A Canvas Print from a Digital Scrapbook Page

I had been wanting to make my daughter a "cowgirl" decorated wall for her room. She loves horses and anything related to them. So I began searching for ideas online, namely, Pinterest. I saw some cute cowgirl plaques and then some that you could buy with custom names. I really liked that idea but none of them were in my budget. Then it popped into my head! Why not make a custom digital scrapbook page and have it printed on canvas. Genius! 

I began researching places that I could get a canvas print before I started to make something. There's a bunch of places and most of them are pretty pricey. I decided to go cheap. Wal-mart cheap. They have a 12x12 faux canvas print for $19.96. I decided that for 20 bucks that I could at least try it. So I searched my digi-stash for anything cowgirl and anything that might look good on a canvas (stamps, paints, splatters, etc...). I also did a little digi-shopping and bought Cowgirl Up by Chelle's Creations and Lace Stamp Alpha from Faith True. 

I had to test out my page several times when I uploaded it to the Wal-mart print site. It is nice because it gives you a preview of how it would look when printed (what parts would be on the sides of the canvas). I ended up making my image 14in x14in and making sure I left about 1.5 inches on each side for the wrap part of the canvas. You can see (on the finished product) that the edge comes right up to the doodled border.

Here's the .jpg image of my digital page.

And here is a pic of the finished product.

I was really pleased with it. The colors weren't as bright but still okay and it printed just as it was shown on their website. Plus I got it in 1 hour and I was able to go pick it up at my local Wal-mart. It is cheap and it is faux BUT for $20 and 1 hour I feel like I got my money's worth and my daughter LOVES it. I probably wouldn't choose it for a professional print but for this little project, it was perfect.

This is what the back looks like.

It's basically a cardboard box.

Here's what it looks like finished on her wall.

I'm going to be doing a post on how I made my paper art artwork see in the frames. Look for that soon.

Hope this inspires you to use your digital scrapbook supplies to make some art for your wall.

My Printed December Daily Album

Apparently, I don't have a problem remembering that it's 2012 and not 2011 anymore! My problem is that I was just so ready for 2012 that I made my December Daily 2011 "In Quotes" album with this front page:

Yup, that's right and I didn't even notice it until I opened up the package and was flipping through it! This isn't the first time this has happened. Look closely at this poster and find the mistake.

Do you see it! Apparently it's 2102. I'm WAY into the future here.

Thankfully I saved the .psd and I can just switch out the numbers for my December Daily album and it only cost $6.00. I think I'll just re-do the cover and order another one or I could just keep it the way it is and get a good laugh each Christmas. As far as the calendar poster template.....well, I didn't realize my mistake until the MIL opened her gift on Christmas day! Everyone had a good laugh.

I was so excited to show you all my finished book and I thought about waiting until I got my corrected book but what's the difference, right? Either way, it will turn out that same, just a different number.

I decided to go with Mixbook because they were  the one place I could find that offered a 4x6 softcover book like this and it was pretty cheap. 

Uploading my photos and arranging my book on their website was super easy. It probably took me about 20-30 minutes. It took about one week to receive my book once I ordered it.

Here's the finished product.

Book made with Magical Christmas by Jady Day Studio and Flergs.

You can see a tiny white edge. When I reviewed the book online I did not see that. It's on a couple of the pages.

The green color looks a little bright here but in real-life it actually looks just like the paper I used in the digital scrapbook kit. My photo editing skills still need some work.

I would say that the overall quality is what I was expecting for $6.99. While it may not last for generations to come it should last a good while and I'll keep the .jpg images of my book so that I can print it out again if I want to.

Well, that's my 2011, oh I mean 2012 December Daily Album!!! Guess I'm a whole year ahead of schedule.

December Daily "In Quotes" - Final Week

I'm done!!! I really loved doing this project but I'm happy I'm done. I'm really looking forward to printing this....now if I can only figure out how I want to print it. Anybody have any suggestions?

So let me review with you the last few days leading up to Christmas in case you missed it on facebook.

Oh, & be sure to check out Week 1, Week 2 & Week 3 if you missed those.

Can you tell she could hardly wait for Christmas?

I should have recorded her singing this. It was adorable!

This is our Emmie. She didn't even hesitate when she said this. We sponsor two girls through World Vision. Each year the girls browse the World Vision Catalog to figure out what they want to "buy". Then they make up a chart & raise the money by doing odd jobs around the house during the month of December. Emmie wanted to give her "tooth fairy" money away.

She sounded so mature when she said this & it just got me to thinking.....

Truly! You should have seen the light in her eyes when she said this. It's like it clicked. She knew that He is the reason!

If you all did a December Daily Album I would love to see it. Just hook me up to your gallery or blog. I'll take a look later this week.

I won't have any releases this week. I've been taking a much-needed break from designing.

I'll be back next week with some new stuff for you all! 

December Daily "In Quotes" Week 3

Do you want to see more of my December Daily "In Quotes" pages? Well, that's what I'm going to show you today. And here some links to remind you of my little project. Week 1, Week 2 and here's a Freebie & Tutorial to help you get started, well okay, maybe not to get started, since it's well into December BUT grab the freebie, learn how to resize your templates & you can use the templates for almost anything.

Here goes.

Ah, the oblivious child. I think every family has one....or should have one. It's quite cute.

I think I have to agree. Hot chocolate is too hot!

Melt my heart.

It's like she's making us feel guilty for telling her the truth about Santa.

I'm not going there.

Sisters. :)

My daughter did indeed eat Frosty's head & she told me it was delicious.

Maybe I shouldn't have put the Christmas tree up until the day before Christmas.....but what's the fun in that?

I can't believe I only have 5 days left! I'll be back next week, after Christmas (shwew!), to show you my last few pages.

And remember, even if you don't do a daily page or daily photo or daily whatever.....at least jot down some of your memories. You can scrap 'em later, after the holidays, when things aren't so crazy, right?

Resizing a Card Template Video Tutorial with FREE Templates!

As promised here's a little video tutorial to show you how to resize a template. This is just a basic tutorial (I'm using Photoshop CS3) that will show you how to turn a 4x6 into a 5x7, 4x8 or even an 8x8. Ultimately you could take any size template and adjust it to make any size that you wanted A rectangularly shaped template may need more adjusting if you try to change it into a square design. It all depends on the design of the template.

Here are the FREE 4x6 card templates. I created them based off of the December Daily "In Quotes" pages that I've been making. Feel free to just use these as photo templates too. All you have to do is remove the journaling part & place a photo there instead. Just click on the pic to download.

Let me know if you have any questions.