April Showers Scrapbook Layout

Scrapbook pages are a great way to memorialize special moments and events. Today’s post describes preserving the love and excitement involved in welcoming a new family member, as well as for conveying the excitement and anticipation leading up to a family wedding.

Linked In Blog Hop Logo Today’s post is part of the LinkedIn April Showers Blog Hop. I’m glad you’re here.  If you are coming from Cindy Murray’s  The Crafty Neighbor, you are in the right place! (If you landed here first and want to do the full hop, start here. )

April Showers Digital Layout

Since I’m in Michigan and the snow is just getting around to melting, I’ve yet to catch spring fever. Instead, I’ve focused on the big upcoming event in our family—the marriage of my cousin’s son Daniel.

All weddings are special, but this particularly resonates. There was a time when our fondest hope for Daniel was for his survival. Fast forward 15+ years and Daniel, a survivor of pediatric cancer, is now working on his Ph.D. in oncology research. Bride-to-be Erin is perfect for him and all of us are looking forward to the wedding.

April Showers… Inside and Out

When I heard that a shower for Erin was planned for April, I had my “April Showers” theme. The look I wanted to achieve was a warm cozy inside moment viewed from outside in the rain.

April Showers digital layout

Steps

I use PhotoShop Elements (PSE) 8, but you can accomplish these steps with other software packages. You can also use the same concepts for a traditional (paper) scrapbook page.

As Erin’s bridesmaids will wear a sea-foam green, I used a similar color from a “Signs of Spring” digital collection found at ScrapGirls.com for my background.  A contrasting yellow to match the spring flower embellishments was used as the backdrop for my narrative.

For me, the narrative is the most important part of my pages. I compose it in Word so I can take advantage of spell-check.  I chose a font with a formal look to go along with the wedding invitations, etc.  I used Jellyka Delicious Cake for the titles and Jellyka Western Princess for the narrative.  Both fonts were free downloads available from DaFont.com.

Making the frame:  To make the “window” into a frame for my photo, I cropped a stock photo of a window, then used PSE’s magic eraser to move the interior content. (The hard part was finding a stock photo. It was only later that I realized I could have simply gone outside and taken a photo!) I also took a photo I had taken of rain coming off of a gutter and used the same magic eraser to isolate the raindrops.  I then superimposed those drops over my window frame.  I used the normal eraser utility to remove any extraneous drops. Now I had my “April Showers” feel.

Adding the photo: The 12 x 12 layout would have had room for a landscape photo, but the portrait orientation works well too.  I added two copies of the photo in PSE.  On the top version, I used Filter–> Distort -> Glass utility to make the photo appear as if it had been taken from the outside.

April-Showers-glass-filter

 April-Showers-layersI didn’t want to exaggerate this effect too much, so I set the transparency of this layer at 49%. I locked the two photo layers, so I could move them around if necessary later on.

Finishing the Layout:  To finish the layout,  I used other embellishments that I found in my spring digital kit to give a finished look. Since Erin’s corsage had white and pink roses, I decided to add wet roses as embellishments. To do this, I used stock photos and eliminated the background of the photos with Image ->Magic Extractor, then added them as layers. To give the ribbon embellishments some depth, I selected each layer and added a drop shadow: Layer –>Layer Style –> Style Settings.

And the Winner of the April Showers Blog Hop is…Angelina Romero:

For our kick off event we offered e a great prize package valued at over $150.  Congratulations Angelina.
April Showers Scrapbook Layout Pinnable Image

Next Hop: Thanks for stopping by!  Now hop on over to Stamp Patty’s to see what beautiful project Patty Chenail has created for you!

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