Tutorial 6: How to create your own calendar

I have a New Year’s gift for you guys this time! Everyone visiting my blog gets a special Quick Page. Don’t forget to unzip your Quick Page when saving it. This freebie can be used in any software.
Here’s the link for everyone to download this freebie:
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You can add a picture with some text on this layout, then print your layout out and insert it in a blank 11 x 8.5” album. Follow my previous tutorial if you need help creating your album. It’s also possible to let the creator print and bind the perfect album for you in this size!!!

This is a finished sample from Liz Gardner from My Memories Suite.

What I am going to do today is, I’m going to show you guys how you can create your own calendar using this Quick Page. So start by opening your My Memories Suite Software. Choose the option ‘Create Album From Designer Template’. Now choose for an 11 x 8.5” album. I am just going to pick a Casual template. Click on ‘Next’.  We only need one page, so delete the rest of the pages by holding your control key in and selecting all the pages leaving just one; press the remove button when you’ve selected the pages.

Your pages have been removed, leaving only one page. Click on ‘Next’.

The ‘Pick and Click’ option is selected, so click on ‘Next’. You can change your album location and name if you want; I’m just going to leave it the way it is and I’m going to click on ‘Finish’.

My album with only one page has opened.

We don’t need the photo and text boxes, so select all the photo and text boxes, right click and choose for the option ‘Delete’. You can select the boxes one by one or you can use a window selection to delete all the items on your page. The window selection is done this way: place you arrow cursor at the upper right of your page, then hold your mouse in and draw a window to the bottom left of your page. The opposite can also be done to select all the items; this mean drawing a window from the upper left corner to the bottom right corner. All the items are now selected, so right click to delete them.

Now we have a completely blank page.

Now click on ‘Embellishments’à ‘Add’à ‘Browse other…’ and then go to the file where you have saved your Quick Page. Select the Quick Page and then click on ‘OK’ and then on ‘Close’.

We now have our Quick Page inserted on our blank page.

I’m going to add a calendar grid which I had downloaded from the free kits at http://www.mymemories.com/ . You can download it, if you haven’t done it yet, but you can also skip this step if you want. Go to ‘Embellishments’ and insert one of the calendar grids. My grids are too big, so I’m going to make it smaller. Simply drag the grids to the left or right so you can see the handles and make it smaller with the handles.

My Grids now have the width of the window on my layout.

Now click on the ‘Calendars’ tab on your Control Panel, then click on the ‘Add Month’ button. January 2012 appears automatically and you have your calendar on your page. I haven’t selected the ‘Lines’ function, because I already have grids. If you aren’t using grids you an also select ‘Lines’ to have lines between the dates.

We need to move the calendar onto the grids and make it a bit bigger with the handles. Stretch it a bit out to get the dates on the grids. Use the ‘Lock Object’ function to select the grids if needed.

Now right click and send the grids to the back. My dates are on the embellishments of my QP which doesn’t look nice, so I’m going to stretch in the grids and the calendar dates a little bit. If you make a mistake, you can simply click on the ‘Undo’ button.

I’m going to place a background for the window area of my layout. I’m doing this by using a ribbon. Click on ‘Embellishments’ à ‘Add’ à ‘Ribbons’ à ‘Plain Ribbon’ and then choose for the color ‘Bubblegum’ and then click on ‘Apply’ and then on ‘Close’.

We now have a ribbon on our page. Stretch it in and out and make it big enough to get the white area covered. Right click and send it to the back.

We now only need to personalize our layout a little bit. I’m going to add a picture of me and my cousins and nephew and some text and Word Art. The 2012 buttons are embellishments from the ‘Heritage Pack’; it costs only $0.99 at http://www.mymemories.com/; you can also use a Word Art or Text if you prefer.  I’m going to show you some other time how you can let your text follow a shape.

I’m going to do one last thing; I’m going to change the font of my calendar dates. Double click on your calendar dates; you will get a ‘Calendar Settings’ window. You can change your font, size, color and opacity of your header, lines and number. I’m only going to change the size of my header and numbers. The two Style buttons are for Bold (1^st button) and Italic (2^nd button). You may need to move the calendar dates a little bit.

Tada!!! This is my January Calendar page!

For your February page, right click on your thumbnail of your January page and choose for the option ‘Insert Duplicate Page’. So now you have a duplicated page. Change your text, Word Art and Picture. You can change the calendar dates by selecting the January calendar dates and changing the month on your Calendar tab on your Control Panel into February; your have your February calendar page ready in just one click.;) Here’s my February page!!! You guys complete the other pages in the same way.;) The pictures out here on my blog are not that clear because I have to resize them to be able to place it out here, but the picture quality actually is very good when you print it out and of course that’s the case when your picture itself is of good quality.;)

I think that you definitely want one of your own created calendars now, if you haven’t purchased this software yet. You can get a $10 discount using the code STMMMS35043 to purchase your My Memories Suite Version 3 software.;) If there are any questions you can place them on the comment section of this blog post. This week’s Quick Page was created with the content from my giveaway freebies, which I am giving away next week, so leave your name or nickname together with your e-mail address in the comment section if you want to participate in next week’s Quick Pages giveaway!

Love you guys,
Sharda

Tutorial 2: How to insert embellishments into your album

Hey everyone!


I’m back! Well, the special news is, as some of you may know, that a newer version of My Memories Suite has arrived! In version 3, you will find everything you received in version 2 plus lots more album templates, papers, embellishments etc., so you can choose from thousands of items to work with and to create something unique and of your own. On the control panel you will find two new tabs: the ‘Imprints’ tab and the ‘Calendars’ tab.
Use my discount code: STMMMS35043 to get your discount on this software!!!
I’m going to continue with my previous tutorial. So you have to open your My Memories Suite software by double clicking on the MMS icon or by clicking on ‘start’ and then clicking on ‘My Memories Suite’. It may take a moment for your MMS program to open.

Your ‘New Album Options’ window will open, and because I’m going to work further with the album I was working on previously, I’m going to click on the thumbnail of my Jingle Bell album which is one of my five ‘Recent Albums’.

So now your album has opened.

You can zoom in or out to get a better look at your page or page elements. I’m going to click twice on the '-' tab to zoom my page out to 50%.You can also click on the Caron sign 'ˇ' next to the zoom percentage to choose a zoom option.

The left corner of my page looks a bit empty, so I want to add an embellishment to this corner. There are two options how you can add your embellishment: you can click on the ‘Embellishments’ tab from your ‘Control Panel’ on the right of your screen or you can click on the embellishments tab (the flower) from your ‘Resource Gallery’ on the left of your screen. I’m going to start by clicking on my ‘Embellishments’ tab from my ‘Control Panel’ to show you how it’s done from here. Your embellishment options will open up when you click on your ‘Embellishments’ tab. Click on ‘Add’.

You will now get your ‘Choose Embellishment’ window from where you can choose an embellishment. What you see on the left of this window is that all the embellishments are categorized, so this way it’s easy to find an embellishment.

I’m going to click on the ‘+’ of my purchased items. I can now choose from the items that are again categorized. I want a Christmas embellishment, so I’m going to click on the ‘+’ tab of ‘Christmas’, which is once again categorized. I’m going to choose for ‘A Gift for You’, which comes with the My Memories Suite V3 software. I love playing with embellishments and imprints. I’ll talk some other time about the imprints. So now I’m going to click on ‘Deer’ next, and I can now choose from three deers. I’m going to click on ‘Deer 2’ of the ‘Preview’ and then click on ‘Apply’ and then on ‘Close’.

I now have my chosen deer on my page, but it’s not where I want it to be. So I’m going to drag it to the place I want it to be with my mouse held in.

At the right on the ‘Control Panel’, you see all the options for your embellishment. You can give your embellishment a ‘Shadow’, ‘Mirror’ it, ‘Flip’ it, ‘Rotate’ it or change your ‘Opacity’. What I am about to do is to mirror my embellishment and change the opacity to make it matching with the grey on my page. To mirror it, simply click on the ‘Mirror’ tab, and to change the ‘Opacity’ value scroll to the left or type your opacity value and hit your ‘Enter’ key. I’m changing my opacity to 40. You can drag your embellishment again to have it exactly where you want it to be if you’re not satisfied. This is what I got.

You can click on your ‘Embellishments’ tab on your ‘Control Panel’ to hide all the options if you want to work with some other tab.

When you click on the embellishments tab from your ‘Resource Gallery’, you will get a better and bigger view of the embellishments. I recently worked with deer, that’s why I will get a view of all the deers. If I want to place another deer, I can double click on the image of the embellishment to get it on my page. By clicking on the ‘Select Category’ tab, you will find all the categories from which you can choose in the same way as from your control panel.

 I can hide my ‘Resource Gallery’ to get a better view of my page by clicking on the left-pointing double angle quotation ‘«’

What you also may have noticed is that the borders of your page are grey; this is the area that will be cropped when you print your album, so keep in mind that you don’t place embellishments and text that you want to be shown, in this area. When you are going to export you album to a JPEG file for example, and are not intending to print it out, you can place your text, embellishment(s) or imprint(s) in this area, cause they will appear normally on your JPEG file. If you don’t want the crop area to be shown, click on ‘View’, then go to ‘Guides’ and click on ‘Trim area-large photo album’ which is active, to make it inactive. So now you don’t see the grey border. If you are to print your album it’s better to leave the grey area or make your trim area active if it’s inactive.

That’s it for today’s tutorial!

This is something I had created with the pack from previous week. The green background is actually from this week’s giveaway pack. Featuring on the picture are Indian actor Gurmeet Choudhary and his wife, and the quote in hindi is from the Indian actress Priyanka Chopra.:D The quote says: “Don’t look at how many moments there are left in one’s life, but look at how much life there is in each moment”.

As no one has participated in this week’s giveaway, this pack is completely mine!!! I really love this pack!

I will be offering scrapbooking Freebies regularly, so you can start with your album for photo books, printing or online viewing by using them!

Do leave your name and e-mail in the comment section of this blog post for a chance to win the next set of Quick Pages next week!

Hugs and kisses,
Sharda