And here’s my pretty little fairy collage couture doll…

First up, check out this fabulously circular layout by Amber.   I love the cloud background and the amazing clusters of elements around the circle.  It makes for an amazing fun layout.

Credits: Kids at Play by Penny Springmann Designs and Kristin Cronin-Barrow; In Orbit template by Little Green Frog Designs; Font is Mom’s Typewriter.

Next up check out this fun and bright layout by Kristy.  I love all the flowers tucked in and around the photo.  And speaking of the photo, how amazing is that smile!  This layout tells a great story.

Credits: Choose Happiness by Kristin Cronin-Barrow and Shawna Clingerman; Template 1 by Cindy Schneider (now retired) 

And finally, you will love this perfect layout by Hanna.  Do you see how the circles form a heart behind the picture.  I also love the layering of paper and stitches around the border of the page.

Credits: Life stories: this boy, by Kristin Cronin-Barrow and Zoe Pearn.

If you have some time would you do me a favor?  Click on the layouts above and leave the ladies some love in their galleries.  And if you would like to be featured on Kristin’s Gallery Stand Outs, make sure you are posting your layouts to her gallery at the Sweet Shoppe.  Thanks for looking today!

What you need to do is to create a clipping mask for your card.  In Photoshop Elements that is made using the shape tool here on the left.

1. On the bottom choose the shape with the rounded edges.

2. The number that you put in the “Radius” box will determine how rounded your corners are.  A bigger number will cut away more of the corner and a smaller number will round the corners only a little.

3. Choose a color.  The actually color doesn’t matter but it should be something different from your background so you can see it well.

4. Set this box to “Fixed Size” and then in the boxes under it set how big you want your card to be.  I did 3×4 since that is the size of Kristin’s card I wanted to use.  Note: You can leave this box as “Unconstrained” and free draw a box of any shape too.

5. Then just click on the layout and a box of the size you specified will be created.

Now you need to put the clipping mask box you made directly under the journaling card and clip the card to it.  In PSE you clip the card by clicking on the card layer and hitting “Ctrl-G” for Windows or “Command-G” for Macs.

I easily did the same with a horizontal card by changing the settings to 4×3 and creating a new box.

I hope you have fun with this technique.  As a bonus, here are two rounded edge card freebies for you to use as clipping masks in case you don’t want to create your own or use a different program that doesn’t do this.  Click here to download them.

The cards that I used in my example here are from Kristin and Zoe’s Life Stories: This Girl filler cards.  This technique would work for any cards though, including Kristin’s newest For the Love of Conversation 2: Cards.  The only thing to be careful of is that you might need to adjust the radius number so as not to cut off words on some cards you are using.

First up is a scoop with Sugarplum Paperie specifically designed for Celebrating Motherhood.

The descriptive titles of the following kits reminds me of my mom, and I am hopeful that you will be inspired as well.
Beautiful You

Grace

A Little Bit of Kindness

Tenderhearted

Domesticated

Blessings

The Way You Are

She Believed She Could

These amazing garden type kits are wonderful for showcasing mom related things.

A Secret Garden

Lavender Fields

Naturally You

Sweet Caroline

Perhaps your mother has a hobby that you want to focus on in a tribute page.

Bake Me a Cake

Blank Canvas

Being a mom is not always sunshine and rainbows. Scrap about the tough times with Mommy Needs a Break.

One last thing. There is a sweet little freebie still available in the store, that would work for something mom related.

Remember to Smile

Thanks for visiting the blog and we wish you all the best in searching for inspiration.

The fun bracket stitching and the beautiful blues in This is What Matters from tammybean04,  caught my eye right away and the rest of the page is just as sensational. Wow!!

I am a fan of patterned paper and right away this page, Shine Bright from JanettD, grabbed my attention with the bold yellow and white star paper. The clustering is gorgeous as is the soft treatment of the photo. Simply gorgeous!

There is so much that I adore about Blessed Beyond Belief from Breaking Brie. The fun sketchy title originally drew me in to see more and once I was close and personal I really just couldn’t stop gazing. The hexagon cutouts, the stitching, the sweet girls in the photos. This is just priceless!

Thanks for visiting the blog today. We love to see all the amazing pages in the gallery. Don’t forget to post your pages in the Kristin Cronin-Barrow gallery and maybe you’ll be featured in our next edition!

1) I’m a bit of a perfectionist.  OK, a lot of a perfectionist.  And I wanted to make sure my layouts were perfect before I printed them.  In those early years, my skills were improving so much each year as was the quality of the digital graphics I was using.  So every year I wanted to go back and rescrap the previous years layouts.  Add in the fact that I’m a horrible speller and I’m paranoid about people finding mistakes on my layouts and you will see that I never got to the point where I thought I had perfect layouts ready to print.

2) I didn’t know which printing company to use.  I try to be frugal and didn’t want to spend money on printing only to not like the results.  So many people had different reviews about printing companies and as with my layout making, I wanted to find the perfect one.

3) I procrastinate.  Printing was a big step for me and I kept putting it off.

So it should be no surprise that I didn’t print my first layout until probably 2009 – 4 years into this hobby for me.  So how did I start printing?  I took it slow.  I selected a few layouts to print and tried out some different places for printing.  It was scaring, but boy was it fun when I got my layouts.

Now that I’m a few more years into the process let me share with you the truths I’ve found about printing.

1) Yes, my pages change from year to year, but that is ok.  I learn more skills, but that doesn’t mean all my early pages are bad.  There are still some I redo, but mostly I remember that they are memories, both of the pictures and stories they tell and of my scrapbooking journey.  I have come to accept that the memories are more important than the perfection.  In fact, I’ve even been known to have a spelling mistake on a page that I found after printing and just left in the album.  (shhh – don’t tell)

2) Some people have strong preferences for the paper layouts are printed on and the coloring of different printing companies.  I’ve found that I don’t.  Again, for me the joy of having a layout printed is greater than any preference I have for how.

3) I can’t keep putting it off.  I scrap these layouts so that my family can preserve memories, but if I leave them on the computer then it is usually just me who looks back and enjoys them.  I found that my kids love looking through my scrapbook albums, especially if the pages are recent and they remember all of the days and events.  So I try and try to print on a regular basis.

OK, so enough chatting about printing.  Let me show you what I do.  I have settled on 4 different kinds of printing.

*I print some layouts to decorate our walls at home.  Here are layouts I did of each of my kids at 6 months and current (at the time I made them – they keep growing too fast!)

*I print most layouts I create in 12×12 for yearly family albums.  I usually chose Persnickety prints.  I love the look of the layouts and see how well the two pager fits together – their cropping of pages is the best I’ve found.

*After completing each yearly album I print an 8×8 photo book with 22 layouts I think the kids will love.  It turns out to be 22 because I do a 20 page album and alter two layouts to fit the front and back cover.  I find this size book (both the smaller size and the fewer pages) easier for my kids to look through frequently.  It also means I can let them handle the books whenever they want without me worrying that they will rip or dirty the pages of our big albums.  For these I use the free 8×8 book coupons that come from places like Shutterfly periodically.  I also don’t worry too much about things being cut off or print being too small – I just print as soon as I can because my kids LOVE these little books and I want to get them to them quickly.

*Finally, my kids adore layouts about their birthdays.  And in our family we celebrate both whole and half birthdays.  I was finding that with three kids and two birthdays each each year (plus sometimes some parent birthday layouts too) my yearly albums were heavy on the birthdays.  So now I include most of our birthday pictures in month review pages in my albums and then have a separate birthday album for each child.  I found three 8×8 albums we had in the house and each year I do two layouts for each kid and print them that size for their albums.

In fact, this last method is what got me thinking about writing this post.  My kids have been begging me to update their birthday albums with their latest birthday pages.  So today I pulled out pictures from two half birthdays and used Kristin and Zoe’s new Life Stories kits to scrap them.  I’m all for party kits, but sometimes it is fun to use more generic kits for birthday layouts too!  (And of course these kits are too amazing not to scrap a ton with!)

Credits: Life Stories: This Girl Collection by Kristin Cronin-Barrow & Zoe Pearn, template by Amy Martin

Credits: Life Stories: This Boy Collection by Kristin Cronin-Barrow & Zoe Pearn, font is Laura by Darcy Baldwin

For those who are wondering, half birthday celebrations for us include a family party with a treat (no presents).  It is super fun and my kids like to hold up a “half” finger for a picture usually.  Our treats have ranged from banana bread to brownies to half cakes.  :)

So, there is a bit about my printing journey and the way I have chosen to print.  How about you?  How to you print your layouts?  Do you have a favorite method?  Any printing tips to share?  I’d love for you to comment and share your printing ideas.  Now I’m off to upload  these layouts to Persnickety so I can print them!

Want it ALL?! Click here! Want just the GIRL bundle?! Click here. Want just the BOY bundle?! Click here.

For inspiration using these kits, check out yesterday’s post or the KCB section of the SSD gallery!

And if you’re feeling nervous about surviving iNSD, why not check out our posts from iDSD with tips on making this a stress-free (or at least minimal stressed) scrapping weekend? Tips 1-5 and tips 6-8 (scroll down to the end of the post!).

Happy iNSD everyone!

*Don’t forget to snag the Digi Scrap Parade freebie on the Facebook Fanpage! Then follow the links to all the other wonderful goodies around Facebook!

Blessed by catgoddess

This has such beautiful shadowing I feel like I could pick those flowers right up off the page. Wouldn’t this make a lovely wall hanging?

Shine Bright by VanillaDesignz

The lovely soft black-and-white photos on this page pair beautifully with the texture of the background and the bright colors of the clustering. Love this!

Shine Bright by EllenT

Last but not certainly not least, this page has a perfect blend of clustering and background texture that doesn’t take away from that great photo. Teen and tween pages can be hard to get just right, I think, but this one hit the bullseye. Gorgeous!

Make sure you go and leave these ladies some love in the gallery. And keep uploading all your fantastic layouts…you could be next in the spotlight!