This is a slide from my third video scrapbook theme, a work still in progress. I thought I’d quickly share how to create and “cut” your own shape for a digital scrapbook page using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. If you do not have Adobe Illustrator I have seen lots of templates like this for sale at online digital scrapbook stores.

1. First In Illustrator, I used the pen tool to create the wavy shapes, each on their own layer. There are two wavy shapes used, with straight lines on three sides and a curvy line on top. Draw each shape on it’s own layer and make sure your artboard is the same size as the Photoshop document you will use it in.
2. Then on the bottom layer draw a rectangle the same size as your artboard. Select that rectangle and select “Object>>Crop Area>>Make” on the main menu. This will make sure that your shapes land on your Photoshop document correctly placed.
3. Export your Illustrator file as a “PSD” file.
4. Open it in Photoshop and duplicate your two shape layers into your digital scrapbook layout file.
5. Now you can use these objects as “clipping masks.” Place the paper you want to “cut” in a layer on top of the shape. Select both layers by shift clicking. Then place your mouse over the line between them, holding down the “Alt” key (assuming you have a PC) and click. Wa-la, your shape is now “cut out” in your pretty paper.
6. Finally, I loaded the shape as a selection, inserted a new layer above the paper, and with the selection still loaded I “distressed” the edge of my shape. Do the distressing on its own layer so that you can adjust the opacity if necessary.

The shapes can also be saved individually as “PNG” files in Illustrator and “cut out” in applications like Creative Memories software. I’m sure there are many ways to accomplish this, with other applications, or even with the ones I used! But, this was pretty easy once I figured out the workflow.

Materials Used:

• Frames, Floral Charm, light lavendar paper: TracyAnn
• Photo Wrap: Katie Pertiet, Designer Digitals
• Spotted paper: Christina Renee
• Floral/Diamond paper: Ruth Davis