Rene Marker

For me it is so much easier to just use single pages even for a double page layout. I guess it is because of how I print the single layouts and put them in individual protectors. On Shutterfly using single pages is so simple, no adjustments needed (except for the covers).

I get the 10x10 books from Shutterfly. Easier to read the journaling! And, fit quite nicely on regular book shelves. The only thing I print right from PSP is 4x6 photos.

Sorry if I confused you. The Persnickety Prints 12x12 pages go into page protectors that are in CM albums. Those are my personal albums. I also buy print credits when Persnickety Prints has them on sale. Normal price $1.99, print credit sale price $1.50. Then I can just order prints when I want. Shutterfly has a book design where you can upload your own layouts instead of placing photos into their pre-designed albums. The books I make for my cousins use that and I upload copies of my layouts to Shutterfly to make them. So at this time they have a Shutterfly book and I have the CM album but I have told them, the CM albums will be theirs when I'm gone. My Canon printer is the Pixma MG7720. Nothing real fancy except for having the 6 cartridges. Only prints 8.5x14. Scan size is 8.5x11. I got it at Wal-Mart and have had it several years.

No, I've never done a photo album. I print 12x12 prints then insert those into page protectors that go in Creative Memories albums. The few photo books I have printed for gifts for my cousins have been done at Shutterfly. I wait until Shutterfly has an unlimited pages sale then order a book with about 100 pages. The quality isn't bad and my cousins absolutely love them since none of them are scrapbookers! I have a Canon printer as well. From my very first ink jet printer to my current, they have all been Canon. My current printer has 6 cartridges and I have found that to be good enough for me. As for cameras, yeah, my phone is not it. I have 3 cameras, 2 Canon PowerShot and a Canon T5. One is kept in my purse (Canon SX 740HS). The other is a Canon SX 540HS. This one stays on my desk. I need to have substance to my camera as my hands shake when I try to use my phone. I do have some photos taken on my phone if I don't have my camera handy but I much prefer a regular camera!

I know a lot of the information is available on the internet but you have to search all over the place to find it. And, that can be frustrating! Especially since most of it is focused on PS and PSE. I think a book would be great for a start then possibly build the website to go with the book. I've only learned what I know by trial and error and frequenting various forums over the years. I already was familiar with PSP when I started since I had already been using it for over 10 years for scanning and correcting photos. I was familiar with layers since the first thing I ever did with PSP in a class on ZDNet was make signatures for forums! But I was a complete novice when it came to digital scrapbooking although I had done paper scrapbooking so knew what scrapbooking was. I needed to learn more about the process. I just thought of something else that isn't PSP specific but how about having testimonials from scrapbookers that use the program giving their tips for how they do things. (For example, when I shadow my layouts I start with the bottom layer and work my way up the layer palette. This way I always know which layers have shadows when I don't use shadows on a separate layer.)

Ann, my go to for printing my layouts is Persnickety Prints. I do print 12x12 size but they have a multitude of sizes that can be printed (as photo prints). I just looked and although they don't have 8x10.5, they do have 8x10 and 8x12 for $3.99 per print. They also have 8.5x11 for $1.99 per print. The quality of their prints is exceptional and if you don't like it, support will work with you until you are satisfied. If I was doing a calendar for a gift, I would use Persnickety and get the 8.5x11 prints and see if they would put a white border all around it. Then I would bind it possibly with ribbon like Sue suggested. Persnickety's customer support is awesome and works with their customers to make sure everything is what they wanted. Shipping is usually very fast, I've gotten orders within 4 to 5 days (Utah to Ohio). If I was doing a calendar for me, I'd just print it on my printer.

I definitely agree that a chapter on supplies that are already there for people to use would be nice. Most digital scrapbookers that I know like to buy a pre-made kit then scrap their layout when they first start out. Heck I've been digital scrapping since 2008 and still prefer to buy kits. I prefer my scrapbooking time actually being spent on scrapbooking not creating although I have enjoyed learning more about creating my own stuff. As for templates, make sure to include the fact that PSD templates can be used in PSP. Even though PSD templates might have native PSD features in them, they can still be used in PSP. A PSP user will just get the basic template to use (I do it all the time). One of the designers I have bought from has glitter styles as an add-on to her kits. Since PSP can't use styles, I always ignored them. Until I found out that the png files of the glitters could be used by saving them in the patterns folder. Not to mention all the commercial use paper textures from Pixel Scrapper that can be used by saving them in the textures folder. I do agree with Susan about using Bootcamp as a starting point. But make sure to expand into more crafty or complex pages. Show what can be done with PSP because quite a few PSD or PSE users think PSP users cannot do everything they can! Most of the scrapbookers that I know started out with very basic pages but as they continued on they found they enjoyed the crafty (and what some call busy) pages. I've seen (and done) some crafty pages that do have the story on the page as well. Just because a page is crafty doesn't mean it can't tell a story. Since you don't want to go in to detail about the tools, if you mention something but don't want to go into a lot of detail put a disclaimer that more info can be found at.... whether it be one of your books or a blog post or tutorial here at campus. A sneaky way to advertise 😉

My first thought was a chapter about layers, a basic explanation at first. Then go into using layer groups, linking layers and using the color highlighting in the layers palette. I personally use linking with the color highlighting to know which layers are in my clusters. I use layer groups for both clusters and alphas to resize the elements all at once. Knowing these basics are useful when creating clusters and the shadowing of the various layers. Another item would be shadowing and explaining how the bottom layers have smaller shadows than those higher in the layers palette especially in clusters. Also, with shadows explain how the warp brush or mesh warp tool can be used to make subtle changes to the shadows. (On a side note I just found out a member of the Sweet Shoppe Designs design team uses PSP and I never suspected it because her shadows look great on clusters. I always though she used PS. I asked for her shadow settings and have played with them a littler and WOW what a difference on clusters!)

As to your original question about go-to scripts, these are mine: Raster to Mask: to place photos on the templates I've bought from designers Merge Group Rename: always use after placing photo in Raster to Mask to keep the photo name. I drag my photo directly into the layers palette which keeps the original file name. Using this script keeps that name which then shows in the credit list compile. Credit List Compile: I mainly use designer kits so I use this so that if I post to a gallery I can credit the designer Guiding Lines: I use this when I think of it!!! I do have a lot of the element scripts but since I mainly use designer kits, I haven't used them much. However, if there is another Build-A-Kit Workshop, I will be using them! Some of those are the plaid paper scripts, Ribbon Factory, Custom Kit Ribbons, Buttons and Labels and various bow scripts.

And I think 385 fonts are too many!!!

I don't decorate much at all. I put some decorations out at Christmas usually after Thanksgiving. These days I use table top trees since I have no gifts to put under a big tree and I can't handle a large tree by myself anymore. I have 4 table top trees that I keep decorated and when not out, they are covered by a plastic bag and live in the bottom of a closet. One goes in my office, one goes in my living room and the other 2 I alternate putting them on the dining room table. Last year I added an ornament tree with some of the pewter Longaberger ornaments I've had for yours as a decoration in my living room. I never put it away! Also, last year I never took down the tree in my office. That may be the extent of my decorations this year. I had my surgery follow-up this week and the replacement valve has not settled in place like it should have so I haven't been feeling too great lately. I'm having a test on the 27th to see what can be done. Once that is done, I wait until the cardiac structural team has a meeting about their cases to discuss what treatment is indicated. No idea when that meeting will be so it could very well be that anything will get done before the holidays so I probably won't be able to put anything else out unless I get someone to come get the stuff off the shelves of the closet for me.

It might be worth it to get a subscription to Newspapers.com (an Ancestry company). I have been using it for genealogy research so I just checked to see if it had Australian newspapers... and it does. You can enter a name and have it search all newspapers or narrow it down to a location. You can even have it search specific decades of year. There is a free trial although I don't know how long it is for, maybe 7 days? Although it may not have papers from the area you want. I do know that the website is constantly adding new papers. There are no papers from my county in there at this time but luckily the names I've been searching are in some papers that are already there... broke down a brick wall with what I found!

15 years ago when I was going to scrapbooking retreats with my laptop, I saved all my kits and photos on an external hard drive. Even when I worked at home on my desktop, I saved what I was doing on that external hard drive. I also had a cloud backup that would backup my desktop hard drive and the external hard drive. So I still had more than one copy of everything. Over 5 years ago I began having issues with my computer disconnecting from the internet on its own. Even new modems from the ISP didn't seem to solve the problem. Then in May of 2019 we had a power outage due to tornadoes in the area and when the power came back my 7 or 8 years old computer wouldn't even turn on. So I had to get a new one. While I didn't have a desktop I had to use my laptop which was not connected to the cloud backup... and I had no internet disconnects at all! I got the new computer and got everything setup including the cloud backup and the internet disconnects started happening again. I paused the backup and no more disconnects so I cancelled the service. So these days, I keep everything on my hard drive but whenever I download my photos or buy and unzip new kits, I back them up to 2 separate external hard drives. I also have 2 other external hard drives that I will back up everything to about once a month. I've also gotten to the point that all my old stuff are on the external hard drives but not the hard drive of my desktop. If I would need something I just hook up the external. This gives me more room on the desktop. I no longer like to scrap on my laptop because I'm so used to the dual monitors but I do have PSP loaded on it. So if I were to go away and take my laptop, if I take one of my external hard drives I could still scrap if I wanted. System works for me!

I took the picture from my front porch. The driveway is mine as is the mailbox on the right side of the photo. There is a street that meets up with my street (almost directly across from my driveway) and the house you see is on the corner of those 2 streets. The neighbor that does my lawn work for me is across the street from me to my south and sits on the opposite corner of the house you see.

The city has leaf pickup service but my neighborhood is outside city limits so we don't get access to it. So way back when the neighborhood was built in the 1950's, the original residents started a leaf pickup for the area we call "the woods" since it is where all the trees are. Just in the last 5 years, my house was allowed to join but only because they needed volunteer workers and my neighbor east of me was one they wanted! They will pickup the leaves for about 6 to 8 weeks depending on when the last of the leaves fall and they then take them to the city farm/compost facility where they pay a fee to dump the leaves. When dad still lived here, he just used a mulching mower to mulch the leaves every fall since our house wasn't a part of the pickup group (even though he asked to be included back in the 1960's!)