Welcome to The Craft Squad’s Monthly Blog Hop and my post about preserving a typical family moment!  This month our theme is “Hoppity Hop Hop”! What does that make you think of? Easter? Spring? Kids bouncing off the walls? You can preserve this rhythms of life with digital scrapbooking.

See how “Hoppity Hop Hop” inspired our Craft Squad members. This month I’m the first stop on the blog hop. My blog is about preserving memories; scrapbooking and paper crafting can play a huge role in sharing precious memories.

Going Digital

The original photo

My last few projects have been layouts that could easily be done with traditional or digital papers. This month, I was inspired by some beautiful digital designs I found on Pinterest to make a true digital design.

Choosing a Photo

Another part of my “inspiration” were the imperfections of the photo itself. The photo is slightly off-center. Cutting out the church building on the left would only have made it worse. I decided to take out the background entirely.

The photo subjects were also not perfect. My niece was more interested in her hat than smiling and both my boys were intent on not doing what they were told.

Perversely, I actually like that part. It was a beautiful day and my sister, on the other side of the camera lens, captured a fun family moment. Although they don’t look like Easter angels, my kids do look like themselves. In other words, it was a typical family moment, not a posed shot that doesn’t really reflect our personalities.

My Family Moment Project

My Steps:

I use PhotoShop Elements (PSE), but you can accomplish these steps with other software packages, including GIMP which you can download free at gimp.org.

As always, I started with creating a new file, 12 x 12 inches large at 300 dpi. I used one of Vicki Stegall’s “Let’s Play” background papers. The tedious part was removing the background from my photo. I did most of this through PSE’s”Magic Extractor” tool. (See my May Flowers post for detailed instructions.)

When I was finished with my “extraction,” I copied (duplicated in Adobe speak) my original photograph layer. I set the bottom (original) layer to about 40% opacity and used the eraser tool at 80% opacity to fade the edges of the top layer. This allows my photograph to blend with the background. I also placed the text against a light yellow background.

Once that was done, it was only a question of adding digital embellishments and a title. I used  Scriptina Pro font for the title.  To achieve more depth, I selected most the embellishment layers and added a drop shadow (Layer -> Layer style -> Style settings -> Drop Shadow).

I really wasn’t happy with the layout until I found the butterflies from the “Natural Breezes” collection I had purchased for an earlier project. (Besides my sister’s church also has a butterfly release on Easter, so it was a good fit with the narrative in my head.)

My Narrative:

Often we don’t have a full story with a plot for each photo. In my opinion, that’s fine. The “narrative” explains how this was a memorable for us. It gives me enough information that I can remember and share  the makings of that happy day. That I can remember that I found joy in the typical family moment.

Next Stops on the “Hoppity Hop Hop” Blog Hop