Today’s Trick My Mix post is inspired by children’s books where you can flip portions of the book to make a funny face. You can change the eyes, nose, mouth, hair, and even ears. It’s so easy to customize your own “funny face” with the Mixbook Creator … check it out!

This trick requires high-resolution photos (at least 4MP) so you can zoom in on the details of the face.

- For this layout, click on the layout drop down menu and select the 4 photo layouts. Choose the one that looks like the above photo.

- Use pictures that are similar in size or proportion and also in the same pose. For this layout I used photos that were all portraits of faces, where everyone was facing forward. Then I zoomed in on key features of the face – the top of the head, eyes, nose, and mouth and connected them where they best fit.

- There you have it! Silly funny faces, and it was so easy to do.

Try to play around with it, and you’ll get some neat effects. Try using other layouts, like the ones below:

This one is like a puzzle, so try switching it around to make it more fun!

This is another funny face photo that you can try. Play with your friends faces, or even use animals.

The possibilities are endless! It’s a lot of fun, and can be done with almost any layout.

You have a funny face,
Alison

Slide frames were oh-so-cool back in the day. I remember making my own slide prints in elementary school and having a lot of fun with it. So we’re bringing back the old school by doing some frame effects in the Mixbook Creator tool.

Some things to remember:

- Frames can be made thick or thin, and give a different feel to each photo.
- The color of the frame can drastically affect what the photo looks like, just like a matte (in a real framed photo) does the same.
- Pairing a frame with a matching or contrasting background can highlight the colors in the photographs.

1) Photo Slides

This simple frame trick makes photos look like they are individual slides and focuses the eye on the main subject, which is the photo.

- Simply click on the “Create Custom Frame” button in the Frames section of the tool.

- Increase the thickness to the highest setting by dragging the tiny arrow all the way to the right, until it is 8.00 in thickness.

- Change the color of the frame if you wish, or leave it at white — which is clean, bright, and usually works with any photo.

- Drag the photo frame to your layout for the book page, and re-center your photos where they need to be.

- Finish by clicking “Save” to save the frame to your drawer for later use!

2) Playing with Frames

This is just a little exercise in fun, to change the look of a page by mixing up the thicknesses and colors of the frames.

- We used the same method as the “Photo Slides” trick only we used the thinnest setting for frame as well and changed the color to match the blue water.

- This page is fun because of the bright background color contrasting with the dark skin of the seals, and the placement of the different frames.

Try mixing your own combination of frames and remember to save the styles to your drawer so you can play with them again!

Alison

Since we’ve been putting these posts off for way too long, we thought it would be a good idea to combine them into one super duper huge post! So here it is, the “Trick Mixin’” update … a compilation of a trick, some lick-the-spoon Mixing Bowl books, and a handy dandy mix-in treat.

Sound too good to be true? Keep reading!

Trick My Mix – Scrapbook Type

This trick is similar to the last one, as it focuses on how to decorate the pages of your book with type/words. The following are three examples of how to integrate words by making text boxes look like the cute letter cut-outs you’d see in scrapbooks.

- The biggest part of this technique is picking a layout that has square text boxes. My personal favorite is the 4 photo layout with two text boxes (as seen in the pink layout), but you can experiment with any layout.

- Next think of any word or words that you’d like to represent in the boxes. Here we have “C-U-T-E” and a series of words (silly, goofy, funny, us being us) for the boxes. For the word “cute” we set the font to Chaparral Pro Bold and the size to 59 or 60, and centered it in the box. You may have to play around with this to get it right.

- Create a Custom Frame by selecting the border color from a color on the page, and setting the border thickness to “8,” which is the thickest setting. Then to create a colored text box go to the “more” button in the Frames section, and click on any background color of your preference. Set the transparency to 1.00 so that the background of the text box will be completely solid. Click “Save” and your custom frame will be saved for future use. Drag the custom frame onto your text boxes, and voila! There you have it! Letter cut-outs to personalize your Mixbook – who would have thought?

- Play with your words - highlight only portions of text to enlarge,bold or italicize them. See below for our final example of this Scrapbook type method, then have at it!

The Mixing Bowl 5

This week’s Mixing Bowl is full of greens! Only one serving though, since we have jam packed this post full of other things.

Community Garden 2007 by Mark S., Lisa L. and Michelle B.

This book caught my eye because of the delicious fresh veggies that are on the front cover. This Mixbook is all about a group of folks that got together every week to spend an evening at a community garden. Months later, they enjoyed the literal fruits (and veggies) of their labor. This colorful and picturesque book makes gardening look like so much fun – I’m ready to pick up my gloves and go! I love how the Mixbookers used our textured backgrounds to add to the theme of the book – the first page has our grass background.

Mix-ins 4

This week’s Mix-ins come from our love of best friends and all the love they bring into our lives. Use a Mixbook to pay tribute to your best friend, the love of your life, or even 10 of your closest homies. Make a Mixbook about the memories and good times you have had together – just because. I’m willing to bet that your best bud will love it. Check out this sample from Mixbooker Libby S., and her best gal pal.

Well, that’s all she wrote for today. Enjoy!
Alison

We’re rushing to get some new content out to you, so we’ll be back on our regular posting schedule tomorrow. Until then, get some fresh air …

Crazy like a Mixbook,
Alison

Hey Mixbookers,

Be on the lookout for some new features on our site that will be coming your way. Soon we’ll have integration with other photo sites like flickr, facebook, and Yahoo! Photos. In the meantime, we’ll be postponing this week’s Trick My Mix post because of our busy bee status over here at Mixbook World Headquarters. Thanks for being faithful!

Generating Mixbook buzz ,
Alison

Today’s trick comes from a night of staying up late and experimenting with fun new ways to present the typed content of a book. Try these examples below in your own Mixbook!

1) ABC Type – this is what we call ABC type, because instead of typing regular content, you use letters to create a type of design on the page. This is how we got the look below:

- Choose a background and set it to 30% transparency (find this feature by clicking “more” in the background section of the Creator)

- Set the font to Cooper Black and the size to 45. Type the letters of the alphabet, or even use words related to the photo (see word example below).

- Change the colors of the fonts by highlighting selected text and clicking on the color palette to select a color. Then use your own eye to change the colors as you prefer.

2) Word Type – instead of using letters, use words to create a design.

How cool is that? We especially love this technique when it is used in a themed book. Change the words and the style depending on what your theme is (the book above was about a trip to Seaworld) – maybe use some of the following:

A book about France – Eiffel, Je t’aime, Oui, Ooh la la, Macarons, Croissant, Romantic, Love.

A book about your kids – Funny, Messy, Loud, Fun, Family, Sweet, Spunky, Caring, Loving, Imaginative, Creative, Youthful.

A book about your dog – Silly, Goofy, Playful, Curious, Cute, Lazy, Nosy, Cuddly, Fluffy, Puppy.

This is just one new way to make your Mixbook unique and interesting!

Dedicated to making Mixbooks better,
Alison

Today’s tip is a simple and easy trick – with potentially beautiful results. Using our custom color picker to match your background and text to your photo(s) can give the appearance of continuity, and can be a striking addition to your book page. We took the photo below and clicked on our background color picker (the small colored square located in the background section) and scrolled over the sky color in our photo (instead of selecting from the pre-set colors). The background is now the same color of the sky, and is complementary to the photo.

The same can be done with the text by selecting the text and clicking on the text color box. Use the tiny eyedropper tool to scroll over the photo and click on a coordinating color. For our book page, we took the text color from the lights at the top of the hotel, as a contrast to the deep blue background color.

And voila! There you have it … a page as beautiful as the hotel itself.

Have a great weekend, and take some time to explore more of our new books and play around with our Creator tool!

Matchy Mixbooks are afoot,
Alison