Photo Tips: A Seasonal Series

Featuring Quarter Pie Die and Piece of the Pie Dies

The new Quarter Pie Die is the perfect die for this week’s Photo Tip. Do you have a favorite spot that you or your family enjoys many times throughout the year? I do. We have a park just around the corner that is one that I love to take family photos in every fall. I love the trees in bloom in spring and the stark beauty of the snowy winter stillness.

 

Photo Tips: A Seasonal Series

Take advantage of the photos you have already taken in your visits to a favorite spot or begin a new project. There’s time to capture summer and fall with winter coming in fast behind, all you’ll need is spring. So you’ve got time to plan things out. Maybe even pick several places and do a seasonal series.

I have several photos that I’ve always wanted to do in a layout showing off all four seasons of this one spot. The only season I was missing was a summer one so I ran up and took a few pics to sit down with and use with this new die.

I cropped the photos to a square before I printed them. This project is one you will need to custom print on your own for the application I’ll show you.

To make it easier, I’ve included a couple of screenshots to show how I did this. As I said, I cropped the photos to a square. I’ve used an 8.5”x11” photo paper to print. I’ve used a contact sheet setting for printing two at a time. That’s 1 row and 2 columns. This will give me two 5.5” squares, just what I need for using with this die. I’ve set the margins to make sure it prints correctly, so a bottom margin is set at 3”. You can get two 5.5” photos on an 11” paper, make it borderless. Print and trim.

I’ve cut four die sections in black and I’m using them as an overlay for this page. Each photo is arranged so that you begin in the top left corner with winter, spring, summer, and fall. The base grid is “Always Afloat” a 12×12 Mosaic Moments Grid from the Summer Grid Collection.

This shows you with just the overlay. It reminds me of the view of Mt. Rushmore I captured with a window frame feel.

Then I reset the black corners to bring that circle image into clear view.

And finally, if you were so inclined you could even use those black corner sections to add a line from a favorite seasonal poem to fill the space.

Bonus Page

When I finished my layout I was playing around with all my scraps and I still had the second new die the Piece of Pie Die and thought I’d give you a second page featuring the original die as well as this secondary die.

For this page, I’ve used Pattern #144, a mostly squares pattern. I’ve also included the circle-corner die for my corner photos. Echo Park’s 6×6 “Back to School” pad by Lori Whitlock and a 12×12 sheet of the ABC print is what I’m using this time. “Sunlight” from Lazy Days Collection will be the base for this page.

I cut a 5.5” section from the 12×12 ABC patterned paper and cut it into two sections diagonally, careful to make sure that I was cutting the right portion to fit into the corners of the layout as I wanted it to. Using some bold colors two of the die sections are cut and the section is assembled on the grid.

The pattern also calls for smaller 4×4 squares and I thought it might be the perfect place for the circle corner die. Two additional colors are cut with the circle corner die and placed on the grid. Sections from patterned paper are cut and fit into the corners. Photos of each of the girls were chosen to fit to the space and then cut and filled.

I wanted to carry the ABC patterned paper around a portion of the page but I’ve used the smaller scale of the pad of paper to do so. The top and lower borders were perfect for the chalkboard pattern in the 1” squares.

Three photos with bold colors of some of our school items offset the black outtakes that I’ve used for titles and tags.

A china white marker is used to write for the chalkboard look. To get an even border I used the die piece to position and line with the China White. You could use a white gel pen for a finer detail and cleaner look, but for back to school I liked the look of chalk on black.

The Piece of Pie Die made it very easy to cut sections out of photos and drop into the die piece frame of the Quarter Pie Die. Interspersing photos with the chalkboard style Piece of Pie Die give the opportunity to use several photos instead of just one sectioned off in the 5.5” square.

I think you’ll find these Quarter Pie and Piece of the Pie Dies won’t add calories, just great layouts!

Andrea Fisher