Welcome to this weeks 3 Kits 3 Ways Challenge!

The Designer Digitals Store is chock full of wonderful products to choose from . . . it is so hard to just pick three each week, but so easy to find exactly what I’m looking for once my mind is made up.  This store literally has everything we could possibly need in the way of digital products!  Debi, Bailey and I will use the three challenge kits in three very different ways . . . so here we go with the 3 Kits!

The first kit is LIfe and LIberty Solids from Jesse Edwards

Next is Sweet and Salty Icons from MIndy Terasawa

And, finally we have Katie’s Rounded Corner Clipping Masks No. 01.

For our 3 Ways this week we will begin with Debi ( Beehive50) and her simple and fun layout featuring Debi’s favorite subject . . . Soccer!  Debi is our purist this week and used only the three challenge kits.  Don’t you just love this fun page?

Bailey’s (Starlight9711) layout is all about a fun summer day with the family!  I love these rounded corner masks and love how Bailey used so many of them to set off her photos so perfectly!  Bailey these extras:  Word Strip Labels No. 04, Staple Its! Clusters, Travel Word Transfers No. 02 & Jelly Alpha No. 13.

My (readstoomuch) layout was made using a photograph of our youngest grandchild at the beach on her first birthday. 

I used these extras:  Bead Scatterings,  Birthday Zoobilee Kit,  CurvyCorner Stitched Blocks No. 01, Dorothy Collection,  Evie Kit,  Hello Summer Hand Drawn Brushes,  Nana’s Buttons, Notebook Paper Page Masks,  Painted Text No. 01,  Stamped Stitched: Summer Brushes,  Stitched by Anna Borders Ice Blue No. 01,  Vintage Flashcards: Summer &  Worth Repeating Expressions No. 05.

I hope that you love these kits just as much as Debi, Bailey and I do . . . and I hope to see the layouts that you create with them in the 3 Kits 3 Ways Gallery here at Designer Digitals.  Merrilee and I are teammates for this challenge and we love checking the gallery to see just what you have come up with each week.  For your layouts you need to use only the three challenge kits and any other DD products that you need want to use.

One way to tell the story of a page is to write actual conversation.  We know that when the mind reads conversation in print it is responds as though the talk were real.  That’s why these pages seems so immediate and so engaging. It’s like you are actually IN conversation.

There are lots of approaches to the method.  And it is important to remember that our one or two page format is tight and limited.  You can’t cover an in-depth subject but you can sometimes plant the questions or curiosities which will lead to an ongoing conversation in the mind of your reader. When you plan a page around conversation, think carefully about the essentials… the tone and the content you want to convey. Don’t try to repeat every word which was said.  Just kraft the words to be truthful to the speaker and tight enough for the page.

I drew my first two examples of this style from the Creative Team Gallery. 

Myra is a master a reporting her son Jake’s insightful considerations of life and it’s ultimate meaning.  Her method is virtual story telling at it’s finest.  You can hear her voice, her son’s voice and the sweet harmony between them. This recent page is a good example of her style.

The Best Life Ever

Another way of using conversation in a page to great effect is what Cassie did here.  She writes this page a dialogue between herself and her son.  By addressing him directly from the page and then asking him a question she immediately engages the reader in an overheard chat about the nature of her son.  It’s a vivid way to make the page come to life. And if you know the Mom, there is her typical tongue-in-cheek, ironic humor here, too! 

Auto Pilot

Finally, here’s another way to use dialogue … a little chat I had with myself, or with my own inner voices, to be precise.  Just a record of my day, my current state of inner landscape but told as a conversation within. Sometimes I pretend I am my own psychologist and sometimes, it works!!

Right NOW, I’m Sailing

Think about how you can use dialogue to tell you story and give it a try. 

Please share your pages with this technique in our PageKraft Gallery  so that we can all learn from you and enjoy your work.

Congratulations to Melissa Hill. Her layout love you everyday has been selected as the featured layout of the week where she won a $ 5 DesignerDigitals Gift Certificate for product of her choice!

This week’s Adobe Photoshop or Elements tip of the week is now available on video. This weeks tip is on Grouping Photos Within a Circle in Photoshop and PSE.

Building up a scrapbook layout can be like a construction project. Building it up layer by layer so that even though it is a digital scrapbook page it has depth and a feeling of weight.

This week I have chosen a layout bykmatorina:

Doesn’t a helicopter ride in Alaska sound amazing? And this is an amazing page to remember it by, as well. I love how all those layers are built up, and how they all conect and overlap so they form one cohesive unit. None of them are left floating - and the page does not look cluttered. Lots of space left for the page to “breathe” plus a strong border to balance the weight of the cluster of photo and elements make this a really strong and eye-catching layout.

Maybe you’ll want to try your hand at lifting this great page, just as Jodi, Wendy and I did. Here’s what we came up with:

Credits: layout by Lynn, Travel Word Transfers , and LoopdaLoop Flowers No.01 by Anna Aspnes, Notepaper, and Painted Accents (coming soon) by Katie Pertiet, Battered Alpha No.02 and “Late Summer” mini-kit (coming soon) by Lynn Grieveson.

Credits: layout by Wendy, Glorious Days Paperpack (coming soon), Roughed Up notepaper paperpack, LoopdaLoop Flutterbys No.01, Notebook Edged Frames No.02, Stitched by Anna Red. No.01, Straightline Stitched Orange No.01, Grunged Up Photo Blocks , Alana Solids paperpack, Metal Monograms No.02, Vintage Storyboard frames No.02, Artsy Blooms No.01, Journeyh Grunge Strips, 2010 Alphabet tabs, Arsty Clocks No.02.

Credits: layout by Jodi, Kiana paperpack, Classci Curled Photoframes No.01, Stitched by Anna White No.05, Date Strips Stamps No.04, Basic Paper Alphabet: Orange, Dragon Trainer Element pack, My Family Geneaology Clipping No.03, Stitched by Anna Baby Blue No.01, Stitched by Anna Borers No.02, Stitched Labels, patterned brushes and stamps.