Guest Author - Michelle McVaney
Use your computer's word processing program to do some creative titles and journaling.
Most home computers have a word processing program such as Microsoft Word, or Corel Word Perfect, or something similar. You can use these programs to journal on your layouts and make some nifty titles.
You can do this in several different ways.
First, you can just put an eight-and-a-half by eleven sheet of vellum or cardstock in your printer and mess around with the program's features and print out all kinds of neat things such as: different fonts. Change your fonts around for your text, and make your words match the mood of your layout. Most programs have a pre-set list of fonts, but you can download tons of really great fonts from the internet.
A fun thing that I like to do it to make some of the key words in my journaling in a larger font. If I were journaling about our Easter morning I could make eggs larger, bunny larger, church larger. All of the words that stand out for Easter are then larger. Then once I print out the journaling I will use chalk to make a little swipe across those larger words to make them stand out even more.
Another way to do this, possibly a bit more frugal and will save paper is to do several pages worth of journaling on the one sheet of 8.5x11 paper. Or you can use Hermafix and temporarily glue the exact size you need onto the paper and send it through the printer that way.
I do a lot of computer journaling, but I do make sure to include some pages with my own handwriting just for an authentic personal touch for heritage purposes. Never let computer journaling take over your scrapbooks. Your familiy will appreciate your handwriting so much. I try to make sure I have a balanced amount of computer journaling with my own handwriting.
Extra tip: If you do not have an expensive cutter. You can still get some nice titles cut for your pages. Choose the font you want to use for your title, try printing it backwards onto cardstock and exacto-ing it for an elegant looking title on your layout!
