Bugaboo's Wednesday Tutorial

Today is a day of first's! I start my new job today as an Outdoor Instructor. I haven't finished my course yet but am able to work around both which is great. It's also my turn to host the Bugaboo Tutorial this week! So what have I got for you? Well...

Are you fed up of having to cut out around images with all the fiddly bits? Well with Digi Images, there's no need. It is possible to put them straight onto some digi papers before printing. I'm going to show you how to create perfectly sized topper which will also save you ink as you will no longer need to print out entire sheets of papers.

So this is how I use Microsoft Publisher in my card making.

Firstly open up a blank page in Publisher:

From the task bar at the top, follow the path TABLE; INSERT; TABLE, and this menu should appear:

Change the number of ROWS to 1 and the number of COLUMNS to 1. Click OK and you should go back to your original page with a long slim rectangle. Move the rectangle up to the upper, right hand corner and use the rulers to adjust it to the size you want. For this tutorial I went for 10cm by 10cm to create a small square topper:

Now it’s time to fill the cell. Click on the cell to select it then RIGHT CLICK. Choose FORMAT TABLE and this dialogue box should appear:

You can use any of these options to fill the cell but I’m going to show you how I use digi papers. Choose the PICTURE option and it will take you to here:

Click on SELECT PICTURE and find the digi paper you want to use from the folders on your computer. I’m using a purple swirl paper from Pink Petticoat. The paper you’ve chosen will appear in the middle of the dialogue box. IMPORTANT, you must now click on the LOCK ASPECT RATIO box otherwise your digi paper will be squashed or stretched to fill your cell. Click OK:

And there we have it, one box of digi paper (no longer a need to print a whole page):

To layer on the Bugaboo image, follow the pathway INSERT; PICTURE; FROM FILE and choose the picture you want (I've gone with the Mad Hatter as I think it goes well with the swirls). Make sure you choose the PNG version. Move it to where you'd like it. In the pic below, I have shown you both versions (PNG on the left, JPG on the right). As you can see the JPG version has a white box surrounding it.

Now simply print, colour and add to your card.

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Layering Images

A few of my latest projects have involved layering images. Here's how I did it.

Again I opened Microsoft Publisher with a blank page. I inserted my PNG version of the Bee Bug Jar first as this is the image I want furthest back:

Next I inserted my Boy Bee image:

I then, simply shrunk him and moved him onto the jar. If you drag over both images, they both become selected and a small box will appear (you can just about see it in the pic):

If you click on this button, it will group the object into one and so you can treat it as a single image from now on. If you want to keep the aspect ratio the same then use the corner resizers whilst holding down SHIFT. What I really like about Publisher is the rulers on the sides. They are so useful for getting things the size I want.

Hope you liked the tutorial and found it useful. Feel free to ask any questions and I'll try to answer them (if I can!). If anyone would like some instructions for how to do this in Word, I have some I can e-mail to you. Just drop me a line and I'll do so.