Joining the Birdcage!

I'm delighted to announce that I've joined the digital creative team of One Little Bird Designs!

You may remember I guest blogged for OLB in December, and I am so thrilled to be a full-time member of the creative team for 2015. I KNOW this will get my creative juices flowing! ;-)

Stay tuned for some new layouts in the works with some lovely OLB products. The paper packs are my favorite. I just picked up the Suncatcher papers and the Fete kit to use in my 5 year olds' birthday party layout! Aren't these colors combinations perfect!? Can't wait to start creating with these pretty patterns.

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From the Monitor to the Album - Printing Project Life at Home

I've been printing my Project Life layouts at home since I first started in January 2012. I've learned a LOT about printing photos since then and I'd love to share what I've learned. This should be useful for people who are beginners and maybe some tips for those who have already been doing this a while.

So this is what a layout looks like once I've designed all the "cards" and arranged them into my templates in Photoshop (FYI, I used to not bother laying them out in templates first- I just printed my photos and arranged them later. Either way works!):

Next, I open an 11 x 8.5" document in Photoshop and drag over one of my cards:

Now this is fine, but once I print it out, how will I know where to cut the lines? I USED to do a light gray background behind all the cards so I could see where to cut UNTIL a lovely Instagram friend shared with me a little trick. Select the layer of card you want outlined. Then click EDIT>STROKE and this box will pop up:

I add a 1 px light gray border to all of my cards. It looks like this (look closely, the line is faint!):

Then bring three more "cards" onto the document and do the same thing (you have to select the layer in the layers palette before you choose EDIT>STROKE)

I try to align the edges as much as possible to make paper cutting easier.

If you fit two 6x4 cards and two 3x4 cards onto a page, there's little waste and you just need two 8.5 x 11" pieces of photo paper per 12x12" layout.

I LOVE Costco Kirkland's Photo Paper and here's the post about where I buy printer ink for cheap.

Let me know if you have any questions or other methods of printing cards! I'm curious to hear how you do things!