Summer Love Mini Course | Three Options for Binding Your 6×6 Summer Mini Album

POSTED ON August 6, 2013 IN Summer Love 2013 Mini Course

Woohoo, welcome back to the Summer Love Mini Course! We’re on the home stretch baby! Today marks the final tips & tricks article of the course so I figured I’d build on Amy’s tips for printing your Summer Love Mini pages post from last week and share three non-photobook options for binding your printed Summer Love Mini Album pages.

6×6 Summer Love Mini Binding Options

AC Dear Lizzy / WRMK / AC Modern / Maya Road / Little Yellow Bicycle / Bo Bunny

1) Use a Pre-made Album with Page Protectors

One of the easiest solutions for binding your 6×6 Summer Love Mini pages is to buy a ready-made 6×6-inch scrapbooking album from a company like American Crafts (No. 1 & 3) or We Are Memory Keepers (No. 2).

Simply print your pages 6×6, slip them into the included page protectors and you’re good to go! No messy resizing or hole punching necessary.

2) Use a Chipboard Mini Album or Binder

Another option, if you’d like to get a little more crafty, is to use a 6×6-inch naked chipboard mini album like the ones from Maya Road (No. 4), Little Yellow Bicycle (No. 5), or Bo Bunny (No. 6).

The awesome thing about these naked chipboard albums is you aren’t tied into any specific color-scheme like you are with a pre-made scrapbooking album – you can customize your cover however you’d like using alphas, paint, fabric or even printed digital elements. Then simply print out your Summer Love Mini pages, glue them back to back and hole punch them using the chipboard cover as a guide.

If you’d like to see the Maya Road mini album binder in action, you can see how I customized one for my 30 Days of Lists mini album here.

3) Make Your Own Mini Album

The final mini album option, and my personal fave, is to create your own mini album cover using book board or art board from the craft store and then bind it using binder rings from the office supply store.

If you want to get really fancy, you can even add a fabric spine to your mini to really give it a polished look. I’ve done this for my last two Holiday Faves mini albums and I love the way it makes them look like real little books.

Well I hope this gets the wheels turning for how to bind your Summer Love Mini Album! If you haven’t yet, be sure to check out Amy’s article from last week for tips for printing your pages. We’re on the home stretch but if you’ve fallen behind, never fear! There’s still plenty of time to catch up on your Summer Minis before the class ends.

Coming up next…On Thursday, August 8th, Team Awesome and I will be sharing our Summer Loves No. 9 & 10 and our Summer InstaLoves. See you then!

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Previous Summer Love Mini Course posts:

View all Summer Love Mini Course posts here.

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Summer Love Mini Course | Summer Currently & Loves 7 & 8

POSTED ON August 1, 2013 IN Summer Love 2013 Mini Course

Happy August everyone! Can you believe we’re only two short weeks away from the end of the Summer Love Mini Course? Craziness! In today’s installment, Team Awesome and I are showing off our Summer Currently and Loves No. 7 & 8, which are pages 17-20 in our Summer Love Mini Albums.

Summer Loves 7 & 8 Pages 17-20

Here’s a look at the Summer Love 6×6 Mini Album templates for pages 17-20:

By Lynnette

Here’s a look at my page 17-20 layouts. I’ve been waiting for this Currently page to come since I first designed it so I’m geekily excited it’s finally time to use it! I’m also really digging the clean & graphic vs paper-lovin’ balance in my page design this week.

Here’s a look at Team Awesome’s pages 17-20:

By Sara

I’m loving the way Sara’s pages are coming together. The clean and simple kraft background paper grounds everything nicely.

By Jen

Another week, another round of hybrid pages from Jen! Really love how her album is coming together so far.

By Brittney

I love the way Brittney used the four-grid page this week with her chalk drawing photos. Very cute!

By Jennifer

I really love the way Jennifer’s adapting the Summer Love mini album templates to her summer. It looks like they’re having a blast!

By Jenn

I’m really loving all of Jenn’s photography and big photos in her album. Such a great way to tell her story!

That’s it from us today, but now we’d love to hear from you! How are you feeling now that we’re halfway through our mini albums?

Want to share your mini album progress? Feel free to add them to my designer gallery at SSD and link us up in this thread at Sweet Shoppe Designs.

Coming up next…On Tuesday, Aug 6th, I’ll be sharing ideas for binding your Summer Love Mini Album. See you then!

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Previous Summer Love Mini Course posts:

View all Summer Love Mini Course posts here.

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Summer Love Mini Course | Printing Your Summer Love Mini Album

POSTED ON July 30, 2013 IN Guest Posts, Summer Love 2013 Mini Course, Tips from Team Awesome

We’re nearing the end of our Summer Love Mini Course which means it’s time to start thinking about finishing touches, like printing. Today Team Awesome member Amy is sharing her tips for printing your Summer Love Mini Album. Take it away, Amy!

By now our Summer Love Mini Album is getting close to being finished which means it’s time to start thinking about on important aspect of any album: printing!

There are so many different album printing options to choose from, but the main two are printing as a bound photo book, or printing on photo paper and putting in an album. Both are great options, but it’s up to you to decide how you want to gaze upon these lovely summer memories you’ve compiled in the coming seasons and years.

Photo Book Printing

First we’ll look at some photo book options available. The Summer Love Mini templates are designed to print at 6×6 inches so it would be important to make sure the company you choose has that size available. Both AdoramaPix and Artscow offer 6×6 photobooks.

If your photobook printer of choice doesn’t offer 6×6 photobooks, 7×7 or 8×8 would also be acceptable as long as you save your layouts at the highest quality possible. You could also add a simple border to your 6×6 pages to make them 7×7 or 8×8 as well.

This site has a breakdown of the top ten photo book printing services: 2013 Best Photo Book Services. That website provides you with the links to those 10 service websites, so take a look at the comparison charts and see if there is an option or two for you there.

Two services not on that list that are still worth looking into are Blurb and Mpix. Lynnette has previously published articles sharing her experiences with both companies so be sure to check out the following helpful links:

The Daily Digi also has a great review of 12 photobook printers here.

The only service I’ve personally tried is Blurb, and I am a happy customer so I have not seen the need to try anything else 🙂

What to Look for in a Photo Book Service

The things you want to keep an eye out for when you’re choosing a photo book service are:

Good quality printing and paper options. Upgrading your paper option will cost more, but it’s usually worth it. Your pictures really pop when they are printed properly and on great paper.
The ability to create a custom cover. I love my Blurb books all the more since I was in charge of the design process from start to finish, including the cover created by me in Photoshop!
The ability to customize the pages yourself. Some photo books will force you to use their pre-made templates, but for printing our Summer Love Mini Album, we need to be able to upload our layouts and have them print full bleed on every page.
Fair pricing. Upgrades will cost you more money, so you need to figure out what’s important to you. Also, most printing companies are based in the USA so if you live in a different country, take shipping and customs costs into effect. Sometimes this can double the cost of your photo book! Before you order, check online for coupon or promo codes that can save you some pennies, or sign up for e-mail newsletter lists and order during the next sale.

Individual Page Printing

Your other option is to print your layouts on photo paper and insert into a scrapbook. This site has a breakdown of 10 printing services: 2013 Best Scrapbook Printing Services so that is worth checking out. Lynnette uses Persnickety Prints for all her prints (her review can be found here) but I personally print all my digital layouts at my local Costco. I find that printing on glossy photo paper really bring out the detail in my photos, elements and shadows.

There are many printers to choose from, but I will show you a quick way to prepare your 6×6 Summer Love Mini Album pages on 12×12 prints ready to go for Costco (in Photoshop).

How to Print Four 6×6 Pages on One 12×12 Page at Costco

Step 1: Create a new document at 300dpi and 3600×3600 pixels or 12×12 inches.

Step 2: Create guides at the 6 inch (or halfway) mark vertically and horizontally. You can do this by selecting the move tool, turning your rulers on if they aren’t already (shortcut is ALT+R on PC or Command+R on a Mac) and dragging out from the rulers to reveal a blue guide line.

Step 3: Save your layouts at .jpgs and then drag them onto your 12×12 canvas, lined up with the guides you created.

Step 4: Once you have four of your layouts on the canvas, save it as a .jpg. I save at the highest quality possible, which was 11 for this print since Costco will not allow uploads to their photo site over 8mb.

Step 5: Once you have your album set up into these 12×12 .jpgs, upload them to the Costco website software and order them as 12×12 prints. Like I said, I prefer glossy, and make sure you have the border option unchecked and don’t allow them to color correct your prints. Once you pick them up (or have them shipped to you), use a paper cutter to chop them up into individual layouts and insert into the 6×6 album of your choice!

As you can see here, there are a lot of different printing options out there. I hope this helps you narrow it down a little bit. Happy Scrapping!

Thanks so much Amy! If you have any printing questions, feel free to ask them in the comments section below. And if you’re looking for ideas for binding your non-photobook printed pages, I’ll be sharing some ideas for that next Tuesday.

Coming up next…On Thursday, August 1st, Team Awesome and I will be sharing our Summer Loves No. 7 & 8 and our summer currentlys. See you then!

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Previous Summer Love Mini Course posts:

View all Summer Love Mini Course posts here.

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New Release | FAVE-O-RITES 2013: July Faves

POSTED ON July 27, 2013 IN Shop News & Releases

Happy Sweet Shoppe Saturday everyone! This week’s release heralds month number seven of one of my absolute FAVE (pun-intended) scrapbooking projects: the Monthly Faves! We’re on the home stretch now, second half of the year baby!

For those new to Nettio Designs & the Faves, my Monthly Faves project is a year-long scrapbooking project where each month you scrapbook one layout documenting your top-ten favorite things from that month. Your faves can be anything: events, food, tv shows, technology, clothing – the sky’s the limit!

I’ve done my Monthly Faves project twice before, once in 2009 & again in 2011, and I love it so much I’m doing it again here in 2013. I can’t even tell you how much fun it is to look back on those layouts and see what’s changed and what’s stayed the same. It’s like a mini time-capsule of your favorite things from way-back-when.

Here’s how my 2013 Monthly Faves layouts are shaping up so far this year…

I’ve written before about why I believe everyone should scrap a Faves layout but here’s the cliff-notes version:

Because scrapbooking lists is fun
Because you don’t remember nearly as much as you swear you do
Because it captures an easy snapshot of your life at the moment
Because it’s the easiest All About Me layout you’ll ever do. Seriously.

And this year I wanted to make it even easier for you to creatively capture your faves. So on the last(ish) Saturday of every month, I’m releasing that month’s Faves layout as a new Sweet Single template. Which should give you plenty of time to capture your Faves for that month before the new month arrives.

Which brings me to this week’s release…

FAVE-O-RITES 2013: July Faves

This week’s release is the seventh FAVE-O-RITES Sweet Single digital scrapbooking template of the year, FAVE-O-RITES 2013: July Faves. It features one of my absolute favorite things – a paper-lovin’ grid-based design – which makes it easy for you to dress up or down with your digi goodies however you’d like.

Here’s a bigger look at my 2013 July Faves layout that inspired this template. One of the things I’ve realized this month is that even when I think a month wasn’t all that eventful when I’m living it, when I go back to pull out my Faves, I realize there’s a whole lot more that happened than I remember! So a Faves list is great, not just for others to learn about you but for you to remember details about your own life as well.

As you can see, my faves list is super random, which is exactly what I love! It’s not something you have to stress out over: make a list of 10 things, scrap it and boom, you’ve captured an easy snapshot of YOU in your scrapbooks. Just think how much fun it’ll be for you or your kids & grandkids to look back on one day!

Team Awesome Inspiration

Of course my team had a ton of fun this month scrapbooking their own take on the July Faves:

FAVE-O-RITES 2013 Half Pack: Jan-Jun Faves

Also hitting the Sweet Shoppe this weekend is a bundled version of the FAVE-O-RITES templates: FAVE-O-RITES 2013 Half Pack: Jan-Jun Faves,which includes all six of the Faves templates from the first half of 2013. If you’ve been wanting to jump on the Faves train but haven’t yet, this is a great way to get started.

New Release Discount: SAVE 20% thru Saturday

And of course, as with every Sweet Shoppe Saturday, you can save 20% off all new releases thru Saturday.

Spend $15 & Get A Free Kit!

As I mentioned last week, this weekend marks the second week of our sweet summer promo, Summer Sixlets. Each week six Sweet Shoppe designers will be teaming up to create a brand-new kit, available exclusively for FREE with any $15 purchase at Sweet Shoppe Designs, and this week is my group!

We came up with this amazing kit (with coordinating template from yours truly) which I think we can all agree is quite the beauty…

Here’s a bigger look at the template I designed for our Summer Sixlet…

Want to save 20% off this weekend AND get a free kit with your purchase?

Pick up FAVE-O-RITES 2013: July Faves here today!

Well, that’s it from me today! Have a great weekend everyone!

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Summer Love Mini Course | Summer Loves 5 & 6

POSTED ON July 25, 2013 IN Summer Love 2013 Mini Course

Woohoo, it’s time for another installment of the Summer Love Mini Course! Today Team Awesome and I are sharing our third set of Summer Love journaling spreads, Summer Loves 5 & 6 or pages 13-16 in the mini album. Can you believe we’re halfway through our mini albums? Page 13 marks the midway of this 26-page mini album so we’re here!

I mentioned last week that at this point in the mini album process, it’s normal to feel a bit uneasy about how the album is all going to come together. So to ease your mind, I thought I’d show you a peek at how the first half of my mini album is shaping up so you can see how it flows even though each page is unique.

One trick I’ve found really helpful for designing my pages is to actually open the Finder window seen above as I’m working. This allows me to see all of my pages at once so I can keep track of how many times I’ve used a page and where I may need to add or subtract pops of color.

For example, on page 13, the Nine Grid layout, I’d originally left the background white but when I saw all the pages together like this, I decided to duplicate the cream background paper from the Six Grid layout on page 8 to add some cohesion and consistency to my mini design. So if you’re uncertain about how your mini album is shaping up, don’t be afraid to look back at your pages as you keep moving forward.

Now on to this week’s pages…

Summer Love | Summer Loves 5 & 6 Pages 13-16

Here’s a look at the Summer Love 6×6 Mini Album templates for pages 13-16:

By Lynnette

Here’s a look at my page 13-16 layouts. I love grids so I was really excited that it was time to use this nine grid page. I’m also realizing that a lot of my Summer Loves have to do with food which I suppose shouldn’t be a surprise because we do love to eat, haha.

Here’s a look at Team Awesome’s pages 13-16:

By Sara

I’m loving the way Sara’s matting all her photos with a solid paper – it’s a great way to add a pop of color to those pages.

By Jen

Jen’s hybrid pages are so fun! If you’re curious how she’s creating her pages, be sure to check out the Silhouette tutorial she posted on Tuesday.

By Sherly

I’m SO in love with the rainbow effect Sherly did on page 16. So pretty!

By Brittney

Brittney’s been swapping out the numbered text title under “Summer Love” in the templates to add in a date. Such a smart idea!

By Jennifer

Jennifer’s family looks like they’re having the best summer ever! I love how she used the nine grid page for all photos.

By Jenn

Jenn’s done a great job adding large photos to her album and this one is no exception. I love how she adapted the text on page 16 to fit with her photo and that bear photo – oh my!

Ok, well that’s it from us today, but now we’d love to hear from you! How are you feeling now that we’re halfway through our mini albums?

Want to share your mini album progress? Feel free to add them to my designer gallery at SSD and link us up in this thread at Sweet Shoppe Designs.

Coming up next…On Tuesday, July 30th, Team Awesome member Amy will be sharing tips for printing your albums. See you then!

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Previous Summer Love Mini Course posts:

View all Summer Love Mini Course posts here.

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Summer Love Mini Course | How To Use the Silhouette to Create Your Summer Love Mini Album

POSTED ON July 23, 2013 IN Summer Love 2013 Mini Course

Today Team Awesome member Jen is sharing her tips for using the Summer Love Mini Album templates with your Silhouette Cameo or Portrait. I admit my Silhouette still kind of scares me but her tutorial makes it seem super easy. Take it away, Jen!

Hi everyone, it’s Jen! Earlier this summer when Lynnette introduced Team Awesome to the Summer Love Mini Album, I decided I wanted to be really crazy and do a hybrid album, rather than a digital album. Lynnette’s templates are very easy to use for hybrid and I love being able to combine my love of digital products with the messiness of paper scrapbooking. One of the best ways to do that is to use a Silhouette Cameo or Portrait to enhance your pages, and today I am here to show you how I am using the Silhouette with my album.

I am using a text page from this week’s sharing examples to show you the process.

Step 1: Open the template in Photoshop or your editing program of choice. Turn OFF the white background layer so that the transparent background shows. Flatten all layers that you want to be able to cut out. Save as a PNG file and note the location where you saved it.

Step 2: Open the PNG file in your Silhouette Studio Software. Under Page tools, go down to the slider and reveal cutting mat until you can easily see the grid lines. This will allow you to ensure that your design is lined up properly for your paper on your cutting mat.

Step 3: Go to the trace menu and select trace area. Deselect the box that says High Pass Filter and choose Trace to complete the tracing. If this step is done correctly, you will see a faint red outline showing the cut lines.

Step 4: Make sure your paper is adhered to your mat in the right place and load it into the Silhouette. In the Silhouette cut menu, select your paper type and make sure you set your blade accordingly. Select cut, sit back, and let it do the hard work. It should only take a few minutes before it is done, then you can unload your cutting mat and it should look something like this.

Step 5: Remove cut design from the mat. You can back it with washi tape, paper, glitter, and so much more, or use the cut out letters and adhere them onto the background of your choice.

I decided to have a little fun with mine, so you’ll have to come back Thursday for the next Team Awesome page reveal day to see what I chose!

Don’t be afraid of your Silhouette. It’s very easy to use and makes doing hybrid scrapbooking so much easier. If you have any questions, ask away in the comments section and I will do my best to answer them!

Awesome, thanks Jen! Looks like I need to pull out my Silhouette and play!

Coming up next…On Thursday, July 25th, Team Awesome and I will be sharing our Summer Loves #5 & 6. See you then!

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Previous Summer Love Mini Course posts:

View all Summer Love Mini Course posts here.

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