Using Overlay Stamps Tutorial and other Goodies

Yesterday I posted a tutorial for how to make four layouts on one page.  There are several reasons you might want to do this: cost savings on printing,  you wish to make 6 X 6 pages to fit in an album, or you wish to make A4 size layouts that you can mount on a card or cardstock base.

Today I am going to show a few tips I have discovered as I made these four layouts.  Especially how to use overlay stamps as several have asked me how to work with these tools.

TIP:  When you purchase the Vintage Overlay set they appear in two places.  Both in the "Stamps" section and in the "Designer Kits" under Designer Series Paper.  I prefer to use these as stamps rather than designer paper for several reasons.  First, you can not change the color of the overlays in the DSP section (At least not that I have been able to figure out)  They are a grayish color and you can reduce the opacity but they cover the entire layer behind it.  In other words it blocks out any paper or embellishments behind it unless the opacity is reduced.  Second, you can easily change the size of stamps to fit your layout.

Isn't the background paper just lovely?  It called Summertime Splendor - a just released set of Stampin" UP! digital DSP.  I chose four of the papers to work with for this project. Refer to yesterday's tutorial of how I got to this point.

Step by step for the orange layout:

1.  Add a photo box and photo.  Use the photo effects button to change the photo to sepia.
2. Add a mat.  Using the color picker choose a dark orange from the flower on the DSP.
3. Add the text.  Using the color match button choose a medium orange from the flower.
4.  Browse the stamps for the Define Your Life set.  Use the Choose Color button just above the Browse button- choose the color picker and choose a lighter orange for the stamps.  Add the now colored "because" stamp to the bottom right of the page.
5.  Browse the stamps for the Presto Patterns Overlay stamps. Use the Chose Color button and color picker to choose a medium orange from the background paper.  Double click to add the stamp.  Double click again to bring up the "object settings" screen.

 6. Make sure to keep the "Keep Proportions" button checked.  Change the width to 300 and press return.  This will change the height to the correct size.

TIP: The Overlays are sized for 12 X 12.  So to perfectly fit a 6 X 6 layout reduce the width by 50%.

7. Position overlay on top of layout.  I did not take a screen shot at this point but it would look like this with the other elements already in place.

8. Reduce the opacity to 20% or to desired level.
9.  Using Arrange - Order - Send Backward, send the overlay backward until it is under photo but still on top of the DSP.

This purple layout also uses an overlay stamp:

Step by Step (the DSP is already in place as shown above)
1. Add the photo box and photo.
2. Browse stamps for the Vintage Vogue stamp set.  Use the color picker to change the stamps to a dark purple from the DSP background.  Add the border stamp to the page and grab the corner to resize to fit the photo.  Use "copy and paste" to duplicate and "flip" to turn the border to fit.  Repeat for side borders.
3. Add text in a dark purple.
4. The "Once Upon a Time" stamp is from the stamp set by the same name.
5.  The overlay stamp is from the Presto Patterns Overlays as well.  Reduce size of the stamp by 50% as shown above. I did not reduce the opacity on this layout as I liked the bold effect against the strong background.

Tomorrow I will show you how I made that really cool frame around the photo in the blue layout.