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Monday, December 27, 2010

Let it snow, Let it snow, Let it snow

Here's my snowflake alpha from last year. With all the snow I thought it would be a good idea to post it again.

download here

If you've been wondering where I've been or what I've been up too.. the answer is NOT SCRAPPING that's for sure. My son has been keeping me busy. I've suspected he might be ADD all year. I finally was able to get someone to listen to my concerns and he's being tested this Wednesday.

Besides that issue, he has Amblyopia in the right eye. We've been patching his left eye to try to get his brain to use the right, but the doctor didn't sound too hopeful at our appointment in Nov. I bought these eye patches for him and they've been working out great! He has to get used to them but it's much better than the sticky patches.

With any luck things won't be so crazy around here and I'll get back to making freebies and doing calendars.

Friday, November 19, 2010

Speed Scrap Sat Nov 20

I am hosting my very first speed scrap tomorrow night at StufftoScrap.com


I hope you can join me tomorrow night. I am anything but -conventional- so don't expect the last step to be journaling and shadowing!!

Wednesday, November 03, 2010

Trick Or Treat by Scraps of Ellay

I've been using the kit Trick Or Treat by Scraps of Ellay to create our Halloween layouts.


There are so many cut elements of kids in costumes. My son had been asking me to be a witch so I scapped that story so I wouldn't forget it years to come. And I couldn't pass up creating a layout with him fast asleep at the dinner after trick or treating. Now I just have to make a few pages in between ;-)


Wednesday, October 27, 2010

It's Me

Check out this kit by Scrapteam 2008 called It's Me


it's always a challenge for me to design with a girly kit since I'm a boy mommy but I ended up having fun with the photos I worked with.


Tuesday, October 12, 2010

FALL in Love Kit - FREEBIE!!

This month I participated in the October Color Challenge over at Stuff To Scrap. Make sure you check the thread to get the other freebies.

Once I got started I had a hard time stopping, so mine is a little more than a "mini kit" but still a FREEBIE!!!!! I hope you enjoy it and please let me know when you use it, I'd love to see your work!

The photos in the preview are of my son pumpkin picking this weekend.

Make sure you download both files
Papers
Elements



Saturday, October 02, 2010

Back to Scrapin'

yes I'm been missing in action. Haven't felt like blogging or doing much scrapping or design work. I spent most of the summer taking care of health issues. Then in Sept my family went on a 2 week vacation to Disney World. It took another two weeks to rest after we came home! I just started scrapping in the last two days.

I created these two layouts using I Heart Milk by Designs by Christi - which is on sale now so check it out! there is even a cute add on




and I made this double page layout about our Disney Trip using Dreamin by Digi-designs by Nicole


This wonderful Disney kit comes with 15 papers and 45 embellishments and is only $3.99! It's a wonderful kit for all you Disney people!


I hope to be creating a few more freebies and I know those of you who collect my calendar pages must be waiting for them!

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Working with a Template Tutorial & Freebie

My very first TUT - Working with a Template.

I've been taking workshop classes at Digi Scrapbook Mania and telling my sister-in-law Susan (hi Susan I know you read my blog) about them. She said it sounded like she could even learn something from these workshops.

Today we had to work with a template - which I've done several hundred times but I was surprised to see how many others hadn't. So I'm going to give you a quick lesson in using a template QUICKLY and more efficiently with short cuts. ((Mac users I don't know your short cut keys, but hopefully you can figure it out))

First here's a FREEBIE a Template called LOVE in psd format only. I created this layout for a clustering workshop so I turned it into a freebie since so many people gave me such wonderful feedback.
here's my layout:

The kit I used is called Pimp My Picture by Dilo Designs the font I used is called Mr. and Mrs. Popsicle from Kevin and Amanda's Fonts

Remember I'm giving you my Fun Colorful Alpha if you use something I've made and credit me. click here for more details.
Hey Kacy keep reading cause I can help you play along too!

Preview of the Template

Download HERE



Now on with the tutorial
opening the "Teaching Template and follow along with me
since I already listed credits for Pimp My Picture by Dilo Designs I am going to continue working with that kit.

You can see that I have Photoshop Elements open with the folder of the kit next to it. That way I can see all the elements and papers and easily drag what I want over into Elements.

If you've never done that before just CLICK AND HOLD on the paper or element you want, then drag it right over into elements. Your cursor will have a little + under it as you are dragging it over. It does take some getting used to if you've never done it before.


Now that we have the paper in Photoshop, I'm going to click on the background layer of the template so when I drag over the paper it will be on top of the layer I want it.


By holding the SHIFT key when I drag it, it places that paper dead center.


Next I'm going to select another paper from the folder and drag it over also


Click on the layer that you want this paper to be, drag it onto the template. if you hold SHIFT down while you drag it will place the paper in the center.

You should have the hang of the dragging into Photoshop and dragging onto the template now. It takes some practice if you haven't done it before, but its much faster than clicking on File>Open>Look In

Now I want to "clip" or "group" that 2nd paper, with the layer. all you do is hold Ctrl and hit the letter G (Ctrl+G) POOF the paper is now clipped with that layer and LOOK it even has a shadow already because it's on the template layer!


Next I like to make my clipping permanent, because sometimes you accidentally move your grouped layer. By clicking Ctrl + E you will merge the clipping layer to the template layer.

the clipping and the merging comes in so handy if you are using a template with multi photo or paper areas. Or if you want to whip up a template quickly!


Lets continue to drag over a paper and clip it on the 3 other layers called papers. And if you don't like the papers you selected you can always drag over more and clip and merge until you're happy with how it looks.

Also before you "merge" you can move around the clipped paper to decide how you want the pattern to look.
here I have the 2nd block showing the pattern paper one way

and here I moved it around a little


I like the 2nd one, so I'm going to merge it now Ctrl+E

You also can see when you merge it that the Bounding Box changes size, since the paper is no longer 12x12

I finished my paper clippings, so I'm moving onto my swirl in the back. Maybe I'll use a swirl, maybe a paint splatter that's the great thing about templates - someone else did the composition for you so you just have to place the elements you like best!

Here I placed the swirl, it's still in it's original size. Please please please remember to RESIZE YOUR ELEMENTS! I see so many layouts with GIANT buttons or ribbons. Think about it this way, would you wear a shirt with giant buttons like that? No so why should your layout have to suffer?

Hold down the ALT key to resize any paper or element while maintaining the correct proportions.

You can already see that the smaller swirly is more pleasing to the eye. Then again you might be someone who likes the giant elements... My @$$ is giant enough so I make my elements smaller!

I did a little rotation of the swirl and hid the template's swirl layer. Now I can see that there seems to be an empty space after I hid that swirl layer. What do you think?


I'm going to duplicate that swirl layer. Fast way is to click Ctrl +J! I made the 2nd swirl a little smaller by holding Alt when resizing and rotated it. I am pleased with how that looks.


Moving onto the flowers

Drag over any flower you want to use, using the steps above. click on the flower layer so your flower element will be placed above that flower. You don't need to hold shift down to make it center, you can just drag the element and aim for that area on the template you want the flower to show up.

Sometimes I notice PSE gets a little freaky and will drop your dragged element to the center if you are holding shift or not, so don't worry if that happens.

And don't forget to resize!! Look how crazy big this flower looks in the original size! Designers create their elements larger because you get a higher quality product.


I'm using one flower so I hit Ctrl+J to
duplicate it two more times. I moved the 2 other flowers over to the flower location on the template. I also rotated my little flowers so they each look a little different


Now here's a cool little thing. I don't feel like messing around with the shadows. What the template came with is good enough for me. Right click on the template's flower and a menu will show up. Move down and select "Copy Layer Style"


Move up to your flower element and right click on that and select "Paste Layer Style"


Do that with all 3 flowers, and make sure you hide the template's flower layers by clicking on the eyeball for that layer.


Time to add my current favorite photo of me with my son. I do the same thing, open my photos in the folder and drag over the picture into PSE. Then drag the photo onto the template. Rotate it a little to be the same angle as the photo layer, resize it, group it, merge it.


Do final tweaking to the layout. I changed the flower sizes and position then added a splatter over the swirls.


Now for those of you like Kacy who do not want to have their photos on the web... after you resize the photo to 600X600 so you can upload it to most digi-galleries, just blur out the photo! if you are a scrapper and you aren't participating on a scrap website out there you are missing out on a lot of knowledge and freebies!

here's how to blur
Ctrl+J to duplicate your photo. Go up to Filter>Blur>Gaussain Blur and set the blur to a little over 50%. This will blur out the faces and places just leaving enough to make out that there is a figure in the picture.


Group Ctrl+G your Blurred photo to your non blurred photo so you can still see the drop shadow.


And please non of this alien looking blurring of the eyes, it's creepy!



I really hope this helps some of you out there and gets Kacy on some sites!


Please let me know if this helped you! Enjoy the templates

Friday, July 09, 2010

Christmas in July Sale

There's a Christmas in July sale going on over at ScrapMatters


ScrapMuss designs has this cute mini kit for the sale


here's what I made with it

My son is ONLY 11 weeks old in the pictures. He was HUGE when he was born 10.3 lbs so he looked older his whole first year. Then his height started matching his weight.

Happy Scrapping hope you get some good deals during the sale

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