Nothing, absolutely nothing, could be worse than creating something awesome with RocketLife, only to re-size a photo or quickly try another layout and then realize that you really liked it better the other way. Previously, there wasn’t a way to “undo” your last step. Now, however, THERE IS!
Cheers! Applause! Confetti!
Meet Undo and his sister Redo:
With Undo & Redo, you can handily take a step backward and then a step forward at anytime during your creation process. Pretty awesome, right?!
I’ve been home from Las Vegas for a few days and the PMA afterglow still remains. Why, you ask? Because RocketLife was… rockin’! Our booth was constantly overflowing with awesome people eager to hear more about RocketLife. All of us had so much fun and even though I was wary of the microphone at first, I loved demo-ing our new release.
New release? You ask. Yup, that’s right. We revealed an awesome new release of RocketLife at PMA. There are so many new, cool features that I can’t wait to show y’all in the coming days.
There’s something else really exciting that happened at PMA… RocketLife won an award!! We were awarded the DIMA Innovative Product Award! And, not to toot our own horn, I’d say we earned it!
One of the fastest and easiest ways to add some pizazz to your creations is to change up the theme or what we like to call a theme variation, which is, uh, a varion of a theme. And if you can see all of the variations to a theme by clicking a button, that’s a good thing, right?
Let’s say a theme catches your eye and you want to make a series of cards or mugs or photo book pages or calendar pages, but you don’t want them to all look the same… Or maybe you’re not totally crazy about the theme but you like the overall idea of the winter theme, for example.
Just click that lil’ theme variation button and change things up!
Here are some examples of how your theme can change:
So go for it! Give the theme variations a try!
Kim Guymon over at ScrapBizness gave RocketLife a huge shout out today. Kim’s a serious scrapbooker and her blog is really at the heart of the industry and the craft.
I have to admit that I find it really interesting that so many scrapbookers (of the die-cut and special glue and fancy markers and stickers genre) are really digging RocketLife photo books. I think it comes as such a surprise to me because I thought a scrapbooker really enjoyed the careful, time-intensive part of their creations (much in the way that I prefer to knit my own scarves - wipe that surprised look off your face! - versus buying them at the store). It’s the handmade factor - the love and care that goes into a project that makes it that much more special to you.
But Kim makes a really good point - there’s so much customization (and love and care!) that CAN go into making a photo book with RocketLife. Here’s what she had to say about some her favorite RocketLife features that let her really get creative with her project as a scrapbooking girl in a digital world:
Smart Arrangement technology (their Secret Weapon) - their program snatches the photos from your computer file and auto fills the book. The cool thing is that it pretty much knows which photos to group together. The result is a really fast book! You could literally order it in 5 minutes. You don’t have to upload them all to their site first and then drag them over to your project.
BUT! Being a scrapper, I need to rearrange things and add journaling. But, even that is easy. You can just click a button and it will change the layout on a page several times rearranging the photos each time. Then, add some journaling and a drag and drop coordinating graphic and away you go!
You can change up the backgrounds within a theme by clicking the button that lets you use other options in the theme. You can go deeper into it and change the color of each background. Basically, you can do as much or as little as you would like to do to each page.
You can order the same book in different sizes without having to re-size the pages by hand. Shoot, you can snatch a page and order it on a mug or puzzle without doing anything but ordering it. So, you create ONCE and can order a variety of products. Cool!
What do you guys think? Are you a scrapbooker who thinks making a photo book is just as fun? Or do you still prefer the traditional way, but like making other photo projects on the side?
And, if you’d like to share some of your creations with us here at the RocketLife Blog, please don’t hesitate to send them - just click here to email me some screen shots!
I know, I know. You’re reading the title of this post wondering how it is even remotely possible that you could ever make an entire photo book in 2 minutes. If you’ve ever attempted one before with one of those other sites (you know, the kind where it takes eighty-nine million years to upload your photos), you probably got irritated and frustrated and decided that you had better things to do with your time than upload and rename and rearrange your photos for hours on end. Which is why you’ll probably be amazed when I show you how to make a photo book in as much time as it takes to, ahem, upload a handful of the aforementioned pictures.
So here we go - start the clock!
Step 1: First I launched RocketLife and selected my photos. I’ve traveled quite a bit in the past year, so I thought it would be cool to make a photo book of all my travels. Within The My Pictures folder on my computer, I had set up another folder labeled Travels with about 60 of my photos in it, so I selected that folder. Then clicked Add Photos. This part is super fast - like maybe 20 seconds. So fast that you kind of wonder why it takes so long to do that on the other sites.
Step 2: Select the project. In this case, I picked the photo book (the cool thing is that my own pictures show up on the preview of the photo book) and then clicked on Customize and Order.
Step 3: This is the really cool part. After I clicked Customize and Order, my book was created for me (it’s that nifty Smart Arrangement Technology again). Just like that. All 26 pages were laid out beautifully with that one click. I love that RocketLife somehow knows the right way to lay out all of the photos. It’s the way I would have done it if I had arranged them myself.
Step 4: If I want to, I can further customize my book - change themes, rearrange photos, add placeable graphics, edit photos. But I can also click the Order button and call it a day.
So there you have it - a beautiful photo book in 2 minutes. And just think of all the cool books you could make - family vacations, weddings, baby showers (or a baby book even!), an anniversary gift or a collection of photos from your first year in college. The possibilities are truly endless.
Now it’s your turn! Give it a try and tell me what you think!
“SAT?” you ask.
Nope, I’m not talking about the ol’ pre-college assessment test. I’m talking about Smart Arrangement Technology. The ingenious behind the scenes fanciness that makes RocketLife so easy for anyone (and I mean ANYONE) to use. All you have to do is pick the photos that you want to use and this Smart Arrangement Technology organizes your photos FOR YOU. So instead of spending, like, HOURS uploading photos and arranging them and making changes and… well, you get the point. Instead of the headache, your pictures are arranged and good to go in literally seconds.
Here’s how it works. First, choose your photos from your local hard drive - whichever ones you want to use for your project. In this case, I’m using some pictures that I took on a trip to Philadelphia this summer with my dear friend, Linda. After you select your photos, click on the kind of project that you want to make. I’m going to make a couple of posters (get ready for photo books tomorrow!). Next, click Customize and Order. Just one click and then… ta-da! Your photos are already arranged in beautiful collages for you! Of course, should you want to, you could always further customize and get creative. But with RocketLife, you really don’t have to. One click and you’re done!
So what do you think? Isn’t this easier than spending hours trying to get things “just right?” RocketLife gets them just right every time. And that’s how you ace the SAT.
Ahem, drum roll please…. Welcome to the new and very fabulous RocketLife blog!! Cheers all around! Champagne glasses clinking! Applause! I’m Shea. And I’m kind of craft challenged. And I’m pretty sure that I’m not the only of you out there who considers themselves to be somewhat creative, but lacking in follow-through. Or maybe you just simply don’t have time to be the divine creative being that you wish you were.
If you’re like me, you have boxes of photos that have never made it into an album. You have a digital photo collection that continues to reside on your memory card or somewhere on your hard drive. Maybe, in a brief burst of inspiration, you ordered some prints somewhere. But it probably took a long time and you probably never did it again.
That’s why I’m here (and why I hope you are too) - to discover how we can actually make use of the photographs that we take. And maybe, over time, all of the weddings and baby showers and first days of school and senior proms will make their way out of our respective computers (or shoeboxes in the closet) and into something tangible.
This is like scrapbooking for the non-scrapbooker. For those of us who don’t have the time to devote to special kinds of glue and die cuts and stickers and anything labeled acid-free. For those of us who want to make something beautiful, but don’t want to spend hours doing it.
I hope that you will join me here to share ideas and help inspire that lil’ creative bug that resides inside each and every one of us. Let’s see what kinds of cool things we can do together
You are currently browsing the archives for the Cool Stuff category.
Follow me on Twitter
