Not all of my photos and stories in my December Daily album will revolve around Christmas. My third story is one that does not, per say. But it does bring me lots of joy, so I guess that does embody the spirit of the season! I’ve adopted a row of strawberries at the University of Florida’s IFAS Gulf Coast Research and Education Center Center. The picking season has started and I love to share what I pick with friends and neighbors.
You can view Ali's blog post about her third story for the month here, as it may help to see how I reflected her physical layout into a digital page.
Story 3:
In Ali's spread she had a photo of her advent calendars shot on an angle. To replicate that on the left hand side of my page, I made a template with placeholders on the diagonal and clipped my photos into those placeholders. I gave some dimension to the "pleather" digital sticker by separating the text from it's background in Affinity Photo for iPad. Once separated I applied a bevel effect to that background. By doing this, it gives the illusion that the white text is embossed into the green background. I also added a stroke to the inside of the rectangle and applied the same effect. Once done, I merged the two layers and added a drop shadow.
The page on the right took a little more manipulation. If you look at Ali's page, she used a the 3x8 "Fa-la-la" Kraft Pocket. Here is what I did to mimic this pocket.
I placed the 4x6 Fa-la-la filler card from the main kit in the bottom half of the screen. In it’s original form it is red with light pink text. I put a white color overlay on it and changed the blend mode of that color overlay to "Hue." This desaturated the colors to a dark gray background with white text.
I then used the background kraft texture from the digital version of the 3x8 pockets, and enlarged it to fit in the bottom half of the page, making sure it is above the Fa-la-la card. I applied a layer adjustment of "lighter color" to let the white text from the card below it show through!
Just like I did in my first story, I applied a felt texture to the number 3. I used the red, digital enamel heart and gave it a little bit of dimension by adding a 3D effect to it. I made my own "a merry little christmas" label tape just by creating a black rectangle and using the Courier font for the text. I did decrease the tracking between the letters because Courier is a font that is spread out when you use it.
The "Holiday Memories" is actually from the December Daily 3x8 Shipping Tag set. I increased the size of it, extended the two black lines to the edges of the page and covered the hole at the top of the tag with the green diagonal strip of paper from one of Ali's previous collections (I don't think it was from a December Daily kit). This green diagonal strip represents the green and white ribbon she looped through the tag on her physical page.
Story 4:
I love our Friday Night Pizza tradition. We have three places in town where we usually order from and we rotate between each one. This week we had pizza from our friend's “permanent” pizza truck! You can view Ali's Story Four here.
Ali's fourth story layout was quite simple to replicate into a digital version. In Ali's layout, the page on the left was a photo of 3 cookies lined up in a vertical orientation. I represented that with three photos of the pizza truck and menu board. I added a transparency circle and typed in the name of the pizza place. The staple is one I created a few years back and I keep in in the December Daily stash to use over and over again.
For the page on the right, I believe Ali used some transparencies and sewed them together. I followed her lead with the transparent circles and "attached" them with my staple. The stitches around the "wonder of the season" circle are by Kristin AAgard Designs. I bought them off The Lilypad a few years ago. I am not sure if they are still available.
The entire background of this page is white. But to make it look like I have two pieces of paper stitched together, I made a white rectangle and placed it on the right side of the page and added a drop shadow to it, so it looks like there is one piece of white digital paper on top of another. I placed the Be Merry and Bright filler card to the top of that white rectangle and applied a drop shadow to it as well. Then I used a stitch brush from Katie Pertiet to "attach" the pieces to the white background (yes you can use install ABR files in Affinity Photo!).
The number 4 is the black chipboard number from the Main Kit. I added a 3D effect and drop shadow to give it dimension.
Thank you for taking the time to read! I'd love to hear any thoughts your may have!