Express Collections in Studio J

The Express Collections in Studio J are some of my favorite to work with. They are a collection of layouts that are all finished, all you do is add your journaling and photos and you are set. No need to figure out what paper you want, or what color to make something, it is all done for you. You can change them up if you would like and I will show you how. First, when you click on Express Collections this is what you will see next:

I am not sure why the Autumn/Winter 2013 Retreat isn't showing up right, but it is there. Today I decided to work on a few photos of my Little E, so I picked the Little Miss collection. I liked the first layout so I picked that one

I put my photos in and resized them using the percentage drop down menu. One thing that I love about this option of changing the picture size is that it tells me how big I can make the picture before it looks bad. It does this with the slider going from green (good) to red (bad) with yellow in the middle (warning, might not look how you want it to). I didn't have enough photos to fill all the photo wells, so I just changed two of the photo wells into journaling spots. This is really easy to do. You click on the photo well and the photo editing box will pop up, next you click on the square at the top of the box with a T and some lines:

Then add your text. I also changed the color of my text by selecting the color box at the top of the text editing pop up window. I picked Slate.

Then I wanted to have the text show up as if it was on a piece of White Daisy Cardstock so I clicked on the other color bloco box in the text editing pop up window and selected White Daisy.

And that is it, now my layout is complete and it took me all of 5 minutes. LOVE it!

Oh and just a reminder, Studio J is free to use, yup FREE, so why not log on and try it out today?

Adding details in Studio J

Today's project is going to look a little than what I left you with yesterday. I just wasn't feeling the colors in the pictures with the color with the paper. So I switched to pictures of my husband's birthday. I only have 2 pictures from his birthday, mostly because I took a lot of video. So I picked a layout with two photos wells and that I liked the paper colors. Here is what I started with once I added the photos:

My next step was to change up the paper just a little to suit my tastes. To do this I clicked on the paper tab over on the left side of the webpage.

I just changed the color of the accented cardstock and the color of the cardstock that is behind the pictures. I wanted to add a little texture and felt that the green was a little too bright. The next thing I did was add a title using the My Stickease title. To do that I first deleted the title spot:

Next I added some color to the ribbon and metal accessories that were already on the page. I choose the color Thistle because then the color would pop. I also made the bow a little bigger by using the percentage drop down menu.

Next I added some embellishments from the My Stickease large selection. One of the presents that I added was a little bit big, so I used the percentage drop down menu again to make the present fit into the piece of cardstock that I wanted it to.

As I was putting together the cake Stickease I did the plate first, and then the top layer and then the middle layer. That layered the pieces in a way that made it look like one piece not three. I added the candle to the top of the cake and that made me want to move the Thistle metal embellishment to the left a little. Moving the hinge was easy, but I needed to zoom in to move all the little brads into their places. To do this I went to the top of the website and used the percentage drop down and moved it to 300%, then I used the slider bar at the bottom so that I could see what I needed to see.

All I have left is to add my journaling, as you might have noticed there is a vellum over the journaling area, to do that you click on the journaling and a box will pop up. Then you click on the little box of colors and I picked the Crystal Blue cardstock color so that it coordinated with the background cardstock.

And that is it. I now have a completed layout that took me 20-30 minutes to make and it is ready to go.

All I need to do now is buy it and hope that I am one of the lucky ones that gets a golden ticket or an album for free this month. To find out more details about today's special just go here. Let me know if you have any questions or neec help with a layout.

Studio J How to

Since this month's special with Close to My Heart is a Studio J special ($5 for a layout, crazy good!) I thought that I would do a quick turtorial on how to use Studio J. Your first step is to go to my website and click on the Products Tab and then click on the Studio J Online Scrapbooking tab and this will take you to the Studio J website that looks like this:

Click on the enter now and log into your Close to My Heart account, or create a new one. You should end up on a page that looks like this:

Over on the right you can see that there are a few options for you, if this is your first time you should click on Create New Project. If you have been before and are coming back to work on something than you can click on Go to My Project. Once you click on Create New Project you get to name it before moving on. Today I am working on my daughter's birthday, so I named mine S's 8th Birthday.

Now you get to upload photos. The easiest way is to put whatever photos you want to use in a folder on your desktop. This makes it really easy to find your photos to upload. The photos will take a little while to upload, so please be patient, maybe grab a snack while you wait, play one of your favorite songs and then go back and let the fun begin!

Once your photos have upload you can click on continue and then you get to pick either to start with an Express Collection or Create Your Own Layout. I choose Create your own layout because I am wanting to use the Confetti Wishes with all these fun birthday photos.

This is what you will see if you pick Creat Your Own Layout. These are all the new kits that have been added.

Up in the right there is a drop down menu where you can pick the number of photos you have. I have 5 photos so I picked 5 photos in the drop down. Then you just pick one of the which layout you like the best. I am a sucker for the Honeycomb layout so I picked that one. Here is what I saw next:

I picked kit one because I loved the look of those fun colors on the gray.

All you have to do now is drop in your photos and go through some options and add in the details. I will be back tomorrow to show you just how to do that.

A Perfect 10

Okay so yesterday I said that Close to My Heart is offering two specials this month, the Rock the Block which we talked about yesterday AND A Perfect 10, which I will talk about today!

A Perfect 10 is a wonderful special if you are a member of Studio J. If you are a member AND order 10 layouts this month one of them will be FREE! Yup FREE! (This is awesome news for me because I just finished scrapbooking 10 Christmas layouts!) To get this special just add 10 layouts to your order and the computer figures out the rest, awesome right? To get started on your layouts just click here and then click on Studio J.

Not a member of Studio J? No problem, let me give you the run down and reasons why to become a member.
1. Member pricing is only $6.50 per layout (that's a $6.50 savings).
2. Members get free JPG files for every custom-printed layout purchased.
3. You can buy the JPG for $3 each without having to purchase the printed layouts.
4. There are a number of member only kits and patterns.
5. Free shipping and handling on your monthly order (4-20 layouts ONCE a month, though if you are international you have to order 7 layouts to get free shipping)
6. Free Memory Protectors
7. Exclusive campaigns and deals (like this one!)

There are two membership options:
12-month which is $99 (auto renews)
and
3-month which is $30 (converts to $10 a month after 3 months)

Here is a sample of some Studio J artwork and I will be posting some of my artwork later this week (though some of my layouts will be hybrids, so you will have to wait for those one!)



Awesome right? So go ahead and become a member today and get your FREE layout!