Please be gentle, it is my first freebie. Special thanks to Rin (from which the butterfly cut-out was made from the freebie download paper butterflies as allowed by TOS), bittbox.com (“teardrop” foilage brush/cut-out, used as allowed by TOS) and Letti who named it!!

How to use this template? Here’s just a very quick tutorial for my friends who’ve been asking me since I started with the digital scrapbooking.

Of course, you need some sort of image editing software. I use Photoshop Elements 6, it’s completely affordable and in my opinion, just as good as the more expensive “full” versions. Of course, there are lots of other programs out there and you should be able to find something to your liking, probably even for free.

So, it’s really all very simple. Open up the template and save a copy (you wouldn’t want to over-write the original). This particular template is sized at 12″x12″ (though I personally print at 8″x8″ myself). Now open your photo(s) and the supplies (digital papers, flowers, etc.) you’d like to use. Now, just drag those supplies and photo(s) onto the template and put them where you want them to go. To make them match a particular piece of the template, make sure you’ve got your paper as the first layer above said template piece and press Ctrl+G, it will snap to match the shape.

Now do the same for your papers and whatnot. You may not want to use the butterfly, that’s okay — delete that layer and drag an element there, or whatever you want. Or notice the ribbon layer, there you could snap a paper in or delete that layer and add an actual ribbon element. When you’ve got all your stuff on, I’ve found that, at least for my stuff, it looks better to add a small drop shadow to the items that would have a bit of “fluff” to them if used in an “actual” scrapbook. In Photoshop Elements, there should be an Effects tab above the Layers palette that may or may not be expanded. Pick a shadow and click apply, you can then click on the blue font-like icon on the layer to adjust the shadow.

Is this all making sense? :)

So, here’s my layout:

I used the kit For Keeps Sake from scrapmatters.com which can be found here.

But! There is also lots and lots and lots of free stuff out there! (Seriously, my “supplies” folder is 22.3 GB in size right now!) Keep surfing around the scrapmatters shop and you’ll find some, and here are some more of my favorite sites to get and find freebies at:

– Shabby Princess*
– Designer Digitals*
– Digital Candy
– Digitreats
– Ikea Goddess (she links to freebies almost every day)
– Faith Sisters
– digitalfreebies.com
– Peppermint Creative

There are so many more good sites! I try to remember to add them to my ma.gnolia, so check that out, too.

(* means I’ve also made a purchase at those sites; there was one other but it has since changed directions so I’ve chosen not to link to it at this time. Also check out Songbird Avenue where each kit is $8 and the money goes to charity.)

So, anyway, if you download the template, I’d love it if you’d leave me a comment telling me what you think. Hopefully in the future I’ll get better with actually creating stuff like this!