Hey there!  LuAnn here with this month’s Home Matters project.  But first, an update on the Home Matters postings.

Starting in May, there will be only one Home Matters post monthly – these will occur on the 2nd Monday of the month.  Our goal is to give you some new ideas on how to incorporate your scrapbooking talents (and digital supplies!) into your home.

Let’s get started with this month’s Home Matters project!  This project is one of the easiest projects to do if you are wanting to give Hybrid a shot!  I know, I know… I’ve said it before in my postings, but this one is really easy!!!!

Today, I’m going to show you how to create some decor that is perfect for a nursery or young child’s room.

My niece just recently had her first baby.  He was two months early and his nursery isn’t quite ready for his homecoming.  Erin sent me a photo of the bedding that she had for the nursery.

I decided to create some wall decorations for the nursery as my gift.  And Chelle’s Creations’ kit Zoo-pendous – combo was a perfect match with both theme and colors!

And here’s what I created to match the nursery bedding:

To create the wall art, I picked up three 8 x 10″ brown photo frames from a local discount store.

Next, I opened my photo editing program and created an 8.5 x 11″ blank canvas – this is the size of regular paper/cardstock.

note:  I always create my own “template” whenever creating a project.  After I create my template, I then go about filling the template much like a scrapbook page layout until I have the results that I want.  You could print full sheets of the paper of your choice, cut an 8 x 10 piece of from the patterned paper and then a 5 x 7 piece with the focal element centered, layer them and be done!

Using the rectangular marquee tool, I drew an 8 x 10″ shape on my canvas.  After adding a new layer, I flood filled the 8 x 10 shape with black.

Next, I drew a 5 x 7 shape, added a new layer and then flood filled the 5 x 7 shape with white.  Center on the black layer.   This will be my template.

After adding the giraffe element from the kit to the center, I picked out the background paper for the matting of my pictures.

I decided to leave the 5 x 7 area white as I had special paper I wanted to print the giraffe.

Before printing, I added some slight contrast and saturation to each layer. This helps tweak the printed color a little.  I then added a shadow to the giraffe.

I printed the background patterned paper on Epson Matte presentation paper and the giraffe element on a piece of Red River paper canvas paper.  Below, you can see the texture of the paper.

After trimming my papers, I adhered the paper canvas with the giraffe in the center of the background paper to create my picture before slipping it into the frame.

note:  you could also add a shadow the the giraffe element and also to the white 5 x 7 area before printing and then print as a flattened digital image to slip into the frame.

I designed the elephant and lion pictures in the same way as described above except that after creating my template, I rotated my canvas to the left so that those pictures were landscape.

Here are all three of them individually:

Didn’t they turn out darling? And I have to say they match the bedding nicely!!!  I’m totally stoked about how they turned out and can’t wait to mail them to Erin.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and are inspired to use your digital supplies to create something beautiful!