Aaron's Graduation Pictures and My Digital Studio Tutorial - Four Layouts per Page

I just picked Aaron's graduation pictures up from the printer.  His senior pictures were somewhat of an adventure.  We had done a very fun camera shoot in our woods last fall.  The pictures were great and I had just downloaded them and was starting to do some editing when my computer crashed and I lost them!  I usually back up all my work on an external drive but I had not done so for a week or so when the crash happened.   Disappointing as the weather had turned nasty and all the pretty fall leaves were gone.  So we had to wait until spring --but spring took its own sweet time getting here this year.  We finally had a brief break in the weather and we were able to get some nice shots.  There are several more in the editing stage right now but we have these two done so we can send out the invitations for his openhouse.  Aaron and I have had a blast playing around with different editing techniques.  We make a good team!

Here is his openhouse invitation done on My Digital Studio:

It is made by designing in 1/4 of the screen then copy and pasting to the other three quadrants.  This is a 8-1/2 X 11 inch page making four individual invitations that are 4-1/4 x 5-1/2 that fit in A4 envelopes.

I was working on a similar project today using a 12 X 12 page to create four 6 X 6 layouts.  I have had some questions on how to do this so here is a tutorial.

1.  Start with Photo Album - 12 X 12 - Create your own- Blank Page.
2.  Turn off the Photo Page Bleed Area Guide
3. Add a Photo box and resize to 6 X 6 and position in the upper left corner.

4.  At this point you have two options.  If you are making 4 identical layouts as in the invitations above, work in this square to create your design.

Then group all elements together and copy and paste into the upper right quadrant.  Use the nudge arrows to tweak the position.

Copy and paste in the last two quadrants.

5. If you are making four separate layouts start as before with a photo box in the upper left corner.

6.  Copy and paste the photo box and position as shown.

7.  Copy and paste two more photo boxes and carefully position into the remaining quadrants.  (It helps to see the alignment of these boxes before adding designed paper and elements)

8.  Add paper to each photo box.

9.  Use the zoom function to enlarge the area to work on each 6 X 6 section at a time.

These pages can then be printed individually and cut apart to make four separate pages.  I had the invitations professionally printed through SU.  The paper that the individual pages are printed on is different from that of the calendars and cards.  The cards and calendars are quite heavy cardstock, while the individual pages are fairly thin and would work well with page protectors.  I have had a number of individual pages in both 8-1/2 X 11 and 12 X 12 sizes printed through SU and each was printed all the way to the edge and nothing was cropped from the bleed area.  If you are doing bound albums or calendars however you do need to be aware of the "bleed area" as these are cropped in the binding process.

I will have tutorials on how I did the individual layouts above as there were some nifty little tricks I discovered so be sure to check back.