Geek Lab; Adding Text to Your Layout

November 6, 2014 by alizadeutsch 7 Comments

Hi everyone! It’s Aliza here with a layout, and some (hopefully helpful) tips to share with you for printing your journaling directly onto your layouts. I discovered pretty early on in my scrapbooking career, that I do not want my handwriting on my scrapbook pages. Yes, perhaps one day, some future descendant of mine would treasure my actual handwritten notes. But for me, I just don’t think it looks that pretty. So, I am always tinkering with ways to print onto tags, scraps of paper, and now that I have a large format printer, directly onto my layouts.

It’s a pretty straightforward and logical process, that takes just a bit of planning, measuring, and remembering not to add embellishments before running it through the printer. (I have made that mistake.)

I start by getting the basic design of my layout. In this photo, the four layers of patterned paper are attached together, while the photo and smaller layers can still be moved around.

Once I had everything placed where I wanted them, I took some careful measurements. Then I measured again. And again, just be on the safe side. (Let’s just say, that mistakes have been made in the past.) I wanted my text to line up with the hexagon patterned vellum behind my photos. I measured from the left edge of the paper, to where the text would begin. I also measured how long the text box would be.

Then I measured from the top edge of the page.

In Photoshop Elements, I created a blank 12×12 document, and dragged some grid lines to where my text would go on the layout. In this case, it was 2.5 inches from the left, and 6.75 inches from the top of the page. To fully justify the text (to have the writing flush on the right and left margins) I typed ctrl+shift+j.

I printed out a test copy on a piece of scrap white paper, (I use the 12×12 sheets that sometimes come inside of sheet protectors) to make sure everything printed where I thought it would, and it would all fit in the allotted space.

Once it was all looking copacetic, it was time to run the actual layout through the printer, during which time I always say a little prayer that all will work out as planned. Once the text was printed without any mishaps, I was free to add my embellishments, and layer it up to my heart’s content.

 

Thanks so much for stopping by!