sorry wasn’t really sure what else to call this. But do you guys build a stash of shapes I.e. scalloped boarders and photo frames etc to use on your LOs or just build them as you scrap on each individual LO. I’m new and just trying to figure the best way to go about this.
Nope, I am a template scrapper so have a stash from Fiddle-Dee-Dee and Scrapping With Liz. They've done all that work for me. I have been collecting templates for 10 years... A lot were freebies (Liz put out a lot of freebies in 2008).
I have a stash of page templates I've built for PL layouts over time, mainly because I scrap 8.5x11 so templates aren't as readily available. Elements and frames I usually pull from kits. I try to tag kit items I'm most likely to use (frames, washi tape, buttons, etc) with keywords when I import them so I can do a quick keyword search when I'm putting together a layout.
I have personal templates for banners and wordstrips. I just made a whole "batch" and added customized drop shadows right away so I an just drag them into a layout and clip a paper from a kit to it.
I use templates also, no starting from scratch building scallops for me either. I imagine once you have a set of goodies though it would make your life easier and scrapping so much faster.
Setting up personal templates doesn't work with my software really, so I have my stash tagged for easy referencing so I can find things quickly to build up my pages. In the early days many of my pages looked similar due to few layout examples. Here we have an amazing gallery teeming full of wonderful ideas and layout arrangements -so much inspiration in there. It's okay to copy "scraplift" a layout in the gallery, just comment on that person's layout and link up to yours so they can see how they inspired you.
I use shapes as I go. I have a lot of shapes from what came with PS / PSE but i have also created my own over the years, so if I am making my own page not from a template I use shapes I have in the Custom Shapes .. I do make things/elements alot as @Rikki does, and save them to a file on my hard drive for easy access. The templates, like the free ones here for the MOC or any of the designers challenges are really neat to use too. Some you can save as custom shapes too, or just use the png of them for your page to "build your own page" if that is what you wish, but try too to combine templates for a new look and just have fun
Oh, yes to what @cfile says. Just recently I used components from templates for totally different layouts. My MOC layouts about my username and the one with the recipe have large shapes in them that came from templates that looked way different originally. So never ditch a template because you think you will never use it (which I did about the template with the puzzle heart)!
