Using templates

[Breel]

Hi -

Can templates that are designed for 12x12 be converted to 8.5 x 11 size?

Thanks!
Lorna

[anxela]

You can do several things, I guess... You can shrink them and mount them onto 8.5x11 cardstock. But how well it works will probably depend on the template. You can also drag elements, frames, etc onto a 8.5x11 document if you want to. Do you have a specific template in mind?

You can also "crop" the template if you only want to cut off the edges a bit.

[earlofoxford]

And Cathy Zielske has a number of templates designed for 8.5x11 pages.

[Breel]

I have a lot of vacation pictures and I am making a photo book that is
8.5 x 11. I came across Lynn Grievesons "Lots of Shots" templates and thought they would be great to use for some of the pages. It appears that they are only available in 12 x12.

I could probably figure out some similar layouts on my own but since I am not very experienced with PSE and digital scrapbooking - it would probably take me awhile. I was looking at the templates to save time.

I started making my vacation/travel books in the 8x11 size and would like to keep the future ones the same size. It seems like the 12x12 size would be harder to store...

Thanks for you input. I do actually have a couple of Cathy Zielske's 8.5x11 templates... maybe I could utilize those.

Lorna

[anxela]

Cathy's The Monthly templates have a similar look...

[anxela]

You can also try Ali's Week in the Life: (Click link to get to all her Week in the life products, click image to get right to the template set)

[anxela]

Here are the previews for the 12x12 versions, I imagine there are similar versions in the 8.5x11 pack:

[anxela]

These might be tweaked as well..?

[Breel]

Oh my Heidi! Thank you so much for all of this information! I am going to get some of these today!

Ok - From what I have read... If I make a digital page in PSE and save it as a jpeg - then all I have to do is upload it to shutterfly as a full page photo - correct? Or should I load it as a "one photo" page and keep a border around it to prevent part of the page being trimmed off when printed? I think I read somewhere that if you load your scrapbook pages (12x12 or 8x8) a certain way (at Shutterfly) this won't happen - but am not sure about 8.5x11 pages.

This stuff has a definite learning curve and I am excited to figure it all out. I spent all morning looking through the gallery and am in awe of the talent I have found here.

Thanks again for your help!!

Lorna

[anke]

I am thinking that this size would work just like the 12x12 pages, meaning that some of the edge will be trimmed off. Just don't put anything important close to the edges of the pages and you should be okay. Just make sure to turn off "vivd pics" under edit for your pages....
As for resizing Lynn's templates, you could just drag all the things on the background (leaving the background behind) onto a new 8.5x11 document and kind of adjust them from there....

[esther_a]

There are a couple of other sets that crop beautifully to 8.5x11. I like my travel albums landscape and usually modify templates to suit. I used Katie's Days of December for my travel blog album.

[sarahorton]

Hi Lorna,
Here's a video tip on our blog that shows you how to resize 12x12 templates to fit an 8.5x11-inch page.
It walks you through the process step-by-step

[esther_a]

How perfect! There is such a wealth of information in those video tips!

[maureenreynolds]

While it's obviously easier to make a 8.5x11 into a 12x12, since you can really just drop that smaller one onto a blank 12x12, I have converted the larger size into the smaller size using all sorts of templates. I'm talking more about templates that are not as geometric as the ones shown.

The guides and rulers help a lot, esp when you are resizing something layer by layer. I don't always make it exactly the same or exactly the same proportion but if it looks good to my eye, that's what matters. I rarely do a rectangular page now except for December Daily and some pages in Ali Edwards' various classes.