break it up later when you have a better sense of how your LO is going to turn out. As you can see below, I also added an inside border made of stitching that "holds" all my broken paper pieces down. Repeat this process on a second layout page.

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Step #2 - Set your background papers using photo boxes and then dragging and dropping your paper choices in there. You can see at the top left that we are preparing to do the splits over to the next page! Don't rip your pants... If you have a large enough computer screen to maintain this for the rest of the instructions, change your "View" to "Page Windows" and open both pages of the layout and line them up so you can arrange your bleed elements from one side to the other. If your screen is small and having both pages up makes them too tiny, just do one page at a time and then at the very end, open them both and adjust a little bit here and there to make them match.

**Trainer's Tip** To ensure an EXACT match with boxes or embellishments, just copy and paste the element or box from the one page on to the other. In the case of this layout, I had an element that was too short to do what I wanted and I had to copy and paste it a few times to achieve the look I wanted. (the white/blue box at the top middle).

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Step #3 - Add those photos! Since I already had a white background, matting and adding shadows was especially important for me. On the right-hand page, you can see I have basically the same photo 3 times. It's a fun way to take advantage of the fact that we take 5-10 of *almost* the exact same photo with digital cameras.

**Trainer's Tip** - Jesus saves, but it's photos that cover your scrappy sins. Up in the middle you can see how the photo covers my doubling-up on the element behind them. Now it looks like one uniform white/blue box - when really, I know that it's two. (PS I love the Lord, hopefully that silly reference didn't offend anyone!)

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Step #4  - Take a swig of your Gatorade and then let's get embellishing! I used some swirls in the same direction as my paper, added some tabs with word art over top and tucked a few flowers behind the photos. I've also added text on the left page and some monograms on the right.

**Trainer's Tip** - Using monograms can be a pain in the tush. But it's worth the extra grunt work because the results are great. I find that once I have them set where I want and aligned (see first photo below), "Grouping" (see second photo) is my new BFF. One they are grouped, I can move the whole word wherever I want.

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Step #5 - My last move here was to add some fastener tabs here and there on the page. These little "real-life-like" add-ons give that "I-paper-scrapped-and-then-scanned-my-work-just-because" kind of look.  I like it.

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Okay sports fans! Another LOL (Lay Out Lift - not *lol* because I'm sure you are too busy reaching for the ol' inhaler right now to laugh) in the bank. Tomorrow will be our final work-out so don't be late and take those unmarked pills I handed you all on the way out of class yesterday. They're just "vitamins"... I promise... ; )

Keep fit and have fun! (I will give three virtual gold stars to anyone who can tell me where that tag-line is from... you're gonna have to think Canadian...)

Love you guys!

Jen

PS To post your two pages together, google how to take a "screenshot" (here is a Windows link and a Mac link) of your computer screen with the two page windows open side by side in MMS and post that jpeg OR get Picasa, use the "collage" function and create your own size collage at 12x24 and put the two pages there and post your exported collage jpeg that way! If neither of those work for you, just post the pages separately!