skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Even though Studio J® is fast and easy to use, it is helpful to know some great tricks that can make customizing your layouts even more exciting. Here are some Studio J tricks straight from our professional Close To My Heart artists:
1. Customize your background and texture paper. You can change the color and intensity of the background and texture paper included in whichever kit you choose. Simply select the piece of background and texture paper, change the color in the color selection tool, and increase or decrease the intensity of the color in that same popup box.
2. Crop My Stickease® quotes, titles, and tags. The cropping feature on the My Stickease images allows you to select a section of a quote, title, or tag to use as a border or other embellishment.
3. Create a customized My Stickease image. If you have a specific image in mind to use as an embellishment on your page, you can create a customized My Stickease to fit your theme perfectly. Simply add a text box, photo hanger, ribbon, ribbon slides, and Stickease to create the little suitcase! So easy! Be sure to crop or send elements behind other elements when necessary, and add several elements together for a unique look!
4. Select more than one element at a time. If you want to move several elements of your layout at once, simply click and drag your mouse around the elements you would like to select. Let’s take buttons, for example. After the buttons have been selected, you can click the icons in the popup box to choose to align the buttons vertically or horizontally if you desire.
5. Make faux washi tape with vellum text boxes. To create the look of a piece of clear washi tape, make a small rectangular text box, filled with vellum background (this is the default color for text boxes). You can make the tape strips as large or small as you want, or even layer them for more emphasis.
6. Stretch one photo across multiple photo wells. If you have fewer photos than photo wells, instead of deleting the excess wells, try scaling the picture to a larger size and then copying the picture to other photo wells and matching the photos up until they align with an almost seamless image. This trick works best with photo wells that are adjacent to each other.
7. Create ruffled ribbon. Select “Ribbons” in the drop-down menu under the Embellishments toolset. Choose ribbon tab and rotate the tab so that it is vertical on the page. Then layer several tabs on top of one another, sending every other one to the back to create a ruffled look.
8. Create a jagged border with text boxes. You can create a jagged border simply by rotating multiple text boxes about 45 degrees and making them the same color as the background. Put these boxes on top of a long, rectangular box of another color, and you’ve got a jagged border!
9. Change the background of your layout. Sometimes you may like the photo and journal arrangement in a layout, and yet want to change the background colors. Because photos sit on top of everything else, this is easy to do. Simply pull a journaling box over the space you want for a different background and fill it with a color from the color selection tool or a patterned paper from the Papers toolset. Then, send it backwards until the photo wells are on top of your new background.
Bonus Trick! Use keyboard keys to make embellishments. Did you know that some of the best tools for creating custom embellishments are the basic keys on your keyboard? It’s as simple as typing into a journaling box with no background color. Use periods to make a polka dot pattern, angle brackets to create a trendy Chevron look, overlapping pound signs to make burlap, question marks to make rope, and so much more!
October is the perfect month to give these Studio J hints a go because for every 9 layouts you create, you’ll get a 10th layout for FREE!
Here is the third and last card for my October classes.
I LOVE the La Belle Vie paper pack and just had to make a Christmas Card with it. I tried to keep it simple because it is a class card. But OH, the possibilities of this paper and this stamp set.
The glittery strip at the bottom is from the CTMH Silver Shimmer Trim.
I cut the ornament using the NEW Cricut Cartridge "Artiste", and stamped with the coordinating ornament stamp. I added a small piece of the silver Shimmer trim to the hanger portion of the ornament.
I just happened to have a roll of this mauve ribbon in my stash that seems to match perfectly in real life. Looks awful in the picture though.
Here is the second card for my classes this month using the October SOTM, Very Merry Christmas
This card was made using retired "Lucky" Paper along with some Pacifica Cardstock that I used an embossing folder on and then sanded.
The mittens were stamped with Sky ink, cut out and sponged with Pacifica. I applied liquid applique to the tops and puffed it with my heat gun. I then added glitter for extra sparkle.
The tag the mittens are layered on was cut using the NEW Artiste Cricut cartridge then used a snowflake embossing folder and sponged the edges with sky ink.
I just thought I needed to throw a gift tag in the mix of cards for my classes.
I thought this just turned out so cute. I think I need to make a bunch of these for my daughter. She has a habit of calling me at night saying she needs tags by the morning. I guess that's my fault for falsely passing myself off as Super Mom when she was younger.
Here is a cute gift tag made using the October Stamp of the Month, Very Merry Christmas. I cut both layers with the Cricut Artiste Cartridge. I attached the two parts together only at the top and stamped the to: & from: on the inside.
I also used the NEW CTMH Cranberry Alcohol Ink Marker to color in the red on the tree.
Inside
I'm a little late getting my October workshop cards posted, but here they are. The first one is a Money or Gift card holder. I posted one for the blog hop, however, I threw that together in a hurry and wasn't 100% pleased with it. So, here is the one I'm using for my classes this month.
The card, ornaments and tags were all cut form the NEW Close to my Heart exclusive Cricut cartridge, Artiste. The paper pack I used is called Pear & Partridge. The stamp set is called Very Merry Christmas. The Bakers Twine is from the Harvest Assortment. The Close to my Heart twine is thicker and a much better quality then any other I have tried previously. It's beautiful to work with.
Inside
