Tuesday Tutorials : Cathy Zielske : Multi-Photo Grids

This week Tuesday Tutorials welcomes Cathy Zielske.

I first met Cathy back in 2003 when I took her Scraphic Design class at Creating Keepsakes University in Vancouver, BC. Known for her awesomely simple, beautifully designed layouts that get to the heart of the matter, she is also one of the best teachers around. Today she's going to walk you through the steps (via video + a pdf download) to create a photo grid in Photoshop Elements.

If you ever have the chance to take a class from Cathy online I highly recommend it.

Here's Cathy:

Consolidation has been a key inspiration for my scrapbook layout design lately, and I know of no better way to consolidate than to get a lot of photos onto a single layout using multi-photo grids. In this video, I’m going to walk you through how to make a 12-photo grid using Photoshop Elements for use on your next scrapbook page or project.

You can also download the PDF step by step tutorial here.

Tuesday Tutorial from Cathy Zielske on Vimeo.

Here's a look at some additional layout samples using the photo grid technique:

Cover one month at a glance.
I love condensing a whole month into one page. I designed a cool “monthly snaps” date artwork series so I can make a page a month for a full year. (See below for info on how you can download my artwork for free to use on your own pages.)
MATERIALS: Photoshop Elements 6; Avenir and Archer fonts

Give everyday snapshots an interesting home.
Ali and I once had a conversation where we both decided if photo grid layouts were the only ones you could ever again do, we’d both be just fine with that. Here, I used the grid approach to create a page when I was participating in my friend Susan’s 12 of 12 project. With a handful of photos and a few lines of text, you can capture a nice wide swath of your everyday life on one page.
MATERIALS: Photoshop; stamp (Cat’s Life Press); Times New Roman font

Make a grid strip.
Here one grid row is used to fill in shots taken over the years of me in my fabulous bee costume. (Note: I’ve been wearing it every year since I was in my early 20s.)
MATERIALS: InDesign CS; Amelie, Avenir and Times New Roman fonts

Think grid.
Thinking grid on any design can make page layout a snap. Here, the 12-square grid exists, it’s just filled in differently. One larger photo takes the place of four smaller ones, and a journaling area to fills in the other. Once you divide up the space, you’ll find that grids can be mixed and matched really easily.
MATERIALS: sticker (7gypsies); stamp (Autumn Leaves); Handwriting font.

FREE DOWNLOAD
Cathy is offering a free download of her Monthly Snaps artwork, to use in creating a page like the one above every month for a full year. You can also download the journaling card as well. Visit her blog for the download and while you're there catch some outtakes from her tutorial video.

Cathy Zielske is a graphic designer, author and blogger. She is the former art director for Simple Scrapbooks magazine, where she oversaw the visual direction of all Simple publications and books.

Cathy started scrapbooking in 2001, and found that her background in design and her passion for telling stories made her new hobby as easy as it was fun. As a scrapbooker, Cathy helped to usher in the trend of clean, graphic layout design. She is the author of the best-selling books, Clean&Simple Scrapbooking, and Clean&Simple Scrapbooking: The Sequel. Both books inspire women to take a fun, well-designed and guilt-free approach to telling their stories through scrapbooking.

Cathy is currently developing and teaching online workshops to help scrapbookers write better and take what they've written and make it look fabulous. She's currently teaming with Big Picture Scrapbooking in 2009 to offer her workshops.

Cathy also reaches scrapbookers through her popular blog, Bits&Pieces.

She hopes to develop more online content in 2010 and beyond, to inspire scrapbookers to continue telling their story in an authentic and well-designed way.