More on Share the Memories

The other day I posted about how quickly and easily I was able to complete a scrapbook with the My Memories digital software program, and I mentioned that one of the things I really loved was the free papers, embellishments and layouts you can download.  This way if you are feeling creatively challenged you can use a layout that was created by someone else . . . and then if you want to add a few of your OWN things to it to personalize it you can do that also.

Here are some examples of three new free kits you can download.

Click HERE to download the first kit.

Click HERE to download the second kit.

Click HERE to download the third kit.

Now to show you how to use one of these sets to make a quick and easy layout, but still give it some of your own personality.  I took one of the Quick Pages from the last kit and created this page in a matter of minutes.

After I inserted the large photo of my daughter into the large frame that came with this Quick Page, and then added two smaller photo boxes to the right and rotated them each slightly and inserted a couple more photos.  

For matting all of the photos I just clicked on one of the photos and then in the control panel clicked on the MAT option.  This allowed me to pick the color and size of the mat.  I wanted to use the orangish color that was in the scrap of cardboard in the lower right color, so I went to the Picker tab and this allowed me to zoom in on sections of the layout and "pick" one of the colors already in the layout as the mat color.  You could also pick a color in the photo, if you wanted to match a mat exactly to the clothing of the person in the picture.  There is also a box you can check that allows you to apply this size and color mat to all images on a page, which is what I used.

Then I added a shape . . . a rectangle . . . and stretched it to a long skinny strip and instead of just filling it with color I filled it with an aqua colored patterned paper.  I then added shadow to this, and copied it so I had three strips to place on my layout.  

Now, to get the aqua strip to go UNDER the small square photos on the right, right click on the aqua strip and you will get options . . . move to front, move backwards, etc.  I moved the aqua piece backwards so that it went under my photos.

Then I added a curled paper element I had.  DONE.  Seriously, it took longer to type up this post and explain how I did it than it took to actually MAKE the layout!  The other great thing is that not only do I have these Quick Pages, but now I have all of the elements, like the torn cardboard element, that I could use in OTHER scrapbook pages.  When you download these free kits you get all of those "little pieces" . . . you are not held to just using the Quick Page that someone else created.  What do I mean?  Well, here is a second page I created

Wouldn't this be nice as a companion page to the first one?  And look, I used one of the papers from the first layout as my background paper, and then I layered the torn cardboard elements (from this set and one of the other free download sets) and then I pulled in some rolled flower elements I had.  Again, all of the shadows were added by just clicking on an element and then the Shadow button in the main control panel.  Easy!

Would you like to give digital scrapbooking a try?  

If you use the code 

STMMMS69390

you can get $10 off the My Memories software! 

Just go to MyMemories.com to download the software and then you can start looking at the free kits and papers so that you can create your own digital scrapbooks too.