Designing my own scrapbook pages is a great creative outlet. When I’m not working with a template, I like the challenge of making a page design work for my photos and the kit I want to use. When I looked over my finished pages, I found that there were some shapes and elements that I was very drawn to using:
- Rectangles and squares
- Triangles
- Circles and half-circles
- Hexagons
- Circle and square frames
- Scallop trim
- Ribbons
- Flowers and leaves
- Buttons
- Hearts
- Stars
- Word art strips
- Banners
- Arrows and Chevrons
- Journal Cards (especially 3×4 size)
So, in order to not start from scratch on every page, I decided to make a “Template Builder” folder and fill it with all of my favourite shapes. Then, when I go to build a page in the future, I can just quickly add shapes from my own shape stash.
These are some of the shapes in my folder:
To make your own shapes, create a new a 12×12 canvas with a transparent background. Draw a shape. In this example, I’m going to use an arrow.
Now get rid of the extra canvas by going to Image>Trim.
Save the file as a PNG to preserve the transparent background. Now it’s ready to be used on your pages!
Here’s a quick template I made using my shapes and then the page I made using it:
Supplies: Sunrise by Kristin Cronin-Barrow
Easy as 1-2-3! I hope this tip helps you to create your own pages, and capture your memories, faster and more enjoyably.
