A Few Lightroom Tips

It's no secret that I love Lightroom. Organizing my photos in Lightroom has literally changed my life - and I have to thank Kayla and her wonderful Finding Your Photo Flow class for turning me into a Lightroom convert. Thank you Kayla!

I'm getting pretty good and fast at using Lightroom on a daily basis to organize, edit, and print my photos. Each time I work with the program, I learn a little something extra to speed up my workflow.

One of the best tips I learned was from Kayla - it's a little feature called Auto-Advance. It's the way to make your workflow speed up to lightning-fast. Seriously.

As you go through purging and rating your photos, this setting will automatically advance you to the next photo. Sounds like a little thing, but it makes all the difference in the world as you're using those hotkeys to move through your photos. Kayla explains it all here and if you use Lightroom, you need to turn on this feature right now. You can thank me later.

Another thing making me very happy with Lightroom is the print template feature. I love creating and printing my own photo collages. To me, it's so much faster than working with clipping templates in Photoshop - and I end up with a single print with lots of photos that I printed at home. Plus all the settings for editing and printing are right there to adjust, which (in my mind) seems easier than the way you have to do it in Photoshop.

The one frustration I was having was adjusting the crop of my photos just right before placing it in the print template. I was never quite sure how to crop it before I went over to the Print panel, and then was frustrated when it didn't look quite like I wanted it to. So I'd re-crop my photo, then re-insert it into the print template. It was a cycle that quickly got old.

I need to adjust the crop on that middle photo..

I finally had an ah-ha moment when I realized Lightroom automatically re-loads your re-adjusted photo for you. (I'll insert a "Duh" here for myself.)

So you can re-crop your photo after you place it in your print template by going back to the Develop panel and adjusting the crop.

Adjusting the crop in the Develop panel

And voila... when you go back to the Print panel, your photo will be re-loaded with the new crop.

Lightroom has re-loaded the photo with the new crop

Love that I finally noticed this. (Don't love how long it took me to see it.) It's super helpful when you aren't sure what size you're going to want to print the photo until you see how it looks in your print template.

So, all in all, Lightroom is the best. I'm still working in Lightroom 3, which is fine for me - but I'm hoping to upgrade to version 4 soon. I hear it has a lot more features in the Print module, which sounds exciting to me.

Do you have a Lightroom tip to share? I'd love to hear it...

Baby Quilt

I made a quilt! It's the first one I've ever made - and I love how it turned out. I made this for my brother's baby girl and gave it to them as a baby shower gift. It matched their color scheme so well, even though it was just a mash-up of beautiful, crazy colors. So happy they like it!

It's an incredibly easy quilt pattern - the classic rag quilt. The front is smooth...

...and the back has all the seams, frayed to be super soft.

This quilt is super easy to make. Here's the directions in a nutshell:

1. Cut your squares of fabric and batting - mine were 6-inch squares, with the batting cut just a 1/2 inch smaller. Make your squares larger or smaller depending on how big you want the finished size to be.
2. Make little quilt sandwiches with a piece of batting in between two pieces of quilt fabric.
3. Sew an X from corner to corner on each sandwich. This is easier if you sew them in a continuous line, leaving just a tiny gap between each square. So, sew one line of the X for all your squares, then clip them apart, then sew the other line of the X for all your squares, then clip them apart again. (It will make sense when you start sewing.)
   
   

4. Lay out your squares in the order you want to the rows to be. Sew the squares together in long rows, keeping the seams to the same side.
5. Sew the rows together. This part get tricky because your quilt will get super bulky and you'll have to roll it up to fit it into your sewing machine. Just be patient (not something I'm good at!).
6. Edge the quilt with a double-line of stitching all the way around.
   
   
   
   
   
7. Clip the seams just up to the stitch line. Clip them about a 1/4" to 1/2" apart. Yes, ALL of the seams. This will take a long time and you might want to wear a glove to protect your hand. Use good scissors. Watch a movie while you're doing this because it will take a long time.
8. Wash the quilt at least once - you might want to do it twice. This is what will fray your clipped seams. Check your seams after the first wash to see how it looks. When you're happy with the fraying, put it in the dryer. This will fray it some more. You will have SO MUCH lint you will think you surely broke your dryer. Also, you and your clothes will be entirely covered in lint and thread. Go outside and shake everything off. You can also use a lint roller or brush to get more of the lint off.

That's it - your quilt is finished. You will love it even if it seems like you will never be clean of lint again.

One more time - isn't it lovely? I'm ready to make another one for our bedroom. How long will it take to make a king-size one? I'm sure I'll be ready to cut off my hand by the time it's done...

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Tutorial: Welded Titles with the Silhouette Machine

I just love creating welded titles with my Silhouette. It gives everything such a custom look. What is a welded title? It's where all the letters/numbers in a font/image are touching - so that when the Silhouette cuts it out, the letters are all attached as a single item.

Vacation Album Memorabilia Pocket
These folders hold brochures, tickets, and other items from our vacations. I labeled this one with a couple of welded titles and a background frame, all cut from the Silhouette. I welded the letters together so that each word was a giant sticker.

Fonts: Mr. and Mrs. Popsicle and Wish I Were Taller from Amanda's Free Scrapbook Fonts

Creating welded titles is one of the best features of the Silhouette. I love the look of a customized title with all the letters touching to form a single word or phrase. I struggled for a bit on how to do this quickly, so that the work of getting out my machine and the tools was worth the finished look of the project. So I practiced and practiced and practiced. (And got lots of advice my friend Brooks!)

So I put together this tutorial on how to weld letters from your fonts with your Silhouette. Give it a try!

1. Type your word in your Silhouette document.
   
2. Click Ctrl+U to ungroup each letter from the object. A light gray box appears around each letter.
   
   
   
3. Click off the word, then click the second letter of your word. Use your arrow keys to nudge it close to the first letter in your word. (Using the arrow keys is more precise than just dragging them around.)
   
   
   
4. Repeat the select/nudge process with each letter of your word until they are overlapping each other as much or as little as you want.
   
   
5. Once you have the letters in place as you want them, you need to weld the shape together. Holding down the Shift key, click each letter of your word.
   
   
6. Under the Modify window, click Weld.
   
   
7. See how your shape looks. Is everything connected? Click it and move it around. Does everything move together? If not, Ctrl-Z to undo that move and try the Weld process again. Sometimes it takes some fiddling around to get those skinny letters in place.
   
   

That's it - you're ready to cut! It's really pretty quick once you get the hang of it.

Once I cut out the titles, I like to use my Xyron machine to turn them into stickers. The full-back adhesive is great for those intricate little details and keeping everything stuck down where you want it.

How about a few more examples?

Birthday Folders
Here are a set of memorabilia folders I created to go in my boys' birthday scrapbook - to hold cards, etc., for each birthday. I created a welded title for the year for the front of each folder using the steps shown in the tutorial.

Font: Wish I Were Taller from Amanda's Free Scrapbook Fonts

Celebrations File and Card File
These file folder boxes house my handmade cards and a tickler file of the celebrations we keep track of during the year. I learned this system from Jen Mohler's Saving Your Sanity: Celebrations class at Big Picture Classes. Love that class!

Font: Minya Nouvelle from dafont.com

If you haven't tried to create welded titles with your Silhouette - give it a try. I so love making these customized titles! It's not hard to do and really makes your projects look so special. Share with us - what have you been creating with your Silhouette?

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