Catherine here with one of my favorite hacks for using Paislee Press designs in a photo book. If you’re new to digital scrapbooking or interested in creating photo books, this one’s for you!

When I started learning how to use digital scrapbooking products back in 2011, I remember there being a pretty steep learning curve.

But once I got the hang of what this was all about, I realized how easy it was to incorporate Liz’s beautiful designs in lots of projects beyond just the Project Life album I was creating to document our son’s first year.

In addition to using Liz’s designs in my pocket page albums, I like to use digital papers to break up a photo book into sections or add “title” pages throughout the book.

These images are from a photo book I designed years ago with the dowtime papers. You can see more of the original project here.

Scroll down for the step-by-step.

One / Find your papers

Start in the Paislee Press shop and click on the “paper packs” link at the top of the shop.

Scroll through all of Liz’s gorgeous paper packs (seriously don’t know how she does this!) and try to make a decision about which you’ll use for this particular project.

I stick with one per photo book, since they all come with lots of coordinating papers. It keeps the project looking cohesive and provides the photo book with a design theme.

Also, then you only end up spending a few dollars to add gorgeous patterned pages to your photo book.

For this project I went with the Love Story paper pack.

Two / Purchase and download

Choose your paper pack, add it to your cart, and purchase it through the Lilypad shop with Paypal or a credit card.

You’ll instantly receive an email with a download link. The instructions are so easy and intuitive. Follow the link and download the zip file.

Once your paper pack is downloaded to your computer, you’ll have to double-click to unzip it and a new file will appear with thirteen JPEG files, each of which is one of your patterned pages.

Three / Upload patterned papers to your project

No matter which photo book service you use (Shutterfly, Blurb, Artifact Uprising, etc), you should have an option to add photos to your project.

With Artifact Uprising, I can create folders of photos on their site, so I just add a folder for this project titled “papers” so they’re easy for me to find.

Then I can add those papers to the project and play around with which patterns to use.

Four / Add your patterns to photo book pages

Each photo book service is different, but with this one I have a pretty limited number of layout options. No worries. I can play around with the layouts and patterns to find what works.

I’ll say that with most of the patterns, it also works to repeat the pattern on two pages. You can include a little white space or none at all.

I also like adding some kind of a title to a patterned page.

The bottom line is that these files are just JPEGs, exactly the same file type as the photos you’re capturing on your phone.

So feel free to play with them in your projects in the same way you play with your photos!

Do you have any digital or hybrid design hacks in your back pocket? I’d love to hear your favorites in the comments!

You can find more of my work over on my website. And I’d love for your to take my free phone photography workshop if you haven’t already! Sign up here and you’ll get instant access.

I’m also over on Instagram and Pinterest. Come say hi!

xo,

Catherine

Products used: dowtime papers, Love Story paper pack, Artifact Uprising photo book editing.