July Lay Outs All Digi

In order to save time this month, I decided to do all my lay outs digitally on Photo Shop Elements. Each lay out took about one hour to complete...maybe more with the shadow tweaking at the end.

Field Trip: Used a digi kit from the Digi Files at The Daily Digi. The name of this kit is A Beautiful Beginning by MiCHELLE Batton Designs. The ticket stubs are from Kate Pertiet, Designer Digitals.

Love this lay out! Omg, these photos are the pro photos taken on the parent/child field trip we did back in May, and I wanted to make a lay out just using these gorgeous photos. Why gorgeous? Because, I actually look decent in them and how often does MOM get to look decent in photos with her kids? Let's save this one for posterity.

I want to add that for the first time in doing a digital lay out, I did NOT use a template nor did I look at something and try to copy it. I just used my inspiration gleaned from the Nic Howard class (Dimensional Design), and I paid more attention to drop shadows this time. This is when the idea of "dimensional" meets digital. There is an awesome drop shadow tutorial on this blog. Look to the right side and you will see the tutorial button. I felt like I could not take full advantage of this tutorial because I have PSE and not the full version of Photoshop, but still, it was very enlightening.

Hot Summer Moments: Used a quick template by (I wanna say) Crystal, but now I am not so sure. In any case, the cloud background, journaling spot, brackets, frames, etc. were already in place. All I had to do was add my photos and journaling. Took like 5 minutes or less!

It's fun to use these quick templates once in a while just to get the job done. I probably couldn't have done it better myself, and I thought the clouds looked pretty summerish. I am always talking about summer clouds with Ailin and showing her these gorgeous cumulous clouds that show up only in summer here. It reminds me of the movie Tonari no Tottoro, thus we made sure she had a chance to watch that DVD during the month of July.

Photos of Jimmy's Wedding: Used a template by Kate Pertiet, which can be dressed up or dressed down very easily.

Gotta include these little jaunts to Korea, don't we? Well, this time it was for a wedding, and I chose a very simple template where I could fit a variety of photos. Love the title? It's so obvious, but it came with the template and I just added the "of Jimmy's wedding" on my own. Notice that I changed all the rectangle colors to match the colors from the photos? Maroon, red, yellow, blue and white were all taken directly from their Korean-style kimonos and her wedding dress.

This is a template by List Girl Designs from a kit called Good Gumdrops. The red paper is from Geek Chic designs, otherwise known as Jen Graham.

This template is an Ali Edwards template (#20).

I wanted to see what would happen if I chose two completely different templates and tried to match them up by using the same colors and some of the same elements. I used the postage stamp-cropped photos from the right side template for the photos on the left side. I also copied the scalloped borders over. I think it works well and it gave me a chance to use tons of photos up.

July Birthdays: Most of the papers and elements used here are from a digi kit called When the Wind Blows by Geek Chic (Jen Graham). The green balloon is #1 from an alpha set inside a kit called Bug Catcher by Chelle's Creations.

Ah, the infamous birthday month for our family. Like the first page from this entry, I wanted to try my hand at designing my own page from scratch. Perhaps my style really has been affected by Nic Howard's class. Notice the balloons made from random elements and ribbons!

My Question to you: Which pages do you like better - the ones that look like they are layered with embellishments (meant to look 3D) or the ones that are purely flat-looking? Please answer in the comments.