Studio J: Family & Friends BBQ

Here in Minnesota it's been the perfect backyard summer! Grills, beach towels, iced coolers, and sunscreen have been at the ready every weekend! One of my favorite get togethers is the Family & Friends BBQ we host right around 4th Of July.

Are there plenty of photos? Heck yeah! We even set up a "Photo Booth" area in the house! As guests wander on through, they put on some fun gear and snap all the photos they want!. This is a great way to capture all kinds of smiles and it frees me up from the camera a good portion of the day! It's spontaneous fun for everyone! Not to mention the photos make a great little sourvenir. (I put them in Christmas cards!)

Once again, I managed all my photos using my download-sort-delete-edit-upload workflow method. I never let photos just hang out on my SD card or computer. They are processed within a few days of snapping them. Then I can create Studio J layouts like these for my Year in Review Album:

Our BBQ is held in conjunction with 4th of July so I used the same "Independence Day" kit from my July 4th layouts but toned it down a bit. This gives a nice coordinated look to all my July layouts but seperates the two events from one another.

Have I mentioned how much I love the quality of my printed layouts from Studio J? The Studio J lab doesn't believe in shortcuts and it shows layout, after layout. Quality paper, ink, and resolution as high as the sky!

See that 12x6 photo on the left page? I don't know anywhere I can go to get that size photo printed. I'm not saying it's totally impossible, I'm just saying that Studio J is an awesome-great-deal on large, high quality prints!

Think about creating this layout with traditonal paper, embellies, inks, adhesives, and a trimmer. It's a whole lot of fun, but it is time consuming. If you're a busy bee papercrafter like me, you need a way to create at least some of your layouts quickly and easily. Studio J is the answer!              

This layout has:

6- 2x2 photos

3- 5x4 photos

1- 12x6 photo

It takes some serious planning and processing to edit and/or resize the variety of photos you see in this layout. Even if you're proficient in PhotoShop or Picassa, you'll still spend more time working the photos than you would using Studio J's drag and drop convenience. Who doesn't love spending less time and money?

Okay.... last but not least ....  a few of those super fun photo booth pics:

These are two collages I created in PhotoShop Elements. I originally created these online with PicMonkey. When I dropped my PicMonkey collages on Studio J's "No Limits" pattern, a little yellow warning icon appeared. It was a low resolution warning. Despite having saved my collage in the highest resolution possible in PicMonkey, Studio J flagged it as not being up to standards for excellent print results.

After recreating in PicMonkey a second time with the same reult, I switch over to PhotoShop Elements and spent nearly an hour creating collages from scratch. Then, it was drag and drop onto Studio J's "No Limits" pattern, add a few coordinating Stickease from "Independence Day" and call it done!

The warning icon for the PicMonkey collages may have been a fluke or comp error. At any rate, it was a good lesson in how time consuming it can be to edit and resize from scratch.

Let Studio J start saving you time and money today. Quality prints are key to preserving your precious photos. Learn more about Studio J by visiting my website today!

So there you have it for today! Have a wonderful weekend!

Comments are welcome and appreciated ... always!!