South Slough Estuarine Research Reserve

A digital scrapbooking layout? What's going on here?

Well, I have thousands of photos on my comptuer that are just begging to be scrapbooked.  One of my goals this year is to actually FINISH a scrapbook including having it printed. Toward that end, I've decided to consolidate my scrapbooking blog with my card making blog.  Going forward you will find a fusion of both digital and physical creations. I have a passion for both card making and photography and this just made sense.

First, here's a little information about the pictures in this layout...

If you head South out of North Bend on the Cape Arago Highway, you'll eventually come across Seven Devils Road which will lead you to the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve.  It's right in the middle of some pretty rugged terrain, but the road leading to it is good.  You can't see much from the parking lot so you'll want to bring a good pair of walking shoes and maybe even a walking stick.  The trails are well maintained but some are a little steep.  The views make the drive and the hike well worth it.

Here are a couple pages I made in My Memories Suite using the pictures I took last January.

Picking a color palette to accent my photos is always a challenge.  I try to keep my choices to just 1 or 2 digital paper packs, but I'm not always successful.  For this two page spread I chose papers from Fireflies (MMDCS) and Day At the Beach (CMD).

For the blue and orange layers, I added photo boxes first and sized them to the dimensions I wanted. After that I added the background papers as photos and dropped them into the photo boxes.  It's always best to do any resizing before dropping the papers or photos into your photo boxes or you may end up with distorted images.

One of the things I love about digital scrapbooking is having so much control over image sizes and zoom levels.  The bridge on the above page was actually from a landscape photo. Since there was no more room on the page for a landscape shot, I dropped the photo into a portrait oriented photo box and zoomed in on just the bridge.

I don't often use a lot of embellishments on my pages, just a little here and there to accent the photos or page topic.  The embellishments for this spread came from several different kits from My Memories as follows:

• Tags - Bella Grace Add On Kit (jjscrap)
• Washi Tape - Beach Romance (kapi)
• Stitches - Day at the Beach (CMD)
• Frame, green and red leaves - Autumn Garden (CatDes)
• Bow - Turtle Cove (MMDCS)
• Fir sprig - A Little Birdie Told Me (DBMarci)
• Star Confetti - Fireflies(MMDCS)

If you'd like to try My Memories, you can download a free trial here: http://mymemories.com/mms/my_memories_suite.  If you decide to buy it, be sure to use my coupon code: STMMMS97442 to get $10 off (coupon cannot be used in combination with other discounts). You will receive a discount and at no additional cost to you, I will receive a commission.