Holiday Templates 2011 | Templates & Development

Classes / Uncategorized

Time to talk Holiday Templates | the templates. Last year’s template set was based on the grid with a curved element. It worked for most but this year I’ve moved into a new direction. And we can thank template team member Blue for the inspiration. In July, when I was picking the team’s brain for suggestions, Blue shared this:

Style the templates as 2-page spreads with consistency for a book. Although you don’t have to use them in that way. Like, for example, a big photo on the left, smaller ones on right with objects on the templates for unity. Offer a cohesiveness to make it faster and simpler for us putting together a December Daily or other holiday book.

I thought her idea was killer, obvious … it just makes complete sense. Templates that work as singles AND as doubles. I grabbed my sketchpad and ran with her idea. I drew about 40 before I settled upon offering template sets.

Four consistent and coordinated templates perfect for single and double pages. Combining each into groups of four allowed them to stand together for a variety of looks. The set shown above is the “scalloped” group. Other groups include the “linear”, the “circular”, the “bracket”, and two more. They’re easy to mix, match, or adapt via rotation or flip. Matter of fact, I hope you do adapt them to increase the variety while keeping the consistency from page to page.

You say I said I drew 40? Yup and then I picked from the strongest designs. The template preview shows 16 you’ll get on day one. You’ll also receive another 4 at that time plus 4 more as the workshop continues for a total of 24 templates. The final 8 are my favorites and/or serve as “training” material for a specific lesson. They’re a “surprise!” Method to my madness, you know.

So if you’ve been following along, I started brainstorming and prepping in July with both the kits and templates simultaneously. Once all were close to done, around the second week of September, I turned my attention to class content development.

Planning lessons, building curriculums, writing scripts, coming up with techniques, fleshing out steps, designing slides, recording the concepts, editing video and creating page examples take more work than one can imagine. It’s a tedious process. One that keeps me up sometimes to 4 in the morning! When I first started teaching classes online, it took days to build one 10 minute video lesson. Now I can bang two quality 10 minute lessons out in a couple hours but I don’t construct more than two a day. Tedious but I definitely love the process.

I record lessons using Screenflow for Mac. Screenflow allows me to add music, drag in slides, and screencast. Definitely the best for video capture! And I use a huge, Larry King, Yeti microphone to record my sexy voice, which feeds directly into Screenflow.

My sister, the accomplished college professor and writer, recommended Scrivener for curriculum building and scripts. This. Program. Rocks! It stores, it documents, it holds screenshots and images and websites. It indexes, it collects, it outlines, it literally organizes tons of information and helps develop my thoughts into actions.

Building steps and comparing them between PS and PSE becomes a snap.

Adding screenshots of potential techniques and clipping it to scripts keeps me on track.

It’s like a huge information warehouse I check my class into during development. I couldn’t survive without Scrivener. Can you tell?

Once I have my lessons ironed out and techniques built, I invite the team and ask special guests to weigh-in with expertise. Join me tomorrow for their introduction!

Holiday Template 2011 | Related Posts

About Tiffany

Tiffany Tillman is the Owner of Simply Tiffany Studios, an online resource with tutorials and page-design interviews for digital scrapbookers. She's also a Designer for Pixels & Company and professionally trains digital crafters developing e-learning content.

Posted by | 9 comments