1. Create a Comparison Chart
Decide who or what you want to compare, choose your own categories, and set up a simple chart! For example, let's say you want to compare and contrast your children. Your columns
could read: Best Athlete, Smartest, Prettiest, Mommy's Favorite, Daddy's
Favorite,
etc. Because nothing's more fun than good, old-fashioned sibling rivalry, right? I say instill it in them when they are really young.
For this layout, I came up with 40 fairly neutral categories that describe the three Hill sisters' physical and personality traits, including several inside jokes and allusions to fun memories. (Note: It's perfectly okay to include photo outtakes on your layouts, especially if they're really funny. Yes, if there's one trait the Hill girls all have in common, it would be our extremely expressive faces.)
Tip: Use the Table function in Microsoft Word to set up your chart. It's quick and easy. I created my original chart this way, but when I showed the finished layout to one of my sisters, she was offended by one of the comparisons. (I honestly did NOT know that was her high school nickname!) So before publishing it on my blog, I recreated the chart (I had failed to save a copy of the old one), making sure to edit out the offending phrase. The chart you see now was created in InDesign, which I have access to because my husband is a graphic designer. Thanks Trav.
2. Describe Your Daily Life on a Journaling-only Layout.
Sit down and brainstorm all the things that you do every single day. Your list can be as random as you like. Think about your routines, your thought processes, things you say, things you hear, things you eat, people you see. Then either write your items on tags, or type your list into a Microsoft Word table, print your page, and cut out each individual box.
I created this layout a year and a half ago, in response to a challenge from a friend, and I'm so glad I did. My daily routine is very different now (for one thing, the alarm doesn't go off at 6:45 anymore!), and it's fun to see how much change just 19 months can bring.
Tip: I did blur out one item that I wasn't comfortable sharing with the world. And no, it was not at all related to item one, in case that's where your mind went (and I don't blame you if it is). Wondering how to do this before posting a layout on your blog? In Photoshop, use the selection tool to select the thing you'd like to blur, then click on Filter > Blur > Surface Blur, and set your Threshold quite high by dragging your slider bar. There you go, an extremely specialized and mostly useless Photoshop tip, from me to you.
3. Fill an entire paragraph with fragment sentences.
Forget about introductions, paragraph flow, and sentence transitions, and write a series of fragment sentences instead. This can be a huge time saver, not to mention a space saver, and there's absolutely nothing illegal about it! It's an informal writing style, and this is an informal setting (i.e., it's not a doctoral dissertation or an inaugural speech). Notice that, apart from my first and last sentences, every sentence shares almost the exact same structure, and they're all fragments.* This type of stylistic repetition gives the paragraph both unity and flow. You know what to expect as you read, and you quickly settle in to the pattern I've set up.
* What's a fragment? It's an incomplete sentence. For example, "Staring confidently into the camera," my third sentence, can't stand alone because it lacks a subject. Who is staring confidently into the camera? It doesn't say. Yes, the structure of the rest of the paragraph keeps you from being confused, but the sentence is still a fragment, even if you understand what it's trying to say.
Tip: For you grammar nerds out there, the fragment sentences I'm stringing together are called gerund phrases. In order to turn these phrases into complete sentences, I'd have to include a verb and an object: "Finishing five DVD segments in less than 3 hours was a worthy goal, but..." These gerund phrases could also turn into present participle phrases, but only if I'm using them to describe a subject, like so: "Finishing five DVD segments in less than 3 hours, Angie felt confident and ready to take on the rest of the day."
Wait, did she just say "less than 3 hours"? Shouldn't it be "fewer than 3 hours"? Nope. Read all about that topic here.
The three journaling approaches above, plus my lame Photoshop tip, represent a good portion of my digital scrapbooking savvy. I can do a bit of photo editing, and I know my way around a few desktop publishing programs, but I'm the furthest thing in the world from a true digi diva. I reserve that title for my friend Renee Pearson, who is now offering classes on her website!
The first one, “Just
the Basics, Ma’am," covers the following:
Introduction to Photoshop Elements
Using quickpages and layered templates
Creating quickpages and layered templates
Adding digital embellishments
Understanding brushes and layer masks
To celebrate the debut of her first class, Renee is offering a special $40 price through TODAY, JUNE 19. (Count on me to announce this when you only have 7 more hours to take advantage of the discount. Sorry!) Sample project images and video are available at reneepearson.com. The class starts June 25.
