trimmingthesails

On a mag jag ...

Magazines? They're my downfall. Home, garden, lifestyle, cookery, sport, cars, yachts, steam trains - whatever is sitting around in the library, the dentists' or the doctors', you'll find my head buried in them. I have been known to miss hearing my name called. Not because I'm reading, you understand; indeed, most of the content passes me by. It's the design that makes my heart skip a beat: flick, flick, stop, stare, grab my notebook and pen, sketch, flick, flick ... This header, In August's The Simple Things, just jumped out at me ...

I mean, how cool is this? Perfect for adding a jazzy touch to an otherwise bread-and-butter page - the sort with lots of photos, and an occasion which just needs recording but without having the red carpet rolled out for it. I couldn't wait to get going in Photoshop and Illustrator, though I am feeling a tad guilty for not being able to acknowledge the designer by name. (Should it be you, and you happen to be reading along, please do email!). Having toyed with converting the shape to an oval so as not to totally scraplift, I realised that the triangular edges of the diamond worked so well with the shapes in my photos that I just went with it, and altered the vertical lines instead ...

So thank-you, talented designer, very much indeed. Now printed onto a single sheet and Herma-swiped, the page has been popped into my Day2Day album. Done. A sigh of short-lived satisfaction, for already I can feel the itch and twitch, the need to feel those glossy magazine pages between my fingers, the hunger for another fix ...  When's the next appointment in my diary? :)

Oh, hold on a minute, just before you go! Just a quick reminder that it's going to be the 15th this Thursday and time for another Simply A Moment: a chance to pause for sixty seconds, look around and within, notice and record. Should you be new to Simply A Moment, or just like a refresh, the original inspiration is here, and the PDF of ideas can be downloaded with a click or two:

Download Simply A Moment PDF

Hoping you will feel you can join us! And see you then?

 

 

Creativity on the Move: Keynote 06 (Printing)

Hello and welcome to using your iPad or iPad for scrapbooking and memory-keeping! Today, how to get your completed pages off the screen and into your albums. You can ...

• print directly from your iPhone or iPad (3rd generation or later) if your printer is AirPrint-enabled
• save your scrapbooking layouts as png files for uploading to your blog, emailing to friends and family, or printing in sizes suitable for pocket memory-keeping, like Project Life
• save your pages as high resolution/quality pdfs and email them to yourself so you can print from your computer using the inbuilt software Preview, or take them into Photoshop/Elements and print from there

The pages below are crisp and clear: the 10" x 8" is a pdf printed via my computer, and the 6" x 4" is printed directly from the iPad onto a 6" x 4" piece of photographic paper. And, of course, with Photoshop, Lightroom, or any other photo-editing program, you can resize to suit your needs ...
 

The pdfs for today contain detailed information ...


... and you'll find them just below, along with all previous pdfs, Keynote files and links to the blog posts in which they appear. Hoping they will be useful to you - if not now, then perhaps once you've been gifted with an iPhone or iPad :).

Today's Files
Download KNAlexa06Printing1.pdf
Download KNAlexa06Printing2.pdf
 Download KNAlexa06Printing1and2.zip

Previous posts and files:
Creativity on the Move: The Map

Creativity on the Move: Managing Your Photos
Download COTMManagingYourPhotos (pdf)

Creativity on the Move: KN01Photos
Download KNAlexa01Photos (pdf)
Download AlexaShapedMasks (key)

Creativity on the Move: KN02Text
Download KNAlexa02Text (pdf)

Creativity on the Move: KN03Shapes
Download KNAlexa03Shapes (pdf)

Creativity on the Move: KN04UsingColour
Download KNAlexa04UsingColour (pdf)
Download KNAlexaColourSwatches (key)
Download KNAlexaColouredText (key)

 

Creativity on the Move: Keynote 05 (Design It Yourself)

Welcoming you warmly! If you're a user of an iPhone or iPad and like to scrapbook - whether hybrid, digital or paper - then this is the place to find out more about using your devices to enhance your scrapbooking and memory-keeping. Should you just be popping in for the first time, all the previous links and downloadable files and pdfs are just below at the end of the post. And today, we're doing a quick whizz around some of the many ways you can use Shapes swiftly and easily in Keynote to do things which are more complex and time-consuming in Photoshop ...

This is but a fraction of what you yourself might come up with while you stand in queues, sit in waiting rooms, or lean up against the worktop waiting for the kettle to boil ... And unlike your computer keyboard, the iphone and iPad are not bothered by sticky, dirty or floury fingers - a quick wipe and they're fine! The Keynote tools will happily respond as far as your imagination and willingness to play in any spare moments takes you. And don't forget that Keynote helpfully saves automatically every thirty seconds, so you don't need to keep clicking. Pick it up, play, put it down - as often as you want. And next time you're putting a page together, you'll have lots of things just sitting right there waiting for you :).

Next time, we'll look at resolution and printing - whole pages, mini-layouts for Project Life, or toppers for cards. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy experimenting! and here in Week 07 is the pdf for today, as well as previous pdfs and presentations below ...

Creativity on the Move: Keynote 05 Design It Yourself
Download KNAlexa05DesignItYourself (pdf)

On Sunday, there is a Very Special Celebratory Blog Hop popping through here - a kind of Pass The Page. So I am hoping you'll hop or pop back here then :).

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Previous Weeks Links, Pdfs and Keynote Files are below:

Creativity on the Move: the map

Creativity on the Move: managing your photos
Download COTMManagingYourPhotos (pdf)

Creativity on the Move: Keynote 01 Photos
Download KNAlexa01Photos (pdf)
Download AlexaShapedMasks (key)

Creativity on the Move: Keynote 02: Text               
Download KNAlexa02Text (pdf)

Creativity on the Move: Keynote 03: Shapes
Download KNAlexa03Shapes (pdf)

Creativity on the Move: Keynote 04: Using Colour
Download KNAlexa04UsingColour (pdf)
Download KNAlexaColourSwatches (key)
Download KNAlexaColouredText (key)

Creativity on the Move: Keynote 04 (Using Colours)

Welcome to Creativity on the Move and using Keynote for scrapbooking and memory-keeping on the iPad or iPhone. Today is all about colour, with a couple of downloads below, so please do help yourself :).

Themes and Colours
Keynote offers twelve 'themes', each of which has its own corresponding colour palette. There are always twenty-four plain colours, plus six gradients and six textures of some kind. Here's the one for Chalkboard, for example:

Expand the colour range with the opacity sllider
As layering is so easy in Keynote, you can take advantage of the Opacity Slider in Effects to generate further shades or hues you want, using the palette of colours inside your chosen theme:

Borrow colours from other themes
Keynote for the iPad and iPhone does not (yet) have a colour picker - annoyingly! However, there are easy ways of expanding the colour range of the theme you've chosen to work in. You can open any theme you choose, select a shape, pick a colour from its range (see Keynote 03 Shapes), then copy and paste it into the current theme you're working in. There, you can further change its size, border etc.

Doing that, however, depends on knowing or remembering which shades and hues are available in each theme. To avoid having to open each of the twelve themes and do the steps above, my solution (available to you too below) is to have all the colour palettes available in just one presentation called Colour Swatches. Into these I've copied and pasted coloured rectangles of all the colours from every theme. Open the presentation, scroll down the twelve slides on the left, and you'll see the colour palettes for each theme at a glance. These are not just for visual reference: they are active and 'live': you can tap to select and copy any coloured rectangle, then go back to your own presentation and paste it onto your slide - much quicker! (And if you want a different shape - like a circle - you will know which theme to open up.)

Coloured Text
Within each theme, there is always the same option for text of white, black and several shades of grey. In addition, you can colour the text using any of the colours available within in that theme. As with coloured shapes (see above), you can borrow coloured text from any theme, but you will need to go into that theme, type some text, choose a colour, copy, paste etc. My quick workaround is here for you to download: a presentation with boxes of text in colours from all the themes. Just tap, copy and paste into your own presentation and type in your own journalling. (Remember, you can also use the opacity slider on text too).

Previous posts and files:
Creativity on the Move: The Map

Creativity on the Move: Managing Your Photos
Download COTMManagingYourPhotos (pdf)

Creativity on the Move: KN01Photos
Download KNAlexa01Photos (pdf)
Download AlexaShapedMasks (key)

Creativity on the Move: KN02Text
Download KNAlexa02Text (pdf)

Creativity on the Move: KN03Shapes
Download KNAlexa03Shapes (pdf)

Today's files:
Download KNAlexa04UsingColour (pdf)
Download KNAlexaColourSwatches (key)
Download KNAlexaColouredText (key)

Hoping these are useful to you, and please do let me know if anything is unclear or you have any queries and I will do my best to help. Next week, I'll show you how to combine and use shapes in Keynote to create some quick and easy scrapbooking elements which you might think can only be done in Photoshop :). in the meantime, happy exploring!

Creativity on the Move: Keynote 3 (Shapes)

Hello and welcome! Whether you're very, moderately or only slightly interested in using your iphone or ipad to scrapbook or record your memories, I hope there might be something in here which piques your curiosity just a little! Today's post and pdf is all about Shapes: where to find them, how to style and use them, and how to do things with them which the originators of Keynote never dreamed of - my favourite part! And, as always, the shots you see here and the pdfs were created totally in Keynote on the iPad and iPhone.

Some of the quick uses to which Shapes can be put include ...

• making tabbed journalling blocks by combining two rounded rectangles of different sizes
• popping a photo onto a coloured background in a jiffy without needing complex layering skills
• creating shaped journalling spaces, with or without borders or fills, where the text adjusts itself as you type
• turning photos into a mini-layouts by adding text- or colour-filled shapes
• devising striped, dotted or squared 'papers' or 'borders' to suit your page in just a few taps
• adding fast-and-easy shadows and reflections for a graphic design look

And, of course, stretching your own creativity enjoyably as you find new ways of using the tools provided! Please help yourself to the detailed pdf of instructions; the previous ones are also included below. As always, the pdfs can be downloaded to your computer, then emailed to your iPad or iPhone; or downloaded directly to your iPad. You can also upload them to a cloud facility like Dropbox, and then download them to the iPad later.

Previous posts and files:
Creativity on the Move: The Map

Creativity on the Move: Managing your Photos
Download COTMManagingYourPhotos (pdf)

Creativity on the Move: KN01Photos
Download KNAlexa01Photos (pdf)
Download AlexaShapedMasks (key)

Creativity on the Move: KN02Text
Download KNAlexa02Text (pdf)

Today's pdf:
Download KNAlexa03Shapes (pdf)

Hoping you enjoy them (and all feedback and comments welcome!) :). Next week, it's exploiting colour to maximum effect in Keynote. Might you pop back?

 

The Return of Colour, and Creativity on the Move (Keynote 02)

You've probably got one too, lurking quietly and well hidden from view. Rarely a thing of beauty or a joy forever, they're not usually by the front door where the visitors come in. My grandmother used to call hers The Glory Hole (which Grandad referred to, with a surreptitious wink behind her back, as The Gory Hole). But for us, bereft of attic, cellar or garage, ours is out of sight - and usually out of mind too. However, a hint of a thaw and a blink of sunlight this morning encouraged me to don my wellies and head off to peep round the ramshackle door into ours. Now, I do love a challenge, especially if it's one of Paula Gilarde's lovely graphic ideas over at live.scrap.repeat, and I wondered if I could interpret her Inspiration Challenge 89 on the iPad ...

I really like what you can do with taps, swipes and the occasional two-fingered twirl for rotating shapes! And the daffs have made it back up the garden path to a place of honour on the kitchen table :).

Having explored how to get photos onto the iPad or iPhone last week and use them in Keynote, this week's help is all about text and how to style it. The overview looks like this ...

... and the pdf is just below, so please do help yourself. It can be downloaded to your computer, or emailed to yourself on your iPad or iPhone. If you have GoodReader (free from the App Store), you can download it directly to your iPad, and peruse it there. I do hope you find it useful and fun! Next week, we'll look at at all the things you can do with Shapes in Keynote.

Previous posts and files:
Creativity on the Move: the Map

Creativity on the Move: Managing Your Photos
Download COTMManagingYourPhotos (pdf)

Creativity on the Move: KN01Photos
Download KNAlexa01Photos (pdf)
Download AlexaShapedMasks (key)

Today's pdf:
Download KNAlexa02Text (pdf)

Hoping you've enjoyed a bit of a break, if there were Easter celebrations your way, and are easing gently into a new and warmer (or cooler, if you need it!) week ahead. Having made an initial foray, I am determined to set off for More Exciting Adventures In The Lean-To. Well, possibly. If the temperature rises. And the sun shines again ... :).

(Pdf for strictly personal use only. No copying, adapting, extracting, re-distributing or selling allowed. All images, files and text are copyright and belong to Alexa, www.simplyalexa.typepad.com/trimmingthesails. All rights reserved.)

Creativity on the Move: Keynote 01

 Hello and welcome to using Keynote 01 Photos on your iPhone and/or iPad for quick, fun and easy scrapbooking and memory-keeping! It can produce pages, either for digital use or to print out, with photos and text (plus sound and video if you wish). Its ease of use makes it a great tool for scrapbooking on the go on a iphone or ipad. Best features?

• you can weave your scrapbooking and memory-keeping into your day, making creative use of little pockets of time

• it saves automatically every thirty seconds, so you can put it down and attend to something else at the drop of a hat, and it will be there ready and waiting when you pick it up again

• pages can be as simple or as complex as you like, using digital scrapbooking elements if you wish

• makes great 'mini-pages' if you want to pop them later into your Project Life-type albums, digital or paper

This is what we're looking at today ...


When you open Keynote, it offers you a series of possible themes. A theme is a design with its own colour swatches and a background paper or two. You don't actually have to stick with these as you will see later in the series. (The one which I've used below to demonstrate is called White and it's the one I use most often).

Here's how Keynote works ...

On the left is the navigation panel, which shows you the slides (pages) you have in your presentation (album). Along the top is the toolbar: just four simple icons with a multitude of functions accessible at a tap. On the screen above in this presentation you are offered a placeholder for the photo and two text boxes, but Keynote is very customisable, as you'll see. Here's an overview of what the icons do ...


There are two ways of adding photos, and the how-to is in the pdf below. We'll be covering the how-to of text and journalling in a later post ...


Photos can also be styled in lots of different ways with a couple of taps - these are only a few of the possibilities ... (More detailed how-tos on the pdf.)

The photo-placeholders which come with Keynote are rectangular and, for those of us who scrapbook, a little unimaginative! So I've created a file for you to download with lots of differently-shaped photo-placeholders which you can use to which you mask your own photos, by copying and pasting the one you want ...

You have two possibilities for downloading the Shaped Masks file below:

• dowmload to your computer, then email it to yourself on your iPad or iPhone. When you open the email and tap the file icon, it will ask you if you want to open it in Keynote, so just tap and it will automatically import.
• If you have Good Reader, you can download it directly to your iPad, tap Manage Files, tap AlexaShapedmasks.key to highlight it, then (in the Manage Files pane) tap Open In ... and choose Keynote. (Quicker to do than it took me to type!).

Here is the pdf. for today, and the shaped masks download:
Download KNAlexa01Photos (pdf)
Download AlexaShapedMasks (key)

Previous posts and files are here:
Creativity on the Move: The Map
Creativity on the Move: Managing Your Photos
Download COTMManagingYourPhotos (pdf)

Hoping that these are useful to you, and that you'll think about having a go. It's a lot of fun!

(For strictly personal use only. No copying, adapting, extracting, re-distributing or selling allowed. All images, files and text are copyright and belong to Alexa, www.simplyalexa.typepad.com/trimmingthesails. All rights reserved.)

Creativity on the Move (2): managing your photos

Hello again! You are most wlecome, and please step right in for the next episode on using your iphone and/or ipad to enhance your memory-keeping and scrapbooking! There's a pdf at the foot of the post for additional details on the how-tos, so please do help yourself :). Today, we're managing photos and finding out ...

• where your photos are stored
• how to enable Photostream
• moving/copying photos between the iphone, the ipad, computer, camera

Where are my photos?
A photo taken with your iphone or ipad goes straight into your Camera Roll. You can leave your photos there, or set up albums to make it easier to find what you want ...

Photostream holds a copy of the photos you take on the iphone or ipad in the icloud. It will keep the last 1000 photos you've taken, and stores new photos for 30 days to give you time to copy them into more permanent storage (like your computer).

If you enable Photostream on your iphone and ipad, then a photo taken on the iphone will appear automatically on the ipad, and vice versa. (You can also enable Photostream on your Apple computer and the photos will go straight into iPhoto or Aperture if you have an up-to-date version of either of these).

How do I enable Photostream?
Easy! The instructions below are shown as for the iphone but apply equally to the ipad. You'll need to enable Photostream on both devices.

How do I move/copy photos between the iphone, ipad, camera and computer ?
There are four possible ways (to my knowledge!) of doing this:

1. let Photostream do it for you (see above) for the ipad, iphone, computer
2. use a piece of kit
3. email it to yourself: fine for one or two photos at a time
4. use Dropbox (www.dropbox.com)

The first option, Photostream, we've looked at above. It will seamlessly sync your photos between the ipad and iphone (and your computer if you use the up-to-date iPhoto or Aperture).

The second option requires some pieces of kit:

The Apple camera connection kit comes with two bits: a Secure Digital card connector if you use one of these in your camera, or a camera cable connector. I use the latter. The list below tells you which bits of kit you need for each combination of devices. (The Apple USB cable you will already have; it's the one supplied with each Apple device).

• iphone/ipad - computer: Apple USB cable and Preview (on your computer in the Applications folder, see pdf below)
• iphone - ipad: Apple USB cable and camera connection kit
• camera - ipad: camera cable and camera connection kit

Using the camera connection kit is quite straightforward. As soon as you plug it in, it will tell you what to do, but I've added detailed help and images in the pdf.

 The third option, emailing, is very easy. It's a quick way to get an image from your iphone to your ipad (or vice versa) or to your computer. It is only really suitable for one or two images at a time.


The fourth option is Dropbox: your own free storage-in-the-cloud box where you can keep any types of files (photos, Word documents, presentations, bits of video etc). You can send files there from any devices you have, and download them onto any other of your devices. You can, for instance, upload photos to it while you're travelling (when you have a wi-fi connection) and should anything happen to your camera, they'll be there waiting for you to access from your computer back home. You'll need to install Dropbox on all your devices (very easy), and the apps for it are free. 

Next steps
Well, that's really all there is to it! Pick one or two of the ways of managing your photos above which will work best in your situation, and off you go ...

If there is anything (and I mean anything) which is unclear to you, either in the post or on the pdf, then please do get back to me on here or via email (alexaatclaradotcodotuk). I know how frustrating it is to read an instruction and find that a non-obvious-to-me step has been omitted, and I really want this to be accessible and fun as you try out another tool to enhance your scrapbooking :).

The pdf is below. (For some reason, the small version of the cover page right is a little blurry but if you click on it it will open sharp and clear in another window).

Download COTMManagingYourPhotos (pdf)

Hoping very much you'll pop back next week for getting up-and-away with Keynote! See you then?

Creativity on the Move (1): the map

Hello and welcome! Today, it's Creativity on the Move: using your iphone and/or ipad for memory-keeping and scrapbooking. Whether you scrapbook digitally, consider yourself a hybrid scrapbooker, or prefer purely paper, I hope there is something for you in here - even if it's simply knowing what's out there!

When I am setting off anywhere, I like a map: a sense of the lie of the land (or sea!). Today is an overview of what you can use or might need, with the detailed how-tos in subsquent posts and pdfs. If you have any questions, please do pop them into the comments below so that I can be as helpful as possible. Off we go - this is my travel kit ...

1 Taking photos and storing/transferring them
There are a couple of options here ...

• iphone/ipad with a built-in camera: at least one of these. If you have both, you can 'sync' them through icloud (I'll show you how to do this if you're not sure) so that a photo taken on one shows up on the other. This is handy if you want a larger screen to work on, but you can work quite successfully on the iphone alone.
• If you have an android phone with camera, there is a version of the photo-editing software I use (Snapseed) for android phones too - keep reading! However, the software for page-making which I use works only with the iphone and ipad.
• optional: your own camera, and a connection kit for the ipad (check your camera's compatibility). I also use my slip-in-my-bag Canon Ixus: a connection klit means that photos can be transferred easily straight from the camera to the ipad in seconds.

2 Editing Photos
You may, of course, be perfectly happy with your photos the way they come out of your camera! I often find mine need slight adjusting for brightness or contrast, and a bit of sharpening; sometimes, they need a little repair, or I want to do something more interesting with them too. Out of the photo apps available, I find Snapseed the most versatile and easy-to-use. There are iphone and android versions and here's what it does ...

You'll see above, down the left, the vast range of its capabilities. Open each window (Automatic, Tune Image etc.) with a screen tap for further sophistication. Its genius lies in its great ease-of-use. Tap the screen to reveal the list of options, slide your fingerup or down on the menu which appears to choose the function, and slide left/right to decrease/increase it - that's it. Here's the Tune Image screen, for example ...

And if you like to play around with your photos, there are a host of interesting filter options in Drama, Retrolux and Grunge. The latter has 1500 possibilities which you can zip through quickly by dragging your finger across the screen ...

3 Making a scrapbooking/journalling page
The best and most versatile app I've found is not a scrapbooking app at all. It's Keynote, Apple's piece of software for putting together a presentation. It has a host of adaptable features, and you can add video and music too, if you are so inclined. Again, it's easy to use and I'll be showing you in detail how to do this - as well as giving you some additional useful items which enhance and work with Keynote's current functions. Think "presentation = album" and "slide = page", and you're on your way! It is a lot easier (and cheaper) to use than Photoshop Elements, and can produce a huge variety of pages ...

You can make whole pages or parts of pages and print them out, or quick and pretty 'mini-pages' on-the-go which can either be added digitally to, or printed out for, a pocket in your Project Life pages. You can email them straight to friends and familly or, once saved to your camera roll, upload them to Facebook and Twitter, or blog them directly without needing your computer.

4 Printing the finished page
It is quite possible to print directly from your ipad or iphone if your printer is wireless and Air Print compatible. Or you can upload your pages to your computer, and print from there. This is my preference, as I sometimes want to print several mini-pages on a single sheep of photopaper. I also like to keep a copy of my work somewhere else besides the iphone or ipad. This can be done via syncing and the iCloud, or via Dropbox (www.dropbox.com) - a handy and free way of storing any data which you can then download when and where you want.

Next steps
If you're interesting in having a go, then the next move is to equip yourself with Keynote, plus Snapseed (if you want to a neat photo-editor), and Dropbox (if you want a handy place to keep a copy of photos and pages and an easy way to transfer them to your computer). I'll share with you over the coming months what I'm learning, and hope you'll dip your toes in the water too. (And I should let you know that I have absolutely no financial interests or affiliate links of any kind.)

Please do ask questions if you'd like to, or let me know of anything you want to know in more detail. Hoping you'll be coming along with me, even if you're just peeping over my shoulder for the meantime :).

In the post ...

... or at least in this blog post, I have a little something for those of you who have been enjoying, as I have, another of Julie's inspiring Going Postal weeks. Here's my contribution to blog happy mail. :)

I've prepared a 'blank' stamp, without the photo above, for those of you might like a digital version into which you could drop your own photo, change the country, type of stamp etc.


In the zipped flle below, you'll find the layered psd. file, a TOU file and, in case you'd like a little bit of help, a pdf. of instructions:


You can download the zipped file here:
Download AlexaStamp

A couple of postmarks might be a nice addition, and there are some great free photoshop brushes in these sites:

• photoshop free brushes
• Libertiny's passport stamp brushes
• redheadstock deviant art postage brushes

Hoping you have some fun with it, and will be happily stamping all over the place; if you do, please do let me know so I can come and admire! Warm regards to you all on a chilly May day - unbelieveably, it was only 1.9C this morning and it snowed. Yep, I know. Welcome to the Great British Summer ...