Scrapbook Sunday: Using a Digital Page Template

I may have mentioned one or two times that I have an ancient version of Photoshop Elements and that translating tutorials for newer versions of PSE on digital scrapbooking was very hard. While trying to work on a photo banner using a template last week, I HAD it! I was so frustrated how nothing was working and demanded rather testily that Brad download the free trial version of PSE 7 pronto!

I can't believe how much improved the seventh edition is, over of say the FIRST edition. Yeppers, that's the one I was dealing with. I always wondered which one I had but could never figure it out since it didn't have a version listed on the about page. Note to self, if there is no version listed there's a good chance that because it's the first one.

Needless to say, I am loving my 30 day trial and at the end of it we will be upgrading☺ I am so happy; it's so much easier to make changes. With a click of a few buttons you can make edits that used to be very laborious. So now that I've got the newest version of the program with all it's bells and whistles, I've been playing around with it and learning how to use it.

To help me figure things out, I've been spending a lot of time watching the tutorials Jessica Sprague has on her site. Readers of Creating Keepsakes magazine might be familiar with her name. She often does tutorials and writes a column for them and has a whole collection of video tutorials that you can view for free.

They are great, because seriously it's so much easier to learn by watching her take you step by step through things. It's much clearer to see her use an element on her page than just read about it. If you're looking to learn more about digital scrapbooking, I highly recommend checking her site out.

That's where I found the great free page template and tutorial I used to make the page at the top of this post. I don't have a very large collection of digital kits or elements to choose from so I had use the same kit I made my header with. Out of all my supplies it was the only suitably summery one. I finished this within ten minutes, not including the time spent viewing the tutorial a couple of times. The swirls at the bottom, title font, and pictures I added but the rest of the page was completed by just dropping in the papers. I love it!