All aboard!!! It’s time for another ride on the My Memories Suite Blog train!!

Hi to all our MMS friends and fans! We LOVE the season we can celebrate LOVE! And who doesn’t LOVE to win free stuff??? We are all gearing up for the next ride on the MMS BLOG TRAIN!! Make sure you check out the blogs for each member of the MMS Creative Team ~ each of our Team has created a blog post on their personal blogs to highlight one of their favorite features in MMS Version 2! There is some great new stuff and each Team member has chosen one to walk you through. It is not only a great way to learn something new, it is a GREAT way to enter to win some FREE STUFF! We are giving away a copy of The MMS Version 2 software/upgrade, 14 (the lucky number of love) FREE kits from the MMS Design Shop and 1 Quick Design Club CD! ALL you have to do to enter is follow the blog train through each stop, collect the key word on each blog, put them in order for a 5 word phrase, and email that phrase to me at lisaj@mymemoriessuite.com. That’s it, easy as pie! So, check out Sarah’s blog to get started, then follow the train from there! Here are the links to refer to in case you get lost on your trip:

Stop 1: Sarah’s blog

Stop 2: Mary & Jackie’s blog

Stop 3: Beth’s Blog

Stop 4: Brooke’s Blog

Last Stop: Lisa’s Blog!

Then email the 5 word key phrase in order to me! lisaj@mymemoriessuite.com

Good luck everyone…and don’t forget to make a memory today!

Lisa J.

Great idea for your 2010 Family Books!

We have been talking about year long projects and commitments on the Facebook page lately… they are a FANTASTIC way to chronicle your family’s year in pictures and journaling. Finding the TIME to do that type of project can be daunting though – especially when we have VERY busy families! Check out the blog post below from Sarah – a VERY smart member of our Creative Team here at MMS! Sarah shares a great idea for how to simplify this task and make it work for YOU!

Thanks for sharing Sarah! Check out Sarah’s blog for more great ideas! Scrapping Sarah’s Scribblings!

I love scrap booking, but when I see challenges to do 365 day projects, my blood pressure rises and the anxiety starts to build. I can’t take medication 365 days a year like I am supposed to, so I seriously doubt that doing a 365 day project will work for me. The 52 weeks projects look a little more inviting, but then I saw a blog that recommended a top ten memories project and knew I had found the perfect one for me.

I CAN make a top ten list for every month of memories for that month. Couple that with my goal to write more stories down and do a monthly round-up and I think that’s all I can handle. This should help make scrapping all the important events a little easier to scrap because it gives me a plan and it limits my entries. Here are the first pages of the year…

Have you started something new for the year? Share your great ideas.
Happy Scrapping,
Sarah

Organizing Digital Scrapbooking Supplies!

Here is a GREAT article from Katie the Scrapbook Lady on how to organize your digital scrapbooking supplies! Check out this great thought from her blog:

I created a folder just for my digiscrap supplies. I now keep this folder on my external hard drive because it is pretty big – I am a Scrapbook Lady you know! This is what it looks like inside my digi scrap folder:

Here’s a list of all the subfolders – the numbers in front of them are to keep them in a certain order since windows likes to organize the folders in numerical and alphabetical order automatically. I wanted the first folders to be related to the months of the year (holidays) so I numbered them that way. I decided to put Birthdays at the beginning of the year.

1 Birthday

1 Winter

2 Valentines and Hearts

3 St. Pats

4 Easter (even though sometimes Easter is in the 3rd month)

6 Summer and Beach (June is the first month of summer)

6 Travel and Camping (This just seemed to fit next to the summer and beach file)

7 Independence Day

8 School/Art/Music (August is back to school month around here)

9 Fall

10 Halloween

11 Thanksgiving

12 Xmas

Does that make sense so far? It’s pretty straightforward – these are the folders for holiday or theme specific stuff. If I have a full kit that is a Back to School kit, it goes in the file marked “8 School”. If I have a cute little heart doodle it goes in file “2 Valentines and Hearts”. I like to select “Large Icon” view in my window so I can see the folders. I also select an image to represent the folder by going to the folder properties and changing the image if needed.

Next I have files of individual elements. I put a 13 in front of all of these so they stay in alphabetical order based on subject; alphas, buttons, frames, etc. So continuing on with my list of files:

13 alphabets/numbers/dates

13 animals

13 buttons and brads

13 flowers

13 frames

13 journaling/quotes/tags

13 misc. elements (the ones that just don’t fit anywhere else)

13 overlays and masks

13 ribbons/trims and bows

13 shapes and borders

13 staples and fasteners

13 stitches

Next up are papers and kits. Let me emphasize here that I always keep a kit together when I first buy it and file it under “full kits” unless it is a theme kit that fits in one of my earlier categories. Kits are designed to have the pieces go together. Yes, that file is really big! But because I have “thumbnail view” selected for every folder in it, I can browse through my kits in a flash. I do keep subfolders within that file that I will show you in a minute.

My paper and kit files all have a 14 in front of them to keep them nicely in place behind the element files.

14 full kits

14 paper prints and packs

14 paper solids

and here’s a peek into my rather large full kits file:

There are several ways you could organize this folder. I have folders sorted by designer. Each designer gets a folder if I have more than one of their kits, otherwise the single kit will go into the misc. sub-folder. I was surprised that some of my favorite designers didn’t show up here, then I realized that I only bought embellishment packs or theme kits from them. This is an easy way to evaluate what kind of purchases you make.

I do have an Asian sub-folder because I’m collecting Asian style kits to use on pages for my husband’s Japan layouts. Perhaps you might want to set up some folders for boy kits and/or girl kits? It can be difficult to categorize some kits. Most of the kits I buy have flowers in them – does that mean they should all be filed under flowers? You can definitely overthink this step. I suggest just finding a method that makes sense to you and won’t take you to long to browse through. I used to keep this file full of individual kit folders and I did like that approach as it was easy to browse through them. It just got too unwieldy though so I needed to create a sub-folder system.

I strongly suggest that you keep kits together though. I read an article by a very popular digi scrapper who said she breaks up all her kits and puts the flowers in the flower file, the ribbons in the ribbon file, etc. I tried this and not only did it take me an eternity to do, but then it was nearly impossible to scrap. It took me months to undo this mistake!

The next category for me is templates. This is probably the area that took me the longest to organize but it is the one that has had the biggest payoff for me! If you read my Power Scrapping Secrets article at The Daily Digi you will see how having templates sorted by number of pictures they hold can save you oodles of time. I will give you a peek into my template folder so you can see what I’m talking about.

I have filed all of my templates by the amount of photos they are designed for. I realize that some templates might fit in more than one file depending on how you use them but I just tried to stay basic with my filing system. I can’t tell you how useful this system has been. Even if you think the rest of my digi organization is bunk, I bet you will find this part useful.

When I go to create a page that needs to have 4 photos on it, I just open up that folder and start browsing. Even if I don’t use a template, it at least gets my creativity working!

I don’t use subfolders here and all I keep is the preview of the template and the actual template file right next to. Sometimes I have to rename them to get them to stay next to each other in the file. Every once in a while I have to make a jpeg image so I have a preview of the template so if you are a template designer – PLEASE include a preview of each template! My very favorite templates are in TIFF format because you only need that one file to serve as a preview and the actual template. This really isn’t as complicated as it sounds – basically, I just like to see what each template looks like at one glance through the folder it relates to.

Now we are getting into sort of the misc. area of my organization. I have a 16 in front of the next few folders which are for downloadable magazines and tutorials

16 albums and quick pages

16 magazines/newsletters and tutorials

17 actions (even after you load them, it’s helpful to have a place for the instructions)

18 memorabilia (scanned items)

19 AMM (my amazing month of memories files)

19 CU (commercial use stuff from my designing days)

20 photos * will deal with this in a future post

21 layouts * will deal with this in a future post

Organization will pay off in many ways. If anything, it helps you avoid duplicate purchases. The best part for me is that it makes me a more efficient scrapbooker which means I get more done in the time I have and I enjoy it more! The only downside is that it is truly a boring task. I mean all you are doing is moving files around – so my solution is to take my laptop out to the couch for this one and watch tv with my family while I’m digi organizing. It’s nice to have something else to think about while you are staring at the screen. And you don’t have to feel guilty about watching tv because you are cleaning while you are doing it!

A *Great* Giveaway!

We made it to Amanda’s Blog! If you are a FONT FANATIC, like me, you will recognize many of the fonts from posted pages that come from Amanda’s collection! At kevinandamanda.com you can find some great fonts and inspiration and ideas (and even some yummy recipes) and it’s ALL FREE! And this week WE are Amanda’s spotlight giveaway! Amanda is giving away a free copy of MMS software to one lucky entry post on her blog! Make sure you check it out and post a response, and GOOD LUCK! So, check out Amanda’s blog and post your comment to win!

… and don’t forget to make a memory today!

Lisa J.

Winter Magic kit FREE with purchase!

Here are a couple cute pages from the great kit by Sandy McDougal for StoryRock. This wonderful kit is perfect for scrapping all your wonderful winter memories or ski trip pages! Check out the entire kit here: Winter Magic. For a VERY limited time, you can have this great kit, perfect for your winter pages for FREE. Just make a minimum purchase of $5.00 from the Design Shop and add the promo code: wintermagic at checkout!

IMPORTANT NOTE: DO NOT ADD THE WINTER MAGIC KIT to your cart, it will be added automatically to your cart when you add the promo code!  Enjoy this great kit for FREE – for a limited time only!
and remember to make a memory today!

Lisa J.

Join the Quick Design Club today!

Here are a couple pages from one of the Designer Templates included on the new Quick Design Club CD! This wonderful new kit is called “Cross My Heart”! This is a great kit that is perfect for all of your upcoming Valentine’s Day pages, or for any book that needs a sweet template! Take a peek at the pages, and sign up for the Quick Design Club today!

The Quick Design Club is a great way for you to get a jump on your scrapbook designs. Club membership entitles you to exclusive access to all new, never before seen templates and packs at a substantial savings.

Shipped directly to your doorstep every other month, each club disc contains over $40 worth of new designs—but is offered to club members at only $14.99. That is a savings of more than 50% off! Plus, by enrolling in the Quick Design Club, you will automatically receive additional discounts and special offers throughout the year with even more savings.

Membership is convenient and affordable. You will only be billed when your disc ships (every two months). You can cancel your membership at any time. Don’t waste another minute, join the club and start creating your scrapbooks now!

Quick Design Club CD Sign Up!

Making a Designer template yours! :-)

Here are some great tips that you can use to help you make the most of the Designer Templates available with your MMS program! There are tons of great templates that can really help speed up the process of creating family keepsakes for you. Let’s face it ~ we creative people have a big struggle when we approach a project. We want to get it done, we want to enjoy the process, we want to enjoy the results, and we want it to look like it’s ours! The flip side of that however is, most of us have INCREDIBLY busy lives! We have children and families, we work inside the home and out, we volunteer, we are there for those around us – and we TRY to squeeze out a little time for ourselves in there somewhere! Well, I have found that using Designer Templates really help me to get through a project quickly. Now, sure, there are still some times and some projects that I start from scratch, because there isn’t a template that quite matches the look I want or I really do want every element added to be of my choosing. That’s one of the things I truly LOVE about MMS. I have the flexibility to choose either option every time I add a page to a project I am creating. But for today’s post, I really wanted to show you some quick tips you can use to start with a Designer Template and truly jazz it up and make it yours! A couple quick steps and you will be DONE before you know it!

So, first I will show you the template page, completely as is. All I did was drag in the photos from one of my folders. In this example, I am using some photos from a project I did for my aunt for Christmas. We live in Florida, so we don’t see much snow – but there is a wonderful exhibit called “Ice!” at the beautiful Gaylord Palms Resort in Orlando every year and I have some cute pictures of her family that I am going to use in these two pages.

As I was saying in the first page, the “before” page – I simply chose the page I was going to work on, and dragged each picture into one of the photo boxes that were placed on the page. This is so quick and easy the page literally creates itself in less than a minute or two. Drag, drag, drag, DONE! Looks great, sure! I could move on, sure! BUT… I want to “snazz up” the page just a bit so it better suits my taste. So, I choose a few simple options from all of those available in my MMS software. Now, most of these additions are available whether you have Version 1 of MMS or the newly released V2. They are SIMPLE to do and whether this is your first page or your 1,000th – YOU can do it!

As you can see, I used the ZOOM tool, to really get the pictures more “close up” so you can tell who’s in them! Click on the picture you wish to zoom, then click the ZOOM IN button until you get close enough in. You can also adjust the visible portion of the picture with the CROP tool, which allows you to move the part of the picture that is shown. This is one of my favorite things to do to really get more of the subject in each picture on the page. Okay, so now that I have done all three photos, I move on to the next little change. I choose to add a MAT to my photos. Again, all under my control, for these photos I choose a thin white mat to frame them up a little, and click the “APPLY TO ALL PHOTOS ON THIS PAGE” so they all match exactly. You can choose the color of the mats to suit your taste – you can also color match them so they are a perfect fit for your page! Then, I move on to my FAVORITE little change – SHADOWS. I can’t say enough how much I just LOVE shadows and what they can do for your page. They literally POP your pages to life. I pretty much use shadows on just about everything on the page! What I love about the shadow option in MMS is that it is COMPLETELY under your control. It’s more than just “do I want a shadow or not?”. It’s how much shadow do I want, where do I want the shadow to be placed, how dark do I want it, how much of a drop do I want? Everything is under my control! So, I first click on one of my photos and click on the SHADOW box in my Control Panel. That brings up the SHADOW PROPERTIES box. This is where you control the appearance of the drop shadow of your selected item (the shadows for embellishments work much the same way). So, you choose how opaque you want your shadow, how much blur (which affects how “soft” or “hard” the shadow appears). Then, my favorite part is to decide the offset. You can use either your mouse, by clicking on the actual shadow in the preview box and dragging it around until you like the way it looks, or by using the arrow keys on your keyboard. Either option gives you the flexibility to show a little or a lot, drag it more to the side or the bottom, etc. I just LOVE that option! You can even choose the COLOR of the shadow! Then, I click the little box that says “APPLY TO ALL PHOTOS ON THIS PAGE” so that all the pictures look the same. You can do each photo individually, but this will save time.

Then I moved on to a little more personalization – but not too much, just to keep this short and sweet! I change out the text that says “Dec 2010” for a little “Ice!” so it fits more with the page. Remember EVERYTHING that is included in a Designer Template is completely under your control. You can move it, resize it, reshape it, duplicate it, eliminate it, whatever you like. I chose to just leave the little shape and embellishment and change out the little words. So, I created a new text box (you can create this in “WORDART” in V2). Used one word to help define what is going on in the pictures on the page. Of course, I add shadows to each of the three parts of this little set. The white circle SHAPE on the bottom, the little blue MAT embellishment, and the text. When I am adding the shadow to the little blue MAT embellishment, I click “APPLY TO ALL EMBELLISHMENTS ON THIS PAGE” so it also adds the shadow to the snowflake embellishment along the left side of the pre-designed page, as well as the shaped strip at the top of the page (that you almost don’t even notice until the shadows makes it pop!)

Then, finally, I add one line of text at the top of the page, and the year at the bottom, to really just define it better and fill in some of the empty space at the top and bottom of my page. I add the “Gaylord Palms Orlando” and the “2008” text. I choose a cute font (this one is called “Tingle Institute” – cute!) and add the text in black, of course add my shadow also. Then another one of my favorite little tricks is to create the text like I just described, then I click the COPY button up top and paste and exact duplicate of my text line, so now I have two. Then I click the WHITE button (or you can choose ANY color) to change the color of the duplicated text to white (or whatever color you selected). Then I just “layer” it over the previous black text and it really POPS your text off the page. Some of this can be done in fewer steps with the word art options in V2, but I still like the double layer look!

To finish up, I enlarged each of the pictures, just a bit, to fully utilize the space on the page and maximize how much of the picture I could show.

NOW, I can say, “I’m done!”. I am happy with the layout of the page, and a few simple, QUICK little changes that really just bring it to life for me. Now, you can spend a ton of time working on each little detail, and many of us love to do that – I love to do that too, but sometimes you just WANT TO GET IT DONE! And this is a great way to combine your own personal flair and the ease of the Designer Template options.
Please let me know if you have any questions, or need a little more help with the instructions for anything I talked about here, just ask away! You can always reach me at lisaj@mymemoriessuite.com or find me on the Facebook page at “Polaroid My Memories Suites”!

Good luck with your New Year’s projects and Happy Scrappin’!!

Lisa J.

New Features Video Tutorial from Lesley @ The Pink Toque

Happy Sunday, and have I got a treat for you… introducing My Memories Suite VERSION 2! That’s right, you heard me correctly. Not only is there a new version to My Memories Suite with all new features, I created a video tutorial to explain it all and show those new features off!

Last month, StoryRock unveiled an all new version 2 of its famous and very popular digital scrapbooking software, My Memories Suite. Version 2 is packed with all new goodies and awesome new features that we were dying for in Version 1. It’s like StoryRock read all of the feedback of features and ideas that its users over the years have been wanting out of the software and put it in one neat little package that will make digital scrapbookers the world over very happy.

If you’ve been to the Pink Toque Craft Blog before, you know I am an avid user of My Memories Suite. I got the software over 3 years ago when it first came out, and I have been in love ever since. I don’t want to babble on forever (because the new Version 2 goodies are exciting!) but if this is your first visit to my blog and you’re wondering what all of the excitement is about and why I love this software so much, be sure to go and read my review. My Memories Suite has been the best digital scrapbooking program to ever come along and with Version 2, it just got better.

Version 2 includes 1500 new background papers, 1300 new embellishments and 20 new layouts that come built into the software for your use right out of the box. On top of that, new features such as the zoom ability, Resource Gallery, and WordArt Designer make creating beautiful digital scrapbooking pages even easier. My favorite new feature is that your text can now be curved and follow shapes. This was not something you could do in Version 1, and I love that I can create text in beautiful circular shapes or to follow the edges of a photograph right on the page. It was probably the most requested feature and question I got from readers of my blog. Before I had to tell people they could only do something like that in Photoshop, but now My Memories Suite allows you to edit curved and rounded text on the fly right in the program instead. Hooray!

Another highly-sought-after feature that a lot of people asked me about was how to view pages side-by-side so they could build double page spread layouts. Unfortunately, this was not something you could do in Version 1, but now in Version 2 it’s easy. You can also now share your digital scrapbook in a wider variety of ways, including trading cards or calendars. They’ve also streamlined the Photobook process to make it easier to create beautiful photobooks of your finished albums.

I received Version 2 last month and have been trying hard to squeeze in some digital scrapping time with it so that I could show off the new features here on my blog. I finally got around to it today, and created a new video tutorial that highlights all of the major new features available to you in Version 2. I walk you through the new things and how to use them, and it makes it easy for Version 1 users to pick right up where they left off in the old version, or for new users to My Memories Suite to see just how awesome the software really is so they can get it for themselves.

Version 1 users will love that all of the photo albums and pages they’ve created in Version 1 will be converted for them into Version 2 compatibility and that the transition will be seamless. You won’t lose anything and all of your old albums will be right there for you in Version 2, ready to go and waiting for you to use the new tools and features to enhance them even further. When you’re adding embellishments or papers, you’ll be able to easily see what items are new to Version 2, and all of the old embellishments and papers from Version 1 are collected together in a folder labeled as Version 1, so you can quickly find all of your old favorites or check out the new stuff.

Speaking of Favorites, another new feature that I just love is that I can “bookmark” the embellishments and papers that I use most often and mark it as a favorite. This means that it’s added to a special “favorites” folder so I can access those favorite items quickly anytime I want to without having to search for them every time I want to use them on my digital scrapbook page designs. I show how this works in the video tutorial.

The WordArt Designer allows you to create fun and professional looking word art for your pages easily, and is built right in to the side tab of My Memories Suite now. Type in the text you want to create into word art, select the font and sizing, line spacing, colors, fill, stroke, etc. You can add shadows or a bevel and design the perfect word art accompaniment to any page you’re working on. I also demonstrate this in the video tutorial!

I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but I’m really excited about the new features in My Memories Suite Version 2! I just recently finished up Family Life 2009 digital scrapbook and am eagerly looking forward to working with all new designs, layouts, and features with Version 2 in 2010. If you want more details about what Version 2 has to offer, check out the info on mymemoriessuite.com. Original users of Version 1 will be able to upgrade for a nominal fee to get all of the new features, papers, embellishments, and layouts that come packaged with Version 2 and brand new My Memories Suite users can get on board and pick up Version 2 for themselves!

I’ve spent most of the afternoon recording the latest tutorial and getting it uploaded for viewing. It ended up being 18 minutes long! Since YouTube only allows videos up to 10 minutes each, I split the tutorial into 2 parts:

Link to YouTube Video Tutorial Part 1

Link to YouTube Video Tutorial Part 2

Enjoy! Be sure to let me know if you have any questions or comments on the new video tutorials or you need help with My Memories Suite Version 2. Hope you’ve had a great weekend Happy scrapping!

Lesley  thepinktoque.com