MDS Monday: Using Page Guides

I can't believe it's been a month since MDS2 came out.  And I'm still discovering new things about it. Last week I was working on an album from a trip we went on last summer to Yosemite, Kings Canyon, Sequoia and Great Basin National Park when I discovered one of these little gems: Page Guides.  These are so helpful when designing in two page spreads.

So what are they?  They are little red lines that span across a two page spread to help you line things up.  How do you use them?  Very simple:

First, you need to make sure the feature is turned on:

I've circled the little icon that turns this feature off and on.  You can also use the menu bar by going to View: Show Guides or you can click ctrl+M.

Once you turn the feature on, to set a guide click anywhere on the rulers that run on the left and top of the page.  You can adjust them by dragging on them with you get the arrows.   I used the guides here to make sure the top and bottom photos on my page where lined up across the spread:

You can see that the bottom pictures on the right don't align with the ones on the left. Using the guides I moved them down so that they could all be aligned. 

You do have to be careful, there is a glitch in the current version of MDS2; if you have the guides on and use your mouse to move a photo box near the line, the photo box mysteriously disappears from view.  I am sure they will fix that soon, but in the mean time use the arrow keys to manipulate those photos when you are working close to the guides.

Here are the final pages:

Colors: Kiwi Kiss, More Mustard, Basic Gray and Chocolate Chip.  Digital Designer Kit: Travel Log. Digital Punches: Arrows.

I tend to take A LOT of pictures when we travel, so I try to maximize the number of photos I can get on each page and keep them pretty simple.  I thought the addition of the arrows with the tags for each photo was kind of a fun touch here and it meant that I didn't need to add any extra journaling.

Don't forget, we have until September 14 to get 31% off print projects so hurry up and get those albums/pages/cards finished!  You know I am.