Custom Back to School Photo Books

Well.... my DD, who is now a Sophmore in hign school started school on Monday!

Which mean I'm busy with all my projects. I'm doing a new Frozen birthday book for a client this week and I'm doing a new "back to school book" for a client with her photos from last year. 

I'm always on the look out for great back to school digital products that I use all year long! 

Having a variety of digital product makes it really fun to mix and match, here's what I found this week.

For all the science geeks out there!

This is perfect for the footballers in your life!

Love this high school options here!

For most of my custom back to school photo books I like to include papers and elements that go with the style of the images. My DD's style is very California and I guess what you might call Boho loo. But she's also I science geek.... so for her I've found a few of great options!

For the Free Spirit!

This is paper for now digital soon!

Love the doodled look here!

love this!

For the Nerds and Brainiacs

and here!

So many great kits to choose from....Happy scrapping!

If you want me to create a custom photo book for you, email me at lisabarrie@live.com!

Photo Editing For Digital Scrapbooking and Project Life!

Today I'm going to share two buttons in Photoshop that I promise will change every photo you own for the better!

See!.... that was super easy right!
So go ahead and give it a try!

Editing in Adobe Camera Raw is also available in Elements and Lightroom. 

Disney's Frozen Theme Photo Book

I'm working on an amazing new photo book for a client based on Disney's Frozen, Oh.. this is the best project ever! The client wants to have the character mix and mingle with her children in the book, so I've made a sample page with stock photos for her approval and I'm all ready to go! It'll take me about a week of so to finish the book and then she's going to have an amazing custom photo book. And of course I had to share it with you all. The Character were purchased through Etsy and she sent them to me to create with. These pages are perfect for skating picures, "Frozen" birthday parties, "Frozen" Halloween costumes and so much more.

Click here to view a complete Frozen Book

I do custom photo book on any theme, with any characters.... you purchase the digital files and I take care of the rest.  The book, pages, layouts and all the digital files are yours!

For more info contact me at lisabarrie@live.com or look at the services pages on my blog.

Photo Book Help!

I just finish working on a wonderful book for the sweetest woman Ann who found me on Shutterfly. I do photo books for people who either need help or want me to do it for them. She already had the book started and I just spent a few hours polishing it up and editing some photos that needed a little TLC.

 Before

After

Photo editing is so important to the quality of any photo book, it worth taking the time to do or have someone do it for you.

Here's what Ann said about her book when I was through editing!

"Lisa it is so Awesome!!!! Thanks so very much!!!  It’s wonderful!  The photos look sooooo much better.  The cover is so much prettier and the red invitation….just perfect!"

"You are so wonderful and I am going to have more books that I would like your help on.  For sure I want the wedding photos in a book and the wedding is October 11^th!

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!"

"I am so grateful I found you………"

 Yep... editing and having a professional work on your photo book makes a big difference!

I'm working an another wedding right now and Katie my client wanted a more sophisticated urban looking photo book to give to her in-laws, but the photos from here wedding photographer were less than stellar.

I took some of the color images and changed them to black & white for a more dramatic effect.

These have a soft vanilla cast to them...so pretty.

 Before

After

Katie asked me to work on this image to try and fix the branch hanging down in the back and fix the very hot /cold effect on the in this photo. It's a really big challenge to make super bright sun and cold shade become the same brightness and intensity and she loved the finish effect. It was a bright sunny day at the beach!

Thanks for stopping by!

Lisa

Printing Project Life Photo Books

This year for my DD's Freshman Year Book I used this template by Valorie Wibben

It is a great jumping off point because I like the different shapes.

For this page I started off with the template in the lower right. When I start I pace the larger photos first since they are the most important and then I work around that. This month was really picture heavy since there was a lot going on. I pulled some digital elements from Glitz Designs that I had in my digi stock and it added just a little bit of fun. I make my own little elements to fill in  the open spaces and that it.

When filling in open space there are ton of options I use.

Here I use a clipping mask and I can make the digital card or paper as small or large to fit the space, like in the June banner. I enlarged a digi card and added a digital alpha over the top and finished it off with a funky arrow.

. 

I created the Stanford banner by removing the background from the logo and added it over another paper from the Glitz collection called "Uncharted Waters" it available at Jessica Sprague.

This time I'm printing at Adoramapix.com since the entire book in done in Photoshop. The printing is on photo paper and the pages are lay flat which means I don't have any lost areas in the creases of a book.

Digital Project Life Photo Books!

This year I decided to do something a little different. Since my DD is in High School I've decides to switch my calender to the ACADEMIC calendar. It just made sense to me. When my DD was little our life centered around things like Easter, Christmas and lots of little birthday parties....oh how things have changed now things are centered around back to school, homecoming, student body elections etc. I find that after 15 Christmas and Easter layouts, those other pages are a welcome change....of course we still celebrate standard holidays, but it's different. The last few years we've travel during the holidays. Our life revolves around the academic calender more than ever. And it fun for a change!

Scrapbook Artist for Hire!

Oh, I have been so neglectful of this blog and the guilt has finally brought me to here! So... I know many of you come to visit for the Silhouette info which it great! I'm so glad you have all been enjoying those tutorials and I'm happy to answer specific question but please leave me your email address so I can reply. I can't post all the answers so an email address would really help.

So I wanted to share what new adventures I've been up to and some of my recent projects. One thing that's new is I've been doing photobooks for people mainly though an online photobook company. I've done everything from Baby books to Wedding albums. I've also been converting peoples paper scrapbooks to digital, that is a big job! I had one customer with 90 photo albums that we scanned and placed in photobooks and I did a huge amount a photo editing since many of the photos were from the 80's and the image quality was not very good. Then we went and did a few new theme albums pulling some of here favorite images and we add scanned memorabilia as well.

I've been doing books for myself too. Right now I'm finishing up my DD's freshman year of high school scrapbook and here are an example of some of the pages. I've combined both Project life style pages and more artistic layer pages similar to what I would have done with paper.

this last one is the book's cover. 

I really like the combinations of the fun, bight, phone images with the single photo, artistic, scrapbook pages. It really covers all the bases both artistically and functionally. All these pages are done in Photoshop and uploaded to the Photobook website.

Thanks for stopping by!

How to get caught up with Project Life!

Hi My Friends,

I have been taking a long break from scrapbooking to take care of some major life changes! I've been dealing with everything from my husband taking a job across the country, to renting out my house, to the death of my 99 year old grandmother Essie. My DD and I are staying in Los Angeles for the new school year while my DH moved to Washington D.C. to start an exciting new job.

So while I have been busy living life I have fallen horribly behind with project life....so what do I do with a Five month gap? Unfortunately there are many long stretches without picture or much to say. So I have decided to be very flexible and do one page at a time filing in the gaps in any way that fits my recollection of events.  The first thing I wanted to tackle was my daughter's summer camp experience this summer.

Luckily I have trained my DD to take lots of pictures with her cellphone. it almost makes the bill worthwhile!

Here are my suggestions for jumping back in:

1. Start with whatever is in the front of your mind.

2. Be flexible, fill in with online photos of places you went or old photos.

3. There will be gaps and inaccuracies (I don't have a perfect memory), enlist others help to remember specifics.

4. Check your calendar or check book register to peace together chronology.

Relax and enjoy the process no one is judging you!!!

Project Life: Documenting a Week When You're Sick.

Every March around the first my daughter gets sick, I don't know why, but here we go again. My DD was home for 4 days with a fever so there wasn't much going on. So what do you document when your home sick with your child?

So here are some suggestions. 

1. Home remedies, do you have a special tea you brew or some other special foods. For my daughter when she's sick the only thing she wants to eat are grilled cheese sandwiches and my special smoothies, especially if she has a sore throat. 

2. Trips to the doctor. 

3. Things that bring comfort. Even my 13 year old reaches for one of her old stuffed animals when she isn't feeling fell.

4. Entertainment. My daughter loves to watch movies and play crazy eights when she starts to feel a bit better.

5. Memories of a previous illness. I remember when my DD got Croup and we had to call an ambulance because it got so bad. No fun but if you haven't documented a story from the past you can tell the story now.

6. Tell a story about when you were little and what your Mom did or didn't do for you. It's a great opportunity to pass down a story or tell how a ritual got started.
7. Take photos of the stacks of Kleenex tissues or bottle of cold medicines. 

8. Remember to take a picture when the cold or flu passes, capture the healthy glow coming back!

So here is week 9 the sick week.

That I used this week:
From Designer Digitals

KPertiet_HeyThere_WoodAccents-thinarrow
KPertiet_MossyAlphabet
StudioDD_ReadymadeBannersForMom
KPertiet_SunPorch Collection
KPertiet_LiftedWingsNo3
KPertiet_BerksLane Collection
KPertiet_ClippedStacksNo6
AEdwards_DocumentDetails_MemoryTags
KPertiet_HeyThere_WoodAccents
KPertiet_CleanStitchedCirclesWhiteNo1
KPertiet_HeyThere_Labels
KP Stitched Grid
KPertiet_StampedBlocksNo7


Digi Kits that will help document those weeks when someone is not feeling their best.



Sick Day by Traci Reed


9 Out Of 10 Doctors Agree by Libby Pritchett

Do you have a ritual when you or your kids are sick, I'd love to hear about it! Leave a comment.

Have a healthy week.

Lisa 

Project Life Documenting your Feelings

Some weeks aren't about what I do, but how I feel. Having a child is a long goodbye, and I don't like it. So 

I'm happy to be able to share how I feel with my daughter in a way that she'll appreciate more when she's 

older. Right now she really is too busy to worry about it, and that's the way it should be. 

Motherhood is letting go, even when you can't

Journaling reads:

Some weeks feel like a quantum leap, I sense the push and pull of your evolution. Your growing inside, so

quickly and I’m both in awe and devastated by the trajectory I see you on, leaps and bounds. At the

same time you call me Mommy and curl up beside me, you come back to the safety of being my baby.

But we see it coming, your future, high school and beyond. I’m mourning, wondering how I’ll let you go.

As you reject the symbols of your childhood, your new wings push against me. I hold my breath because

I’m not ready, but this isn't my choice. This is your journey, all I can do is stand back and watch you soar.

 Now that I'm finishing my second month of Project Life I feel like I'm making it my own. In the beginning couple of weeks I had no idea what I wanted to say or how I wanted things to look, but now this is starting to feel really good. And I look forward to doing the week.

Lori Whitlock Blog Hop Giveaway!

Welcome Blog Hoppers!

I'm so happy to share with you some of the new two page layout I have created for Lori using her amazing templates  Lori has recently released some double page layouts in both SVG and layered Digital Scrapbooking PSD format.

The SVG files are designed to be used with Silhouette machines and can be found here in Lori’s shop.

For the digi scrappers these files also come as layered digital scrapbooking kits, and are found at here at Jessica Sprague . They have been created as layered PSD file which means you can use the pieces as clipping masks in Photoshop Elements and Photoshop. These are ready for you to add your favorite pattern papers, digital embellishments, and photos. Remeber you can mix and match any collections!

PSD FILES in the Jessica Sprague Store

The great thing about using a templete is it can be just a starting point and you can do whatever you like with it!

"Life is Good" layout by Lisa Barrie

"Sunshine in the Rain" by Lisa Barrie

"A Perfect Summer Party" by Lisa Barrie

and "Sunday Picnic" by Lisa Barrie

Without further ado, please let me show you the order of our blog hop today. These ladies are truly amazing and have shown you different ways to use these layouts, both digital format and SVG’s.  When you are done be sure to come back here and leave a comment so you can be entered in our drawing for a $20 gift card to Lori’s shop. She has amazing shapes there and more coming each week.

Lori Whitlock
Natalie Graham 
Corri Garza 
Joy Dickson 
Lisa Bell 
Mendi Yoshikawa 
Christine Ousley 
Lisa Barrie
Roelien VanDenBerg 

Don’t forgot to leave a comment here and on Lori's Blog about your favorite project for a chance to win a $20 gift card to Lori’s shop!
Here are my Projects: Life is Good, Sunshine in the Rain, A Perfect Summer Party and Sunday Picnic! So after you visit Roelien it's back to Lori Whitlock blog to comment!

Thank you so much for visiting and you can sign up to follow my blog to see more of Lori's new products and design inspiration!

Project Life meets Pinterest!

This page was created as a filler page for my Project Life book I'm doing for my DD, a filler page can fill in the gaps between one and two pager weeks. I love this neutral colors on this which is very contrary to usual bright colors, but I did manage to add a few little pops of color. I think this layout style is great for a week when you don't have as much going on too. It's only 6 cards instead of 9 or more, and instead of add the little elements I could have used the space to journal. I've had this page in my head all week and then I saw a layout in the DD gallery that pushed me to get it done. I like the fabric theme to this page and it inspired me to use a linen matte with pearl push pins and stitching.

So here's what I used

Available at Jessica Sprague

LW-Basics-Life-Cards

Echo Park_t&t christmas

Echo Park Tailored

Echo Park t&t graceful

LW-Autumn-Afternoon

Designer Digitals

KPertiet_CrowningAffairUnderstatedSolids

KP Stitched Grid

PKnox_PinItsPearls

KPertiet_MetalClipAssortment

KPertiet_AssortedMessyStitches_WhiteNo1

Pocket Page Layered Templete

other stuff

kcroninbarrow-domesticated-cleaningtag

mkc-come_away_with_me_tape

LaurieAnnHGD_SummerCottage_TwineBow