Baseball season is in full swing here in steamy Saint Paul, Minnesota. If you follow me on Twitter, you'll find a few days of the week are full of baseball-related Tweets, be them from Cole's games or from the games of our minor league team, the Saint Paul Saints.
Over the weekend, I made a very simple page with one of my favorite photos of Cole taken thus far in the season. I loved the warm light in the shot (and yes, that came from the actual sun, not a photo action.) So I added a simple edge burn vignette to the shot (using Rad Lab's EZ-Burn action) and designed this simple digital page using one of my layered templates and brushes from a new set, Typesets: Baseball 01.
Here's the digital page:
I could have called this good but I wanted to print it out and put it right into Cole's album. Now, one of the issues with printing full bleed/borderless pages is that your printer has to enlarge it just a bit to get the full edge-to-edge print effect. I'm not always a fan of how it alters the intended design ever so slightly. So I decided to reduce the size of the page by half an inch, and then mount it on a piece of black cardstock. In the end, it looked like this:
TECHNICAL NOTES: This page was designed using a layered digital template in Photoshop CS5. In order to reduce the size of the page, I went to Image > Image Size and changed the width of the template to 8 inches. Next, I sent the file to print with the Crop Marks option turned on. I did choose "Borderless 8.5 x 11 Photo" as my print style, because I wanted the crop marks to show up on the page, and I figured that a little tiny bit of enlarging (as will happen with borderless printing) was okay.
I trimmed the print on three sides, placed it onto the black cardstock and then made the final trim on the bottom side in order to ensure equal amounts of black cardstock would show on all sides. I adhered the print and voila, finished page.
DESIGN NOTES: This design features on large photo with a group of small squares that can house photos or text. The small squares feature repetition of size. Also, note the repetition of color on the page. I used the Eye Dropper tool to sample the maroon and greens used on the page. Then I repeated those colors in the title art. The title and journaling are centered, with lots of nice open white space surrounding them on three sides. The narrow black edge of cardstock creates a grounded frame effect on the overall design.
And yes, if this design looks familiar, it should I used it to create a favorite page of Aidan about a year ago, using the same template.
Here's to recycling and re-interpreting templates!
SUPPLIES:
dawn says
WOW!! LOVE LOVE THIS, SO COOL!!! Would look great in his room also!!
TaraMcK says
Love this I was looking through my layouts and came across one I made last year using this template… thanks for inspiring how to reuse it. I plan on scrapping with it this week!
Kendra B says
What a great page!!
Lynn L. says
Thanks for sharing the “why’s and how’s” of your pages and design choices…very helpful! Love the picture and layout. 🙂
kate says
Lovely page Cathy although it took me 4 attempts to work out what a “simple edge bum vignette” was – on the fourth attempt I realised it said burn not bum and all was clear 😀
cathy says
ha! : ) Glad you figured it out!
Judy says
Hi Cathy – is there a simple trick to convert an 8.5 x 11 template to 12 x 12? Or am I dreaming? Thanks for always taking the time to share your work and inspire us! I joke with my hubby all the time that my dream vacation would include a few days with you so I could pick your brain for hours on end!! LOL
Nicky from Okotoks says
love love love the color – it will make you smile everyday
TaraMcK says
Cathy – Quick question did you print straight from photoshop? (was wondering about the crop mark option)
Thanks Tara
cathy says
Yep. I do. There is a Crop Marks option in the print window. : )
Which program are you using PS or PSE?
Kim says
I’m still slummin’ it with version 3. 🙁 Love the layouts though.
Firstflight says
I love this page so much. So beautiful the DESIGN!