Technique Tuesday: Creating a Stamped and Watercolored Floral Background

As promised, today on my YouTube feed, I'm sharing how I created this soft, stamped and watercolored background on my Jot Magazine March mood board layout, which you can find on yesterday's blog post below!

This technique is so easy and fun- all you need is a solid shaped stamp, some water-based ink pads, an inexpensive watercolor set and an inexpensive brush, as well as water, of course! There is no need to be an artist to create this lovely, custom background, because you are starting with the shapes you stamp first. 

Please leave a comment or a thumbs-up on my YouTube feed if you liked this Technique Tuesday post and be sure to follow me for more scrapbooking and papercrafting videos! 

Tutorial: Print and cut journaling inside a circle

I recently shared a layout, "The Twos" that included a circular cut file in the background. To keep my design clean and consistent, I decided to include my journaling on the largest die-cut circle. My writing, however hard I try, is not very small, so to get all of my words down in the 2" circle, I was going to have to type it on my computer and print it out, and I figured that the quickest way to cut it would be with my Silhouette Cameo. Today I'd like to share this process with you using Photoshop Elements and Silhouette Studio software, so that you can try it on your next layout! 

1. In Photoshop or Photoshop Elements using the ellipse tool, draw a circle just smaller than the diameter of the circle that you will be adding to your layout. In my case, my largest die-cut background circle was just over 2" in diameter, so I sized my circle at 2", using the ellipse option menu at the upper left side of the toolbar.

2. Choose your horizontal text tool. Although the screen shot doesn't show it, when you hover your cursor over the edge of your circle after choosing this tool, a small circle appears behind your cursor. When you see that, click and the boundaries of your text box will be placed inside that circle.

3. Type your journaling so that it fits inside the circle. You can adjust the font and size to make it fill up the entire circle shape. Once your journaling is complete, save the file as a PNG. 

4. Open Silhouette Studio software and in the Design Page Settings menu, make your sheet 8-1/2" x 11", and turn on the print and cut border. Locate your PNG file and drag and drop it into this new document, being sure not to adjust the size. Your text should be well inside the print border lines.

5. Using the ellipse shape tool on the toolbar, draw a circle. In the Scale menu, adjust your circle size to fit your die-cut size, which is slightly larger than your journaling circle, in my case 2.2" in diameter. Turn on your registration marks in the Registration Marks menu and be sure that everything fits inside the guides. 

6. Print your journaling from the Silhouette Studio software. This will also print the registration marks, which are the key to being sure that your circle will cut in the correct place.

7. Once your journaling is printed, load the paper in your Silhouette Cameo and cut according to the paper type settings for your chosen paper. The Silhouette should cut it exactly as it is shown on your screen and you can then adhere to your layout! 

I hope you find this useful on your next project! Thanks for stopping by!

Journaled labels tutorial

I'm up on the Scraptastic Club blog today with a new layout that uses an entire sheet of journaling labels, along with the It Takes Two kit & add-on. These labels coordinate with the Scraptastic Club kits each month & are available to subscribers, but you can also get the same labels for free download from Kaitlin Sheaffer's blog. 

Lizzy is currently saying and doing so many things that I know will change quickly. To get all of these "Lizzy-isms" down on a layout, I decided to put a different fact in each label & without a cute vintage typewriter, I used Photoshop Elements to type my journaling directly in the PNG file.

After typing out my journaling, I opened the modified PNG file in my Silhouette Cameo software and used the print and cut feature, saving me a lot of time cutting out each individual label! To show you how I did this, I created a video tutorial showing the step-by-step process on my computer screen.

If you found the tutorial helpful, I'd love it if you could leave a comment letting me know. Have fun incorporating these useful labels into your next project!