matter of scrap digital scrapbooking

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Quick Page Magic – Create an album of layouts with one quickpage!

This tutorial is for paper scrapbookers even more than it is for digital scrappers. I want to show you the possibilities that you can do with a digital quickpage. I’ll show you four traditional layouts that I created with one digital quickpage plus how I added to the quickpage for a personalized digital layout. By printing out the quickpage and following these easy ideas, you can have a whole album of layouts in no time with just one quickpage!

Supplies

Cardstock to coordinate with your quickpage
A quickpage (digital file)
Paper trimmer
Adhesive
Printer to print out the quickpage (doesn’t have to be a wide-format printer)
Stamp pad/ink to ink edges (optional)
Ribbon (optional)

Quickpages are pre-designed scrapbook layouts (here we’re talking about digital layouts) that usually have places to put in photo/s, journaling and sometimes a title. A quickpage can be an image in the JPG format (just like your digital pictures), or it can be layered, which means that there is a background (again, pre-designed with elements, etc.) and a top “layer” which will be a PNG (pronounced ‘ping’) file. The PNG file might be a frame and elements with a transparent ‘hole’ that your photo will show through when the PNG file is place over your photo. For this tutorial, we’ll work with the JPG type of quickpage.

Now that we have done a brief explanation of what a quickpage is, let’s get on with our project. First, we will need to print out the quickpage.

Open your quickpage in your image-editing program (the program you use to open and print your digital photos). Great if you have a wide-format printer, but I don’t, so when I print out my layouts, I choose the ‘fit to page’ option and my 12x12 layouts print out nicely as 8x8’s. So, print out your quickpage on a nice photo-quality paper. (See my TIPS below.)

TIPS

Kodak makes a good photo paper that is heavier stock and matte finish, great for printing out digital papers. It’s called Kodak Matte Paper and it’s acid and lignin free.
If you don’t have matte paper, printing on the back side of a glossy sheet will work in a pinch, but check to see if the paper has a watermark. If it does, most times you won’t be able to see it once it’s printed over unless you are printing something with a lot of white.
I don’t recommend printing digital scrapbooking supplies on regular inkjet/copy paper because the paper is more porous and if your quickpage has deep colors, it might bleed.
NO IMAGE-EDITING PROGRAM? You don’t need an image-editing program to print out your digital photos (or digital papers and quickpages) if you have Windows XP. In Windows XP, you can browse to your file/quickpage, right-click on it and choose PRINT. The print dialog will open up. Choose INDIVIDUAL PRINT, check CUSTOM SIZE and put in 8 for the width and height. Uncheck the boxes for CROP TO SIZE. Make sure your printer settings correspond with your paper type and print!

Now you should have your quickpage printed out. At this point, you could add your photos (you’ll have to crop them to fit the photo mats on the quickpage) and leave it at that, BUT we’re going to do something different. Using your paper trimmer, slice up the quickpage, keeping the main elements intact. For the quickpage that I used, I cut out the title, the photo mats, the flower (cut this out in a square-shape) and was left with a few extra paper scraps. Don’t throw those away – we’ll use them. Here are my pieces after I trimmed my quickpage:

ASSEMBLE YOUR LAYOUT

Trim your cardstock to 8x8 size. Ink the edges of your pieces and cardstock (optional). Lay out your trimmed pieces from the quickpage and adhere. Below are several layouts I made with the cut pieces.

I used one of the mats, layered the dotted paper under the title, added three of the diagonal striped scraps and tied a ribbon to the flower element to make it into a tag.

Here I used the paper scraps differently, and placed the title at an angle, used both mats and two photos and cut the diagonal paper scraps into squares and placed them under the photo on the left. I left the dotted mat blank so I could add journaling later.

Here I placed everything except the diagonal strip vertically.

Here’s a simple layout using two of the diagonal strips, the flower patterned mat, the title and the flower tag.

VARIATIONS

By using different colors of cardstock and laying out the trimmed pieces of your quickpage differently, you can easily have a whole album of layouts. Many quickpages have corresponding kits with more elements, including alphabets that you can print out or use digitally. And, by using your stash of scrapbooking supplies, you can add ribbons and embellishments to customize your layouts.

Credit: The quickpage used in this tutorial is the Cherry Pie Kit by Tracy Watson, available at matterofscrap.com

Clara Wallace is the owner and designer at Matter Of Scrap Digital Scrapbooking and is active in the digital scrapbooking community. She has been a featured artist in Simple Scrapbooks Digital Scrapbooking 5 and her designs and layouts in the book, Digital Scrapbooking in Easy Steps. You can find more tutorials and digital scrapbooking supplies at her site, Matter of Scrap.