You have a stash of your favorite embellishments, somewhere in your supplies area or crop bag. (For example: miniature frames for photos or journaling, or tags in various shapes and sizes.) How about creating and storing your stash of favorite things in an electronic file instead?

Take a stack of tags, of various sizes (round, rectangular). You could use them as you need them and hope that you don’t run out of the size that you need just when you’re ready to use one. Well here’s a way to guarantee that you won’t ever run out.

As soon as you have a good variety of the sizes that you use most often, before you even think of sticking one to a page, you’re going to scan your whole assortment. Here’s how easy it is to do.

Lay them all down on a scanner bed, in order of size, just to be neat about it. You’re basically taking this photo so that you can save it on the computer. You’ll name this file “rect tags.”

Save this page and print a few of them to have with you whenever you crop. You’ll end up with a less bulky page, even though it looks 3-D, and You’ll always have the size you need.

Or, you can crop the photo electronically and save just one of the tags that you’d like to use. Once you have just one on a page, you can type right into it, using Word and text boxes, and make it look like the 3-D tag is printed with your journaling. You can either type the text and then print and cut out that one tag, or else you can start your layout by positioning your headline on the page then place the tag with the text right into the layout. From there, you’ll just add color and photos.

If you want to get really fancy, and you know how to do this with software, you could even change the color of your tag’s background. This would enable you to color coordinate the tag to the page you’re making right then and there. Of course, this would mean you have your whole layout planned out before you start to put it together. It might just be easier to keep a few pages of each of your favorite page scans with you, when you’re at a friend’s or at a crop, and to write on them once they’re cut out as you normally would. Save the fancy coloring-in and importing them into a digital layout for when you’re at home.