MDS Content Discs + PSE9 Tutorials

Using Stampin’ Up! MDS Disc Content with Photoshop Elements

Disclaimers and explanations:  

This tutorial is aimed at the Australian/NZ market where we don’t yet have MDS available, but do have the discs available to purchase in our Stampin’ up! product range.   I am using PSE9, on my Mac.  

 Already a Digital Scrapbooker?

If you already do Digital Scrapbooking with Photoshop Elements, then you probably already know how to use the brushes, embellishments, and digital papers contained in the MDS Discs.  Please note that you cannot use the Photobook  or scrapbook page templates as “quick pages” where you simply drag and drop your photographs.  This is disappointing, admittedly.  You may be able to use them as hybrid pages.

 First Step:  Downloading MDS Content.

For the purpose of this tutorial, I’m using the Eventful Year Disc.

When you insert your disc, you’ll encounter this:

Click on the “Extract for Other Applications” icon, and wait for it to download.

Once downloaded, as with any digital scrapbooking products, save it to your computer.

When you open the Eventful Year content, you’ll see something like this:

If you click on the MDS jpeg icon (the one highlighted), you’ll see a picture of everything in the disc, like so:

Well, that’s not actually true.  You get much more!  Not shown are the stamps (Brushes), the DSP, and the embellishments.

Loading and Saving the Stamps/Brushes into PSE

This process is the same for any digital brushes you might have.  These are files with .abr at the end.  What PSE calls “Brushes” are stamps you can use in your projects.

Open PSE, click the little paintbrush icon along the left hand side menu, then click on the drop down Brushes menu , as shown:

Then you’ll see some arrows to the right of the Brush drop down Menu.  Click there to go to another drop down menu, and select “Load Brushes”

Go to wherever you saved the disc content on your computer and select the .abr files to load.

Now that your brushes are loaded up, you need to save them!

Go to the same drop down box as before, but this time select “Save Brushes”, follow the prompt to save.

How to Use the Digital Content

Now you have it loaded up, what do you do with it?  Quite simply, anything you like!  I’ve used it to make a Facebook Timeline Banner, a Blog Header and buttons, Scrapbook Layouts, mousepads, luggage tags, marketing tools, and more.  

What about the Templates?

If you are a regular Digital Scrapbooker, you’ll have a supply of “Quick Pages” you use to make easy layouts - where you just drag and drop your photographs into the template and call it good.  Unfortunately, you cannot do that with the MDS Content and PSE.

You can use the template as the basis of a hybrid page - where you combine traditional scrapbooking methods with digital scrapbooking.  In this case, you’d print out the template (at home, scaled to an 8 x 8 size perhaps unless you have an A3 printer) and then apply your photographs, printed at the appropriate size in the template.

I’ll be covering the beginning-to-end creation process of some projects soon.  Watch this Space!