Play Ball!

As mentioned, I'm playing along with Shimelle's challenges this week.  This layout was in response to the Bingo Cards & Butterfiles JBS challenge.  I should note there are neither bingo cards or butterflies, but the challenge was actually to take one of the elements she demonstrates in the video and use it in a layout.  I REALLY wanted to do a page with a photo strip, but I have no photo strips.  I "could" make one by cropping photos and putting them behind a photo strip shape, like say, here with these scraps:

Thing is, it is quite a bit of work and I didn't have any photos that I could think of that would really work at that size and were already printed.  (Did I mention it was 10pm?  Right)... Anyway, then I remembered that I had printed out a bunch of iPhone pictures that, when cropped were about 2.5 inches square.  Perfect!

I also used the painted square mat, trio of embellishments, and mixed alphabets for the title. (Note-- yes, several pictures on my layout were taken with different aps and have different filters applied.  No, this bothers me not at all.  Photostrips often have some great and some not so great pictures and this seems to work with that vibe.)

Quick page and a great memory of a fun baseball game on the hottest day in OK since 1936!

For those that are interested here is a quick tutorial explaining how to print your iPhone pictures this way:

Here is what I do:

• download onto your computer (and remember where you put them!!)
• Open Picasa (dowload version)
• Pick 8 that you like, select them by pressing ctrl+h when viewing each
• Click "collage" on the bottom strip of picasa.
• Once in the collage tool, you will need to select a size - for 2.5x2.5 pick 5x7 -- Yes, you get 8 prints on just one 5x7 (do the math, it works).
• If you want, you can increase the white space between photos using the little range bar, just above the "size" options.
• Look near the bottom and click "make collage."  This will take a couple minutes, but it will let you know when it is finished and make sure you pay attention to where it puts your collages. (For me, it is Pictures/picasa/collages)

There you are! Ok, shortly there after I learned there is a cool app for iPhone called PostalPix.  It allows you to print 4x4 photos directly from your phone without all that uploading, jazz. Granted I think it is only individual photos, but so handy.