Make Your Own Scrap Book Paper

I have been having some fun playing around with PicMonkey and I have found a way to make my own scrap book papers to use online or perhaps print out. These are fun and easy to make once you know the steps. There are many ways to use these 'papers' online and I will be showing you some ideas in the future. 

**Update** PicMonkey has started charging for some of it's features though most features are still free. I will be checking out other free sites to see what they have to offer and let you know what I find. In the mean time, a good free site is Ribbet.

I made this tutorial as clear and as short as I could manage, however it is still long! Not hard! but long. It will be as easy as pie once you have done it a time or two!

I like to start making my scrap book paper with an inspiration photo (the one on the left). This helps me stay with in a color palette to keep everything coordinated beautifully. For this set of papers I am using a Zinnia photo from my blogger friend Debra over at The Homespun. She takes amazing photos! I asked for permission first. 

1.   Go to PicMonkey and click on 'Create a Collage' Then click on 'Upload Photos' in the upper left corner. Upload your inspiration picture. It will appear next to the 'Upload Photo' box. Drag and drop it into your collage anywhere. 

2.   Back at the left side click onto the little icon shaped like an artist palette. The rainbow color bar appears and you will see a little dropper just above the bar to the right. Click on the rainbow bar anywhere, then on the dropper picture, and your cursor becomes the dropper. Take it to your inspiration photo and choose a color from it. I am choosing the palest yellow I can find for mine. Left click when you have your color picked.

3.    Now drag your inspiration photo off the collage. When it is completely off the collage you will see that the entire background is the color you picked. This is your base for your scrapbook papers. Click save at the top and choose a name for your collection. Mine is named 'Debra's Zinnias' :) Close the window by clicking the X in the upper right hand corner.

4.    On the PicMonkey home screen choose 'Edit a Photo', then upload your blank colored scrap book paper your just made. In the left column click 'crop' and choose '8x10' in the drop down box. Click 'apply'. Your paper is now a standard 8x10. Save this to your pictures as it will become the base for your next papers. 

5.   Click 'Overlays' in the left column and at the top choose 'Your Own', and then upload your inspiration photo. Expand it, (move your cursor over the outline around the photo. An arrow pointing to each side will appear. Hold down you left mouse button and pull) to cover a good portion of your base paper. A color bar will be to the right. 

7.    Decide what you want to design for your scrapbook papers. I will do stripes today. Again click on 'Overlays' and choose 'Geometric', then choose the rectangle. 

A black rectangle will appear on your paper. Pull it so it goes from top to bottom (or side to side) on your base paper then pull the sides in to make a thin stripe the size you want. 

8.    There will be a color bar available; with the stripe still selected, click on the rainbow bar and then click on the small bar to the right to get your dropper. Take the dropper to you inspiration photo, and choose a color for your stripe. Click when you have the color you want. I chose to fade mine 25%; the fade adjuster is also on the color bar. Now select your inspiration photo and move it all the way to the right until it is hidden. It will still be there even though you don't see it when you need it later.

9.   Once your stripe is like you want it right click your mouse and choose 'Duplicate Overlay' as many times as you would like; you can always delete extra overlays. I choose to have five strips this color and size. I moved them around where I wanted them to be. Make sure these stripes cover top to bottom completely. Then I duplicated one, made it thinner, and duplicated it four more times. 

10.  Pull your hidden inspirational photo back onto you paper and choose another rectangle overlay. Repeat with sizing, color, and when it's the way you want it, move your inspirational photo out of the way. Duplicate until you have as many stripes as you want. I choose to make a couple of different sizes in green and faded this one 50%. I wanted one more color so I brought back my inspirational photo and choose a darker yellow and repeated until I had it just as I wanted it. I decided to move some of the stripes around and change the sizes of some of them too. 

Then to finish, I chose 'Merge' on the top bar to merge all the overlays together. Merging fuses your design; you can add more to it but you can't change what you already made. Then, I saved my stripes to my computer using my design name, Debra's Zinnias stripes.

Here is my finished paper in a collage! I love it and it coordinates perfectly with Debra's Zinnia photo. 

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