This week's freebies and questions for you

Hey everyone!
It’s a New Year and a new time to renew, so I am going to ask you guys some questions.
Question 1: What do you guys like about my blog?
Question 2: What would you like to see more of on my blog?

These are this week’s freebies for everyone, but you have to participate in this week’s scavenger hunt in order to find and download them!;) Have fun finding them! (Hint: On which blog post is the link for this week’s freebies?)

Here’s a layout I created with this week’s freebies. I encourage everyone visiting my blog to try these freebies out! These are fast and fun, and a great way to embellish your photos. If you think that you can’t scrapbook, think again! With these free Quick Pages it is easy to just layer your pictures behind the page. Add a little journaling or extra embellishments if you wish and you’re ready for printing or saving for the web! If you need some help, please check my previous posts for tutorials.



I am getting lots of visitors on my blog, but not many people follow me out here. I would love having more followers out here, so please be a follower on my blog! Wishing you guys a wonderful day!!!

Sharda

Tutorial5: How to work with your freebies in MMS

Hey everyone!
How are you guys doing? And how had your Christmas been? Not every day is a day of sunshine; but I hope you guys had a wonderful Christmas. In the daytime at Christmas, a car had landed upside down in the canal not far from our house, because it was in a very high speed. Good thing that my neighbor immediately jumped in the water and broke the car window to rescue the victims; they were unharmed. So be careful in the traffic everyone and save your life and those of others. At night on Christmas we had a lot of guests, yummy food, fireworks, and lots of fun.;)
I had already placed a tutorial out here about how you can work with your freebies in Microsoft Word. Today I’m placing a tutorial which teaches you to work with your freebies in My Memories Suite. If you haven’t purchased your software, you can use the discount code STMMMS35043 to purchase your software. You will be paying $29.97 instead of $39.97 with this code for your MMS version3 software. Software also comes with a $10 coupon, so a total of $20 in savings for you guys! With this coupon you can choose a free kit or some other product at www.MyMemories.com. If you choose a kit that’s $10 or less, it’s totally free for you with the $10 coupon!!!
No one has participated in this week’s giveaway, so the freebies stay with me. I am going to work with this week’s giveaway freebies. You can work with the freebies from previous week; scroll down to my previous post to download your freebies if you haven’t done it yet. Download the freebies and unzip it. Open an album and click on ‘Insert’ from your Menu bar, then click on ‘Add Page’ and choose for the option ‘Blank Page’ and then click on ‘OK’.

So you now have a blank page.

Now click on ‘Embellishments’ from your Control Panel, then on ‘Add’. You will get a ‘Choose Embellishment’ window; click on ‘Brows Other…’.

Now open the file where you have saved your freebies, then click on one of the Quick Pages that you want to work with and then click on ‘OK’ and then on ‘Close’.



I now have my Quick Page inserted on my blank page.

What we are going to do now, is to insert pictures. I’m going to use firework pictures that my brother and cousin had fired at Christmas. So click on ‘Photos’ on your Control Panel, then click on ‘Box’; a picture box will appear on your page where you can insert your picture. I am going to change the shape of the picture box, so click on ‘Shape’ from your Photos tab and choose for a ‘Circle/Oval’ shape and then click on ‘OK’.

The picture of your picture box has now changed to a circle shape. Move the picture box to the place where you want it to be and make it smaller if necessary. If you are working with the quick pages from the previous post, choose for a ‘Rounded Corner’ shape for your photo box.

We need two more photo boxes for this layout. We can simply copy the photo box we already have by clicking on the ‘Copy selected object’ button and then clicking on the ‘Paste copied or cut object’ button twice. Move your copied photo boxes to its place.

Now double click on one of the picture boxes to add your pictures; you can edit your pictures the way you want. Do the same for the other picture boxes. You can use the Zoom function if you want one particular part of your picture to be shown. The zoom function is also very handy for if you have a group picture and you want only one person to be shown on your layout. Double click on the picture to get the position of your picture right.

Now we are going to add text to our layout. Click on ‘Text’ on your Control Panel. Then click on ‘Add’; a text box will appear on your layout. Move your text box to its place and make the textbox bigger or smaller if necessary and then type in your text. To move your text box simply click on some other object and then select your text box to move it. Double click in the box to add/edit your text. I’ve chosen for a centered alignment for my text and I’ve used picker for a matching text color. You can change your font, size, etc. the way you like.

One final step I forgot to do; right click on one of your pictures and choose for the option ‘Send to Back’.  Do the same with your other pictures. If you want to edit your picture after sending it back simply select your layout, then right click and choose for the ‘Lock Object’ option, now you can select your pictures and edit it the way you want. Right click on the Quick Page again to unlock your Quick Page. I’ve zoomed the first picture a little bit in. When you don’t lock your object, you will only be able to edit your pictures by sending your Quick Page to the back. When you have lots of objects on your layout the lock function is handier, cause with the send back or forward function a lot of objects can get out of place which will cost you much more time to edit your layout. We’re done now; that was as easy as 1-2-3!!!

You can export your layout to a JPEG image and share it online with your family or friends or print it out.

Wishing you a prosperous and happy New Year everyone!!! And be careful with the fireworks.
Sharda

How to print out your MMS layouts if you don’t have a printer of your own

Hey everyone!
How are you guys doing?
I’m good; just pampered my feet in a hot tub. It’s good for your body as well as for your soul to pamper yourself now and then.;)

Today I’m going to share my printed postcard with you guys. I don’t have a printer of my own, so I had placed my exported JPEG images which I had created with my My Memories Suite close to each other in Microsoft Word to print it out.

First I had inserted my JPEG images by right clicking on the thumbnail of my JPEG image and then clicking on ‘Paste’ in Microsoft Word. I had created another layout for the back of my postcard in MMS. So when you insert your layouts in Microsoft Word they will be on two pages. I’m going to place them on one page. So how do you do that?

First start by changing your page layout. Click on ‘Page Layout’ and choose for ‘Narrow Margins’.

Now I’m going to make my images smaller. First select your picture, then click on ‘Picture Tools’. Now you can change the size of your picture.

I’m gong to change the height and width of my picture into 4.84”, but you can also choose some other value if you like. So type in the value; I’m typing 4.84” for the height and width and then I’m hitting the ‘Enter’ key.

Select the other picture if you have also created a back in MMS. I’ve added a deer embellishment and a Text ‘Created by Sharda Sewdien’ for the layout of the back. If you haven’t created a back for your postcard, you can also leave a piece of white area and cut out the white area as your back after printing out your layout. So now I have both my layouts on one page.

Select the pictures one by one and and choose for the option ‘Rotate Right 90˚’ from your Format menu.

You could actually also have choosen for a landscape orientation; this way you wouldn’t have to rotate the pictures. There are lots of ways to get the job done.

When you only have one layout, you can place your layout somewhere below on your page and print it out and your done after cutting out your layout! When you also have a layout for the back of your postcard, we are going to continue. So when you’ve rotated your pictures, give it a borderline by selecting a picture border color; this way you will be able to view the borders of your layout.

You can now see that there’s a space between the two layouts. So what we are going to do is, we are going to select the second layout and then we are going to give it a Text Wrapping; click on ‘Behind Text’.

Now you can place the two layouts close to each other without any space; use your arrow key ‘↑’ to get the layout a bit up.

Now choose for ‘No outline’ cause you don’t want to see the line between the two layouts and then insert a line shape instead at the top and bottom of your postcard, this way you’ll know where you should be cutting your postcard.

To insert a line, go to ‘Insert’, ‘Shapes’, then click on ‘Line’ and draw your line by holding your mouse in. Now you can print out your postcard.

This is the front cover of my postcard.

The back of my postcard.

You can also decorate the inside of your postcard if you like. There are endless ways from which you can choose to decorate your postcard. You could for example also have created another layout for the inside or you could use cut-outs and or other decoration items. As a little girl I would love cutting out shapes and pictures from magazines and decorating my diary with them. I’ve chosen for this option this time to decorate the inside, cause I love reusing materials.  You could also try this out when it’s for personal use. I’ve cut out a light-up penguin pal from the inside of an Avon brochure cover which isn’t valid anymore and I’ve glued it on the inside of my postcard. I’ve also stuck some glitter stickers on the side of the penguin and I glued a piece of red lace on the other side. This is how the inside of my postcard looks like.

The only thing missing is a handwritten message and I can do it in the post. I also have created my own envelope; maybe I’ll explain next time how I created my envelope.

I have something special for you guys this week! Everyone visiting my blog gets a free gift. You can download your full of spunk quick pages from this link: Sorry, link has expired. Check out my newest post for new freebies. . You have the time till Tuesday to download your free gift. Have fun creating your layouts with them!!!

I’m going to polish my nails now.

Till next week,
XOXO

How to use My Memories Suite Quick Pages in Microsoft Word

Hey everyone!
I’m back to continue with my tutorial in how to work with My Memories Suite Quick Pages in Microsoft Word and how to save the Quick Pages made up in Word in a .jpg format. The last thing I had explained in my previous tutorial was how you can place a Word Art on the zipper pull. You can also maybe place a picture on the zipper pull. There are a lot of creative things you can do with these Quick Pages. So if you want to place a picture on the zipper pull, first open a new blank Microsoft document, and insert your picture the way I had described in the previous post. You can also insert a picture in your blank document by going in the file where you have saved your picture, then right click on the picture without opening it and choose for the ‘Copy’ option. Come back to your blank Microsoft Word document, then right click on the blank page and choose for the option ‘Paste’. So now you have your picture on the blank page.

The second step is to change the shape of the picture. You can choose from a lot of shapes, like you can give your picture the shape of a sun, a cloud etc. I’m going to choose for the ‘Oval’ shape cause the zipper pull has an oval shape. Make the picture smaller by pushing the little circles at the corners. Now right click and choose for the option ‘Copy’. You now have to get this picture in your previously saved document. So open that document, then right click and choose for the option ‘Paste’.

 

You now have your oval shaped picture on your page together with your Quick Pages. Click on the oval shaped picture, then click on the red ‘Picture Tools’ tab at the top. You can now change your Text Wrapping. Choose for the option ‘Behind Text’ from the Text Wrapping pull down menu.

 

I want my Word Art on top of my picture so I’m going to drag it somewhere on top of my page. The oval shaped picture is still too big and it needs to be stretched out in order to get the zipper pull shape. Give the picture the angle of the zipper pull in the way done previously by rotating the oval shaped picture. You can zoom in a little bit to get a closer look. Just move the zoom tuner, at the bottom, to the right; you will see that the percentage will go up. So this is what you will get.

Now right click on your Word Art and choose for the option ‘Order’ and then click on ‘Bring to Front’. You can now drag your Word Art on top of your picture. You can also change the shape of your Word Art if you like. Simply click on the ‘Change WordArt shape’ tab (on the little triangle of a blue ‘A’ that you will see if you click on your Word Art tab), and choose for a shape. I’ve chosen for ‘Arch Down (Curve)’.

I want my Word Art a little bit brighter so I’m going to choose for a brightness of +10% for my oval shaped picture, then I’m giving my Word Art a shadow and I’m going to outline the Word Art with a dark blue color. This is what I am getting.

This week, the pictures on my blog are clearer, cause I’ve used my My Memories Suite software to resize them.;) Now I want to be able to mail the picture I’ve made up or to be able to place it on Facebook or whatsoever. So what you should do now is to press together your ‘Alt’ and ‘Print Screen’ tab on you keyboard. The next step is to open a blank page in Paint. I think that you guys know how to open a blank page in Paint. I’ll give you one of the options how to open a blank page in Paint. Click on ‘Start’, then go to ‘All Programs’, then go to ‘Accessories’ and then click on the ‘Paint’ option. So you will now get a blank page in Paint. Now click on ‘Edit’ and choose for the option ‘Paste’. You will see your whole Word Screen in Paint now. Save this Word Screen in Paint.

Now for the final step; go to the location where you have saved your Paint document and right click, then go to ‘Open With’ and choose for the option ‘Microsoft Office Picture Manager’. We are now going to crop those areas that we don’t want in our picture to be shown. Click on ‘Picture’ in your ‘Microsoft Office Picture Manager’ and choose for the option ‘Crop…’. You will get a crop toolbar on the right.

Move your picture borders inside with your mouse held in to crop those areas that are not needed. This is what you will get; you can see that the black corners and the black small lines in the middle have moved.

Now click on ‘OK’ on the side bar and save your modified document by clicking on ‘File’ and then on ‘Save’. Your picture is ready to be shared with friends and family!!! This is what I finally got.;)

Although no one has participated in my Quick Pages giveaway this time, I have my winners for this week!!! This is the pack that the winners Meenu and Francesca have received because they had participated in my My Memories Suite V2 software giveaway on my blog CREATIVE D-ZINE and I don’t want to leave the participants of my software giveaway empty-handed. Do participate next time everyone! You can use all your creative ideas to work with the 2 Quick Pages of my giveaway.

This is something I’ve created with the My Memories Suite software using pictures I had taken in our garden and using some items from this software. The cupcake paper is from the free kit ‘This is My Day!’, and the background is from the free kit ‘Honeycomb Solids’. If you purchase this software, you can download all the free kits at http://www.mymemories.com/. Use the coupon code STMMMS35043 to get a 25% discount on your MMS software.;)

Ciaoooo everyone!!! Come and get your new Freebies out here next week!;)