Hi, everyone . . . Jaime here with a little Hybrid tutorial for you. I have been a traditional scrapbooker for a long time, and for the past few years I have also loved digital scrapbooking. One of my favorite ways to merge the two is what I like to call “punchable hybrid”. Paper punches are one of my favorite traditional scrapbooking supplies, especially shapes like circles, squares, and tags because of their versatility. I like to create images in Photoshop to use with my punches, so I can just print and punch. Circles are what I use the most because they are easy to create, and I have a few different sizes of circle punches. Here are a few examples:

This is a cake I made not too long ago for my son’s birthday. He had a Halloween-themed party, so I used Britt’s kit “A Halloween Nightmare” to create these circles with the letters to spell my son’s name. I sized the circles to 1″, printed them, and used my 1″ circle to punch them out. I taped them onto toothpicks and stuck them in the cake.

This is a journaling tag I created awhile ago, and I use it all the time. I think it is the perfect little tag to add a date, tie to a gift, or whatever. Sometimes I print and punch this one, and other times I use it digitally as a brush.

Here is a mini card I made using the tag, but this time I added some text before I printed it out.

Like I said, I like circles because they are fairly easy to create in Photoshop. However, sometimes I like to use my other punches, too, so I’m going to show you how I go about making sure what I create is going to fit the punch I want to use. These screen shots are from Photoshop Elements 5.0, so the steps may differ depending on what program you are using.

First, punch a shape using a solid color and scan it in. The particular punch I am using is a tag punch by Stampin’ Up! I have two of these punches, one that is slightly smaller than the other, so they can be layered.

Now, select the magic wand tool and click somewhere on the white. Right-click and choose “select inverse”. (I do this rather than just clicking on the black part, because it doesn’t always select the correct part that way, especially if I used textured cardstock.) You should now have marching ants around your shape.

Create a new layer above this one, and go to Edit . . . Stroke Selection. I chose 5 pixels for the width and Inside for the location. Hide or delete the original layer (the scanned image). The outline is not perfectly smooth, but that’s okay because I’m not going to print that part anyway . . . it’s just there for a guideline. Now, using the outline as a guideline, create your tag (or whatever shape you are using). I created a birthday tag using the ScrapMatters Birthday Collaboration Kit.

Open a new document the size of the paper you will put in your printer (I use 8.5×11). Select all parts of your tag (you can merge the design part first if you want, just don’t merge the outline to it because we want to be able to hide it before we print), and drag it onto your new document. Copy this as many times as you want it to print.

Now, go in and hide or delete all the outline layers (I initially keep them to use as a guideline so I can make sure I give myself enough room between tags).

Now, print it out and you are ready to punch.

Like I mentioned earlier, I have another punch like this one, only slightly larger. So, I punched out some green tags and mounted the “Happy Birthday” ones on these. Most of these I will use to tie onto gifts, but I used one of them to create a 3×3 card.

I hope this tutorial was valuable to you! And, because I love freebies, I’m offering my oft-used journaling tag as a freebie. Included in the download is an 8.5×11 .pdf version of a sheet of tags that are ready to print and punch. They are sized to fit a circle punch that is 1.25 inches or bigger. I’m also including the .abr and .png forms so you can use it digitally, too.  (Click on the preview to go to the download page.)

Enjoy, and let me know if you have questions!