Katie Pertiet is the owner and founder of www.DesignerDigitals.com. Her layouts have been published in Creating Keepsakes, Simple Scrapbooks, Memory Makers, Legacy, and BHG Scrapbooks Etc. Katie also designs products for Autumn Leaves, Creativity and Fontwerks and licenses her designs in the home decor market. 

In this article, Katie tells us about her love of photography and scrapbooking, and gives us some great tips on how to make a special summer photo book using Designer Digitals’ “ Made to Remember” Layered Template.

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I became consumed with photography in high school. We had a dark room at school and learning to develop my own pictures and experiment with developing techniques created an art out of photography and I was hooked. I went on to work as a photographer in college and continued to photograph all of life’s events so I could hold on to the memories. I have scrapbooked since high school too, gluing photos and memorabilia to pages to be treasured forever. In 1999 I joined Shutterfly and began my transition to digital. Taking digital pictures and working with photoshop makes the experience even more artistic. I take my camera everywhere and really try to capture the moments in our lives that my family can reflect on and cherish.

Last year we rented a beach house for the first time and I wanted to have a book about our experience there. Our favorite part of the week was at the beach so that’s where I focused the book and pictures on.

I chose the “ Made to Remember” Layered template because of the grungy, roughed edge photo masks. I felt like they conveyed the rough feeling of the sand and the grit of the beach and leant themselves to the blending I wanted to do with Photoshop. I took the photos that weren’t necessarily the best but still showed the essence of the experience and blended them with digital paper for backgrounds and then placed a few photos on top. I just journaled briefly on each page spread so the book could be primarily a photo book of memories rather than a storybook. But now I’m working on a new storybook approach, using a diary that I kept on a vacation.

So when you go on that vacation this summer, take along your digital camera and a notebook so you can document each day about the things you did and even the things your children said. Take pictures of everything on your trip. With digital now there’s no reason not to. Take pictures of the room you stayed in, the places you ate and the places you visited, people you met and those on the trip with you. When you come home and put together those memories, you’ll be so glad you wrote in your notebook each day and took so many pictures that you can reflect on that summer vacation for years to come!

HOW KATIE CREATED HER BOOK

This book was created with Shutterfly’s Digital Scrapbooking option. Using the “ Made to Remember” Layered Template at DesignerDigitals.com along with Adobe Photoshop Elements Katie was able to completely customize her book with digital scrapbook products.

Shutterfly’s digital scrapbook option allows you to upload your full- size, pre-designed page and arrange them just like a traditional photobook and even design custom covers and spines using Shutterfly’s templates for Photoshop Elements. The cover design for this book was included in the “ Made to Remember” Layered Templates so all Katie needed to do was add her photos and digital papers and the book had a unified, consistent design.

If you would like to more information on the art of digital scrapbooking, check out this article, which contains lots of useful information and links.

And don’t forget to take a look at Katie’s “ Summer 2007” book.