Jessika Chabot, Author at Impressed Blog

DIY Gift Guide: Family Recipe Book

Posted by | DIY, Holiday DIY, Photo Books | No Comments

Gather your family’s favorite recipes and make them into an heirloom recipe book, complete with vintage family photos.  The best gifts are made with love, and this one is sure to be a favorite around the tree this holiday season.

1. Select 16 family photos to pair up with each recipe.

Don’t have digital copies?  See our blog post on scanning and digitizing old photos.

2. Choose 16 recipes you’d like to pass down.

3. Click to download the DIY recipe Photoshop template below:

Impressed App DIY recipe book page template for Photoshop

4. Open the Photoshop template and enter your first recipe

5. Save your recipe as a .jpg file

6. Once you have all of your recipes ready, add them along with your desired photos to a Dropbox folder

Get a free Dropbox account here.

7. In Impressed App, select the 8×8 Layflat book

We would recommend using the Layout Selector option here to select layouts that allow for 2 images per spread.

To use:

  • as you start making, you’ll notice a red button titled ‘LAYOUT’ in the middle right hand side of your screen
  • when you tap it, you’ll have multiple options of layouts to use
  • simply select the desired layout and hit ‘USE’

8. Populate your spreads with your photos + recipes.

We went with a photo on the left, recipe on the right.

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Your Holiday 2016 Wrap Inspiration

Posted by | DIY, Holiday DIY, Photo Prints, Photography, Washi Tape | No Comments

With the start of November just around the corner, this is the time of year we like to start getting our ducks in a row for the upcoming holiday season; gifting lists, holiday cards and most fun of all: gift wrapping style!

Before the holiday madness kicks in, we wanted to share with you a few tips and inspiration to getting your gifts looking pretty even if you’re not the craftiest of types.

First things first, gift tags.

Dress up your gifts with personalized gift tags.  We like printing our own on Impressed App’s 3×3″ mini prints.

Ideas:

1. A photo of a special moment shared with the recipient makes for a great gift topper that they can re-use as a daily memento even once the holiday season has come and gone.

 

2. Print a stock photo of a scene you know your recipient will enjoy.

TIP #1: our favorite sites for downloading awesome stock photographs for printing are Magdaleine.co and Unsplash

TIP #2: use the sites’ search tools to find particular scenes or themes such as ‘forest’ or ‘ocean’

[print on far left courtesy of @laurenmichelleanderson]

3. Print free original artwork and graphics directly from Impressed’s ‘Free Artwork’ section.

TIP: find it in your photo sources section, once you start making prints

[palm tree print courtesy of @laurenmichelleanderson]

4. Consider getting 2 different sizes of gift tags and layering them to create unique combinations.

Onwards: wrapping paper

We’re huge fans of purchasing rolls of solid wrapping paper (2 complimentary colors will do!) and letting the accenting and ribbon shine.  This year, we even played around with layering our paper to create a color blocking effect.

Finishing touches

We typically like to choose 3 colors that would go well together as part of our theme and let those colors inspire our accents.  Your accents don’t have to quite read holiday either - think outside of the box and have fun with it!

Ideas:

  • greenery
  • ribbon + string
  • colored sharpies for making patterns + designs directly on your wrapping paper
  • washi tape

TIP: we used ours to make patterns and affix tags to our gifts

 

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life-well-lived-cover-maartje

Life Well Lived: those perfectly candid family shots

Posted by | Home Decor, Kids, Travel | No Comments

Say hello to Maartje: mama and primary school teacher, known online as @ourlittlephotodiary.  Her life well-lived consists of beach days with her boys and home projects to cozy up her family’s space (including a new garden canopy for those wine evenings spent with friends).  Read on as Maartje talks to us about how she manages to get those perfectly imperfect candid family shots and interior inspiration. Read More

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Life Well-Lived: natural portraits + light play

Posted by | Photography, Tips, Travel, Uncategorized | No Comments

Meet this month’s inspiring customer: Sara, aka @saraspectrum.  She describes her life well-lived as balancing work with time outdoors, a little adventure and slow mornings (with tea!), which is easy when your backyard is the gorgeous Pacific Northwest.  Scrolling through Sara’s Instagram feed is like flipping through a lifestyle magazine and has got us inspired to add more of these elements to our own everyday.  Read on as Sara tells us how she achieves such beautiful natural portraits and her tips for playing with light.  Read More