I am so excited to welcome Wendy of Studio Wendy as a contributor to THE DIGI FILES this month!  You might remember her post she did not too long ago about printing an album/photobook. Wendy is not only knowledgeable and talented in all things printed, but in all things action related too!!  Here’s a closer look at her contributions to The Files this month:

These actions are based on layouts of mine (Steph) and they really do the work for you!  There are instructions included for installing and running the actions and they work in PSCS2-4 and PSE5-7.  I use CS and I literally dragged and dropped the actions into PS and then click play.  The action will run and then stop with instructions on what items you will be selecting next!  I really LOVE them!  I was able to create a layout that followed the action exactly in under 3 minutes.  I created another layout and changed and tweaked things, in under 10 minutes.  Not bad!

Wendy will be posting a tutorial tomorrow for us as well!

Here is what our team created using Wendy’s actions:

Layout by Karen, additional supplies: Jennifer Barrette Love Blooms kit; Laura Bratcher Once Fabulous frame; Fontologie Printing Primer font.

Layout by Karen, additional supplies: Cathy Zielske word art; Lauren Reid paper strip and staples.

Layout by Katie, additional supplies: Scrapbook Graphics Impressions of Friendship kit, font is Pea Jiawei.

Layout by Katie, additional supplies: Scrapbook Graphics Impressions of Mother Earth

Layout by Kellie, additional supplies: Paradise Found by One Little Bird (photos and placement altered after action completed).

A graphic designer for the printing industry by trade, I was creating rudimentary “digital” scrapbooks using inexpensive scrapbooking software and Photoshop in the mid 1990s. I even designed my first brag book using Quark Xpress and Photoshop a full year before I discovered the digital scrapbooking world in June of 2006. A whole new world of artistic expression was opened up to me and I was immediately taken with digiscrapping. I began designing templates based on my layouts and began selling my designs in early 2007.

In the course of my personal scrapping, I decided to try printing my layouts in a photo book. I found the resources a bit confusing and in the creation of my first books, I developed a set of tools including actions and templates to help make the process painless. Shortly thereafter, I began making those available to my customers as well. Since then, I’ve developed countless tools and time saving actions for both scrappers and designers. These tools help you get back to what you love to do, creating!

When I’m not at my computer scrapping or designing, I can be found enjoying a good book, movie or TV show, or spending time with my precious family.

WENDY’S STORE

I’m currently working on a digital art journal, inspired by Studio Tangie’s Art Journal Caravan. I’m well behind the scheduled itineraries, but you can view the work in progress in my gallery.

This is my favorite new tip! It’s called “scrubbing” and it has nothing at all to do with cleaning the house. In Photoshop and Elements, you can adjust most of the sliders by clicking on the text next to the drop down menu and dragging left or right. For example, adjust your opacity on the layers palette by clicking on the word “opacity” and drag left or right. So, start scrubbing!

My very first experience with digital scrapbooking was with a cheap little scrapbooking program that was clip art based. Although I did a few pages with it, I never did anything with them. And, they were not much better than what I could do paper-wise. When my son was born, I attempted paper scrapbooking. I got all of 3 pages done in a year and had to call my sister in to help finish the album, which was still, um, well, pretty bad! After that, I created my first digital brag book using Quark Xpress and Photoshop! It was a big step ahead from anything else I had done, but was very basic, using just solid blocks of color and photos. It wasn’t long after, that I discovered digital scrapbooking as we know it today. I was instantly hooked! I had finally found a way to preserve my memories. I was not limited by my lack of paper scrapping talent. I could use my 15 years of experience in graphic design and Photoshop to create things that I was proud of.

It wasn’t long before I started giving away templates based on my layouts, which led to my first design spot in early 2007. As I worked on my templates, I began to see the need to save time doing repetitive tasks, first with resizing my layouts for photobooks, and then for designing, and scrapping and anything related to both. And, so began my transformation from a template and kit designer to an action and tool designer. As passionate as I was about digital scrapbooking, I became even more passionate about both photobooks and saving time! Three years later, my shop at Scrapbookgraphics is stocked full of actions, templates and tools that help me (and you) be more productive, and back to doing what we love, creating!

Sometimes, my inspriation comes from an “a-ha” moment when I realize that I can automate that certain thing I’ve been doing over and over again. Other times, it comes from customers or fellow designers who wish for something specific to make their lives easier. Other times, I get an idea in my head that I need to work and massage and turn over until I can figure it out. I love a good challenge or puzzle, and love it when I get something to work perfectly. In my scrapping, I am equally inspired by my photos and memories as I am by the kits that I work with. Sometimes I see a kit and know exactly what I want to create. Other times, I start with a photo and build around it until it takes on a life of it’s own. I love that my job and hobby cross paths and allow me to express my creativity and my analytical side.

15″ MacBook Pro, 2.25 ghz, 4gb ram

Programs:  PSCS3, Illustrator CS3, PSE 6 and 8 for testing

Camera:  Canon T1i, a huge splurge this past year and it’s well worth the money compared to my old point and shoot.

Other tools:  I have an old Wacom Graphire 4 tablet, and a really bad scanner LOL

That’s a really hard question! My Trim It action and Shadows & Borders come to mind because I use them every day. Then, there are my photobook toolkits which I use to resize my layouts for printing. Those are huge times savers. But, going through my shop, I have to say I really love my Lift It Templates: The Collection. These are templates based off of the amazing pages designed by the Studio Crew. The help you create stunning pages in a short amount of time.

I had to look this up, but by far it is ACTION: Cut & Cluster.

Here are a few of my favorite products of Wendy’s:

Here’s some great inspiration created with Wendy’s products (images without credits are linked):

Layout by Steph, supplies: Scrap It 5 (included in collection 2), Papers and Elements from FireFly Lane by Amanda Heimann and Ziggle Scraps, “forever” signature series alpha 2 by Taylor Made, font Fontologie Printing Primer. Photo by Lisa Hysteck

Go have a look in Wendy’s Studio and come back and tell her what you like, we will randomly select a winner from those comments to win $10 in product from their store!  (Comments must be posted before midnight EST and must include a product name to qualify)!

As a THANK YOU, Wendy has a couple of things for us!!!

First is a coupon:

In addition to the contest WE are running here at TDD, Wendy has these two contests going on at Scrapbook Graphics:

I would like to thank Wendy for being here with us this month and sharing her knowledge and talents with us!!

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