Hybrid How-To | Valentine Notebooks

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Valentine’s Day is coming up and I have these cute hybrid notebooks to share with you. They’re super easy to put together – no cutting machine needed! They’d make great gifts for a classroom full of kids.

Supplies

  • Digital journaling cards of your choice. I used Life Stuff | 3×4 Cards by Julia Makotinsky.
  • Photo editing program like Photoshop or Photoshop Elements
  • Cardstock or Photo Paper < for more vibrant color
  • Plain copy paper for inside pages
  • Scissors OR paper cutter
  • Sewing machine OR stapler

Instructions

1. Get those cards ready to print! I wanted the back to be a fun color to match the cover. I dragged the cards onto a new canvas in Photoshop Elements, duplicated it and filled it with a coordinating color. Make sure the front of the cover is on the right side and the back is on the left.

2. Print covers and cut them out.

3. I cut my plain copy paper to just smaller than the covers, centered them inside the covers, and then sewed down the middle of them. You could just as easily staple the books together – three staples down the middle. Fold the books in half.

I loved putting these together. Using journaling cards makes this a quick and simple project, and of course what kid doesn’t love a blank notebook! It’s sure to be a hit.

Kate About the Author  Kate is on the hybrid team here at The Digital Press. She lives on the Utah/Colorado border with her husband, 5 kids, 10 chickens, and a dog named Gracie. She’s a city-born girl who found she’s really a country girl at heart. She can be found outside, barefoot, and probably in her garden.

Foodie Friday | Julia Makotinsky

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Hi everyone! It’s Friday, and as always that means it’s time for another edition of our Foodie Friday series here on The Digital Press blog! This week, we’re featuring Julia Makotinsky who recently jointed The Digital Press as a permanent design team member. Therefore, as this is Julia’s first blog feature here at TDP, I have asked her to give a brief introduction.

Julia was born in Moscow, Russia… but now resides in New York in the USA, where she has lived for a little over 25 years. She graduated as an illustrator from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, and then later began designing digital scrapbook kits in 2008. She says, “learning as a designer is a never-ending process. But designing is my passion — and not only digitally. My style is mostly hand-painted/sketched and illustrative, and I do love to sketch. I am a night owl and quiet evenings are the time when most of my creativity begins. I love to drink black tea with lemon or fresh mint. I also love to ski, I love living right by the ocean, I love riding my bicycle in summer, and I love reading books and flipping actual paper pages (rather than kindle). “

If you have not checked out Julia’s store here at The Digital Press yet, you are in for a wonderful surprise! Her extraordinary and unique art features prominently in her designs, which are also highly colorful.

Julia also loves to cook… and says, “we Russians are big on cooking — especially during holidays — and most of our food is very colorful, both in taste and calories! 🙂 I prefer more healthy choices, lately, however.”

Here’s a look at two of Julia’s favorite recipes, and one of mine…

What are those amazing, delicious-looking items you see up above?

  1. Herb Crusted Salmon with Arugula Salad
  2. Oven Baked Chicken
  3. No-Bake Date Slice

Herb Crusted Salmon with Arugula Salad

INGREDIENTS

  • 2 salmon fillets (6oz each)
  • 1 heaping tablespoon coconut flour
  • 2 tablespoons fresh parsley (or dried, if you have on hand)
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon dijon mustard
  • salt and pepper, to taste

FOR THE SALAD

  • 2 cups arugula
  • 1/4 red onion, sliced thin
  • juice of 1 lemon
  • 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • salt and pepper, to taste

INSTRUCTIONS

  • Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
  • Place salmon fillets on a parchment or foil lined baking sheet.
  • Top your salmon off with olive oil and Dijon mustard and rub into your salmon.
  • In a small bowl, mix together your coconut flour, parsley, and salt and pepper.
  • Use a spoon to sprinkle on your toppings on your salmon and then your hand to pat into your salmon.
  • Place in oven for 10-15 minutes or until salmon is cooked to your preference.
  • While the salmon is cooking, mix together your salad ingredients.
  • When salmon is done, place salmon on top of salad and consume.

Oven Baked Chicken

In Julia’s words “This is my girlfriend’s recipe… and all of our friends absolutely love it, I’ve cooked it myself at my house many times, but I still prefer hers. It’s the easiest recipe ever and the best part there is no measuring involved!”

INGREDIENTS

  • Chicken thighs or entire legs (thigh and drumstick) fatty part cooks best so chicken breasts won’t work
  • salt and pepper
  • minced garlic from the jar

INSTRUCTIONS

  • Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
  • Place chicken into oven pan, sprinkle each piece with salt and pepper working it into chicken, use your hands to smear it on all sides.
  • Do the same with minced garlic even going under the skin.
  • Cover the entire pan with aluminum foil on top and place in the oven for an hour.
  • After an hour remove the foil and using  a spoon baste each piece of chicken with the juice that came out of the pieces. Place them back into the oven uncovered for another hour, basting occasionally as required.
 “That’s it! It takes 2 hours to cook all together but it’s sooooo delicious and juicy inside and crisp outside, and can be served with any side dish of your choice such as mashed potatoes, salad, pasta etc.”

No-Bake Date Wafers

“This was my own favorite biscuit recipe growing up as a child. My mum used to prepare it whenever she needed something quick to take out. Now we only prepare this at Christmas, due to the sugar content… but I still love it.” ~Carolyn

INGREDIENTS

  • 4 cups puffed rice or Rice Bubbles
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 2 oz margarine
  • 1 large lemon (juice and rind)
  • 1/2 pound chopped dried dates
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 4 Tablespoons unsweetened desiccated coconut.

INSTRUCTIONS

  • Line biscuit tin (rectangle app 12″ x 7″) with paper then sprinkle half of coconut over base.
  • Cook dates on stove top (medium heat) until soft with sugar, butter and lemon rind. (This will take app 15 minutes)
  • Remove from stove and add all remaining ingredients (except coconut).
  • Spread mixture over coconut in lined tin then sprinkle remaining coconut over firmed down biscuit.
  • Cool in fridge before cutting into squares.

I hope that you have enjoyed these new recipes from Julia and myself. Let us know if you decide to try one of them, or if you have any questions!

Meanwhile, it wouldn’t be a designer feature week without a fantastic sale and a special Free-With-Purchase offer! Not only is Julia’s entire shop marked down 30% OFF throughout her entire feature week (sale prices will be valid through 11:59pm ET on Thurs 2/15)… but she also has the following Free-With-Purchase offer available in her shop all week long, as well — spend $10+ in Julia Makotinsky’s shop at The Digital Press and get the following item completely FREE!

AvatarAbout the author  Carolyn lives with her partner and 2 rescue dogs on 5 acres of paradise in the hinterland of the Sunshine Coast, Australia. Her camera, along with an assortment of lenses, is never out of sight. When not taking photos, she loves cooking and gardening and, of course, scrapbooking.

Tutorial Tuesday | Streamline & Scrap an Entire Year Fast!

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Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of our Tutorial Tuesday series here on The Digital Press blog! Today I am here to show you my plan for getting an entire year’s worth of photos and memories scrapped — and fast (!) — using a pocket page-style system of scrapping.

I have been documenting our everyday memories using weekly pocket pages for years now, and yet recently I have found myself a little behind. Well, actually a lot behind! I have not scrapped a single week for 2017! I do have the photos (and some notes for the journaling), but I still need to actually create the weekly scrapbook pages. All 52 of them!

Therefore, I knew needed a plan in order to get an entire year of everyday memories scrapped. I needed it to be fast… and I needed it to be easy.

I think that starting a big project like this is always the hardest part. It can feel so overwhelming,,, which is normal when taking on such a daunting task… but it doesn’t have to be paralyzing. If you simplify the entire process, it can actually be really easy and go really quickly!

For me, the first step was to choose a template pack/design that I could use for the entire year. I chose Every Day Life | Templates No3 by MEG Designs…

More specifically… I decided to really simplify things by choosing the same templates to use for the entire project (thus cutting out the time/etc. it takes to choose a template for each new page/2-page spread). I chose template 10 for all of my left side pages… and template 9 for all of my right sides.

Similarly, I knew it would speed things up if I chose a calendar card to use at the beginning of each month on the left side (in the upper left-hand pocket).
For this, I chose Calendar 2017 — also by MEG Designs…

Then, as soon as I had a chunk of time (1-2 hours) available to scrap, I did the following:

(1) I inserted a calendar card for every month and saved the PSD file into my 2017 folder on my desktop…

(2) Then, I chose (a) date stamps and (b) weekly cards to use throughout my album… with the idea that these items (combined with the monthly cards I’d already chosen, above) would create a simple and consistent look throughout the entire year/album. For the date stamp, I chose Date Stamps | Stamps & Brushes by Dawn by Design… and for the weekly cards, I used Weeks Volume 2 by MEG Designs…

Then, I re-opened each of the layout files I created in Step 1, above, and I inserted each of the weekly cards and the date stamps into the right side of all 52 weeks (see next image, below). This did take some time… but I binge-watched Netflix while doing it, and got it done! 🙂


(3) Once I had all 52 of my templates started and saved in my folder, as detailed above, I started working on January. My plan was to set aside a chunk of time to complete 1 month at a time. In theory, that would mean that in just 12 “chunks” …I would have a completed 2017 album!

For me, the fun part is always choosing what digital kit to use! I am typically an embellishment-loving scrapper — meaning I like to add all kinds of chunky embellishments and layers on my layouts. But I knew that if I was going to get 2017 completed, I would have to keep my layout spreads simple. With that in mind, I decided that in addition to the cards and date stamps already discussed above, my plan would be to use: (a) plain backgrounds, (b) journal cards, and (c) minimal embellishments.

Here’s a look at how I began “filling in” my templates with journal cards. For the first week, I chose to use the January Documented Cards by Dunia Designs…

*PRO TIP*
Even though I didn’t keep up with the actual scrapbooking of my weekly spreads in 2017, I did keep up with my daily journaling. I simply sent myself an email every morning with a recap of the day before — along with random memories like the silly things the kids said or did, and/or any other special moments. Then, I filed these in a folder in my gmail account. Easy, right?!

Using these notes in the “emails to myself,” I copied and pasted some journaling onto my cards/layouts…

Then, I added my minimal embellishments…

And finally, I added my photos (which I keep organized in SmugMug throughout the year, as I take them)…

After completing my first week’s spread… I repeated this process to finish out the rest of the month of January 2017.

As I worked my way through the month, it turned out that I didn’t have too many photos for Week 2, so I created a single page. There are lots of other types of pages that I can put in place of the “missing side” (some ideas I like are: a “Currently” page, a “Current Events” page, a “Travel Bucket List” page, and/or a list of “Resolutions”).

Here’s what my single-page Week 2 layout looked like, once finished (using the Hello January Bundle by Dunia Designs)…

After that, I created my Week 3 spread (using products designed by one of TDP’s guest designers in January 2018; no longer available at TDP)…


And finally… a look at my Week 4 spread for January 2017 (using the Make it count: January 2018 | Collection by Anita Designs)…

(4) Once each page was finished, I saved my files in 3 places:
1. External Hard Drive
2. Smugmug
3. Blurb (that way, my files will already be uploaded when it comes time to print!)

(5) And now… I just need to do this 11 more times and I will have a finished 2017 album! 🙂

But truly, it was really quick (and easy!) to get an entire month’s worth of photos from a year ago scrapped and recorded in just a couple of hours. Streamlining the process (with the monthly cards, weekly cards, and date stamps) really sped things up. Using my emailed notes from last year was a life-saver, as well!

So now… go give this a try! If you’re feeling behind and you have a mountain of memories to document, give this system/process a go! You’ll be happily surprised at how much you can get done in a really short time if you “automate” the page composition and the decision making.

 

About the Author  Krista Lund is a mom of 3, married to her high school sweetheart and living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Some of her favorite things are brownies, chips ‘n’ dip, taking pictures, and documenting her family’s story.

Foodie Friday | Jimbo Jambo Designs

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Hi everyone! It’s Friday, and as always that means it’s time for another edition of our Foodie Friday series here on The Digital Press blog! This week, we’re featuring Aga of Jimbo Jambo Designs. This amazing designer has already been featured twice (if you want to learn even more about her, you can find her first feature article from October 2016 HERE, and her second feature article from May 2017 HERE).

In addition to creating super fun and inspiring templates, she has many other talents as well… including cooking! Let’s discover the three fabulous recipes she will be sharing with us today…

What are those yummy things you see, above?

  1. Chicken in Garlic and Orange Juice
  2. Gazpacho Andaluz
  3. Strawberry Crumble Cake

Chicken in Garlic and Orange Juice

INGREDIENTS

  • 4-6 pieces of chicken
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/3 teaspoon pepper
  • 1/2 cup orange juice
  • 1 teaspoon honey
  • 1 teaspoon ground ginger
  • 1/2 teaspoon curcuma
  • 2  clove of garlic
  • a bit of rosemary and cayenne (pepper) if you like spicy food.

INSTRUCTIONS

  • Season chicken with oregano, salt and pepper, to taste; set aside.
  • Melt butter in a large oven-proof skillet over medium high heat. Add chicken, sear both sides until golden brown, about 2-3 minutes per side; set aside.
  • Mix all ingredients and heat up without boiling and leave to cool.
  • Add chicken and toss to coat. Cover and marinate at least 3 hours up to overnight in the refrigerator.
  • Place into oven and roast until completely cooked through, reaching an internal temperature of 180 degrees C, about 25-30 minutes.

Gazpacho Andaluz

INGREDIENTS

  • 1 kilo of ripe tomatoes (with an accentuated red color)
  • 1 green pepper Italian type (about 60 grams)
  • 1 piece of cucumber (about four fingers wide)
  • 1 piece of onion (about 100 grams)
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 3 tablespoons olive oil
  • 3 tablespoons of white wine vinegar
  • 1 small spoonful of salt
  • Optional: 1/2 green apple (for example a Golden) and cold water

INSTRUCTIONS

  • Wash tomatoes, apple, cucumber and pepper well. Let it drain. If you want you can remove the tomatoes’ skin.
  • Remove the corner and seeds from the pepper, cut it into four or five pieces and put it with the tomatoes.
  • Peel the clove of garlic and put it with the rest of the vegetables.
  • Take the piece of onion (peeled) and cut it into three or four pieces. Add to the blender jar.
  • Take a piece of cucumber about four fingers long and peel it. Cut it into four or five pieces and to the blender.
  • Now that all the vegetables of the gazpacho are in the glass of the blender we will turn it on (well covered) and we will leave it working until there is no piece of vegetable left (the time will depend on the power of the blender).
  • Now add the salt, the oil, and the vinegar. I advise you to start with three tablespoons of vinegar and to rectify (adding more) to your liking. Give the blender five seconds and try. Rectifies of salt and vinegar to taste.
  • makes 4 glasses (1 liter)

Strawberry Crumble Cake

INGREDIENTS FOR CRUST

  • 200 g of wheat flour or spelled or oat flour
  • 50 g of rice or potato flour
  • 1 teaspoon of baking powder
  • 150 g butter (cold)
  • 50 g sugar
  • 1 egg

INGREDIENTS FOR CRUMBLE

  • 150 g of wheat flour
  • 50 g of rice or potato flour
  • 50 g sugar
  • 125 g butter (cold)

INGREDIENTS FOR FILLING

  • 800 g strawberries
  • 3 tablespoons of potato flour
  • powdered sugar

INSTRUCTIONS

  • Put baking paper in a form of a size 24 x 34 cm.
  • Put into the bowl both flours, add baking powder, sugar, cut into pieces butter and an egg. Rub your fingers with the rest of the ingredients into a small crumble, then quickly knead the dough by combining the ingredients into a homogeneous sphere. Place the bottom and a piece of the side of the mold with the dough. Punch the bottom with a fork and put in the fridge. Heat the oven to 180 degrees C.
  • Place the baking tray with the dough in the oven and bake for 15 minutes for a pale golden color. Take out the dough, but do not turn off the oven.
  • Crumble: pour the flour into the bowl, add the sugar and cut into pieces cold butter. Rub the butter with the rest of the ingredients with your fingers until you have a crumble (small pastry crumbs).
  • Strawberries: cut into smaller pieces (eg into quarters), put in a bowl, mix with potato flour.
  • Put the strawberries on top, put the crumble on top and put in the oven. Bake for approx. 35 – 40 minutes for a golden color. After baking sprinkle with powdered sugar.

All of those recipes look amazing, right? Aga is a world traveler, and it definitely shows in the foods she prepares! I love them! Unfortunately, I won’t be able to try the gazpacho because I’m allergic to raw tomatoes… but I hope you’ll tell me in the comments if it’s as tasty and delicious as it sounds!

And of course, it wouldn’t be a designer feature week without a fantastic sale and a special Free-With-Purchase offer! Not only is Aga’s entire shop marked down 30% OFF throughout her entire feature week (sale prices will be valid through 11:59pm ET on Thurs 2/8)… but she also has the following Free-With-Purchase offer available in her shop all week long, as well — spend $10+ in the Jimbo Jambo’s shop at The Digital Press and get the following item completely FREE!

ChloéAbout the author  Chloé is in charge of PR and communication for her small town by day, is a digiscrapper “by night,” and a photographer whenever the light is beautiful. She lives with her man and fur-babies in a small town of Alsace (in the northeast of France), where she loves to read, watch good TV shows (TWD being her absolute favorite), and just hang out with her friends — no matter if they are close by, online, or away in her Swiss hometown. She recently became quite obsessed with Bullet Journaling, FLyLady and Zero Waste.

Tutorial Tuesday | Using Color Casts on Photos

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Hello everyone! Today I am going to talk about something that we probably don’t see many examples of in the scrapbooking galleries. Have you seen photos with colours that match more closely with other design elements on the page or are colour blocked to give a more graphic feel and wondered how it is done? So, let’s drive straight in.

Colour casts are something that we should be very careful about. They may not work for all kinds of photos and layouts. Of course, there are many ways to do it but I will be highlighting two distinct approaches today.

1. All over photo colour cast to harmonise the layout

This is my original photo that I will play around with.

After usual edits, I decided to overlay a slight blue green tinge. The steps followed are shown in the image below.

Using a solid overlay is the easiest way of adding a cast or a tint. However, if you don’t like all of your photo to be tinted you could very easily use the gradient tool to create a more subtle or dramatic (as the case may be) effect.

As you can see, I have used a gradient so that there is minimal tint on the girls and more on the background.

Once you are comfortable with these basic steps, you can practically play with different blending modes and select the one that suits your photo/layout the most. A couple of other options shown below:

Hue blending mode 47%

Overlay blending mode 50%

2. Overlay a block of colour on photos – partially/in patterns

The colour casts can also be used selectively – for example if used in conjunction with geometric shapes, the effect could be quite graphic. Here is one of the layouts I created to demonstrate this.

So that’s it, some quick ways to add colour casts. Hope you have found this useful. Please share any layouts you make using these techniques in the comments below.

Till next time then, happy scrapping!

Profile pic avatar small

About the Author Shivani Sohal is a donner of many alter-egos. A finance professional by day in busy London, she morphs into a seemingly normal mum of two in the evenings and weekends. She is constantly found with her fingers in too many pies and juggling the metaphorical balls. That is living on the edge for her; aided by the two ankle biters and a darling hubby who define the warm and mushy for her. She is ferociously dedicated to memory keeping — almost immune to any nay-sayers (or equally-disruptive crying children or annoying house fires!); keeping her head down and forging ahead at all times.

Hybrid How-To | Matchbook Valentines

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Hello everyone! It’s Tanya here, and I’m excited to share another edition of Hybrid How-To with you here on The Digital Press blog! With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, I thought I’d show you how to use your digital stash to create these fun matchbook Valentines.

This is a great project, because you can truly use just about any of your favorite digital products to create these matchbooks. These are really fun to make for a child’s whole class in school, even! Depending on the age/grade of the class, you can repurpose a ton of different digital kits.

SUPPLIES NEEDED:

  1. Your favorite digital scrapbooking products
  2. White card stock paper
  3. Coordinating card stock colors for your printed pieces
  4. Double-sided tape
  5. Fun-size candies (I used M&M’s for this tutorial)
  6. Paper cutter
  7. Stapler

Here’s a look at the kits I used for my matchbooks…

[1] Get Connected, [2] Hello, I Love You, [3] You & Me Elements, [4] You & Me Papers, [5] Zoobilee, and [6] Nature’s Playground

INSTRUCTIONS:

I used the Silhouette Studio software to create the tops of the matchbook, but you can use whatever photo editing program you prefer.

First, I drew out a rectangle 3.15″ high x 2.75″ wide and replicated it to fit as many as I could on my page. Then, I filled each one with papers that I thought would be good for Valentine’s Day. Next, I added some elements from the kits to match the papers…

It was so fun to make the cards! To get ideas, you can google “Valentine’s puns” and you’ll find a bunch of great ideas and inspiration. Here are some of the card ideas that I came up with (I had to stop myself because I could have just to keep on going!)…

For the cards themselves, I was going to use the print and cut feature on my Silhouette Cameo cutting machine… but in the end, I decided it would be just as easy (and maybe quicker!) to use my paper trimmer.

I did do some layering with some of them, though, because I love dimension. For this, I just printed out individual elements and used the print and cut feature because I’m terrible fussy cutter…

For the actual matchbooks, I took coordinating card stock and cut 3″ x 9″ strips. Then I scored & folded the cardstock at 1″ and at 5.25″. I have a scoring blade on my paper trimmer, but you can also use something flat like a credit card or gift card to achieve a good, clean fold…

After that, I added double-sided tape to put the printed pieces onto the colored card stock… and then I folded up a flap at the bottom and stapled in my M&Ms (see bottom right photo, below)…

Finally, I completed everything by tucking the top into the bottom, under the flap created by the staple. On some of the matchbooks, I added a little extra dimension by adding double sided tape and adhering the extra pieces I cut out…

Here is a look at one of the finished matchbooks up close…

Aren’t they so cute?! So many possibilities! Here’s a look at a bunch of the different designs I created…

I think I might even give these to my co-workers! 🙂

I hope that you have enjoyed this edition of Hybrid How-To, and that you will give this a try and come up with one of your own matchbooks! Don’t forget to visit the CROSSWORD SECTION in The Digital Press forum, and jump into this month’s Hybrid Challenge if you are thinking of trying this project. You can earn points toward discounts & FREEBIES! I hope that you will join in!

Tanya

About the Author  Tanya is a part of the hybrid team here at The Digital Press. She has been hybrid crafting for at least 15 years now, and loves creating and sharing those creations with others. Her all-time favorite tool is her Silhouette Cameo. She has been married for 28 years to her high school sweetheart, Richard and has two sons: Chris, 26 and Chance, 21. She also enjoys crocheting, photography and woodworking.