Those of you who have had your work published in ‘real life’ magazines can hopefully still remember the thrill of actually seeing your own layout staring back at you from the glossy pages of a big name magazine for the very first time. So I hope you will be indulgent whilst I just take a short moment to say

YIPPEEEEE!!!!!

whilst jumping up and down and waving my hands in the air.

A thread that was started a couple of months ago on the Scrap Girls message board encouraged us to share some constructive feedback so we could submit our layouts for publication. I had never done this before but I thought, hey why not? I was completely blown away when the very first layout I have ever submitted was accepted by Scrapbooking Memories (Australian version). I was also stunned at how excited I felt about that.

And now the magazine is finally in print and my layout is enshrined for posterity (well for me to gloat over in future years at least).

So to celebrate this momentous occasion I made this ‘layout of the layout’ using the same template and fabulous Art Journal Kit from Scrap Girls that I used in the original, but giving them a different look. And I thought I would share the ragged edge curvy template I made for the layout with you as a Freebie.
You can download here. I’ve saved it as a .PNG so it is portable across a number of graphics editing programs.

Instructions

(written for PSE but should be easy to follow in other editing programs):

1. Create a new 12×12 inch 300dpi document to work in so you don’t accidentally save your changes over an original file.
2. Open the 3 template files into your graphics editing program. Decide whether you want the curve vertical or horizontal and rotate the template files 90 degrees if required (>Image>Rotate>90 degrees left or right).
3. Click on File 1 and drag from your editing window into the new document you have created using the Move tool (Arrow icon at the top of the tool bar).
4. Open the patterned paper you have chosen for your foreground and drag it onto your document.
5. Press Ctrl G, and then Ctrl E and your paper is cut to the shape of your template.
6. Drag your photo or photo’s into your document and then in the layers palette drag the photo layer(s) below your foreground paper layer.
7. Position your photo(s) to your liking.
8. Click on File 2 and drag from your editing window into your document. And in the layer palette position it above your photo(s) but below your foreground patterned paper.
9. You can now drag the curved side in as far as you like to cover as much of your photo edges as your choose.
10. Now drag a coordinating paper into your document, position it directly above the File 2 layer in the layer palette and press Ctrl G, then Ctrl E.
11. Repeat Steps 8, 9 and 10 for File 3 using the same coordinating paper.
12. If your photos have not covered the centre portion of your layout, either drag another paper into your document, positioning it at the bottom of the layer stack, or fill the paint bucket with a coordinating colour and dump it onto the background layer at the bottom of your layer stack. You can play with some effects to get some interesting texture on your background if you choose.
13. Add some drop shadows, a title and a couple of embellishments and your layout is complete.

Hope you enjoy.

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Other related Posts:

Scrapbooking Tips & Techniques – The Visual Triangle
Scrapbooking Tips & Techniques – Upsizing Photos
Scrapbooking Tips & Techniques – Printing your Digital Layouts