Wednesday, March 14, 2018

CS Blog Hop March 2018 Daffodils

Oh Joy!  This kit is truly to die for drop dead gorgeous.  As I mentioned at the beginning of the month, I got photos that were perfect for this kit almost immediately.  You have probably all seen the many photos of my new granddaughter Elliot on a multitude of different papers already but ... what a photo worthy subject she is.

We are very fortunate to have such a great baby grand and even more fortunate in that we get to see her almost every day for baby huggies!

Anyway enough rambling.  I am here to write a blog post for the hop.

As always, open up a blank transparent background 12" x 12" at 300 ppi.

























I use the full Photoshop CC and you can see how easy it is to make a new page.

Then open up everything from in the Daffodils kit.  To do this I go to my Bridge>documents and type 0318 in the search box and hit Enter.

























Here I have opened a new document and pulled in a photo of Elliot.  This baby is so photogenic it is hard to choose photos to use but this one shows her being a little startled - hence the big eyes!

























This photo has such hard edges that I really want to use a mask to soften all the sides.

In Adobe Bridge, I have opened up my folder that has all my masks in it.

























From here on it is realtively straight forward.  I need to find a mask that will soften the right side of this photo quite a lot and also the top and left side as well.  The bottom I can deal with using eraser brushes.

I think this one will work but I may need to resize.  Anyway, drag the mask and position it on top of the photo.  Once there, go to Edit>transform>scale and a binding box with handles will appear for you to change the size of the mask.  If you want to keep the proportions the same, use the shift key when you drag out on the handles.  Once you are happy, hit the enter key or check mark.  That sets the mask.  Then move the mask behind the photo and select the photo layer and go to layer>create clipping mask and voila!

























I am not sure if you can see this but at the top of the photo there is a distinct straight line.  I do not want anything with straight lines on this layout so I am going to use a very soft fuzzy brush to remove the straight line part of the mask and photo.  When that is done, you may want to merge your layers so you can resize without losing the correct aspect ratio of the photo.  Below, you will see that I have already resized the mask with the photo and brought in one of the cut-aparts.

























Now it is time to bring in a background or two or four!  Here you can see that I am looking at the quadprint from the kit.  Trying to decide what I would like to do is hard.

























Of course anything is possible here.  I do really like that bottom left print, the really light one so I selected part of that and brought it onto its own layer and resized.  Now I do not like this cut-apart but I also brought in another embellishment.

























Total change of direction. 

What happened here is that I used one of the square cut-aparts and added a layer to it and brought in one of the cut out daffodil blooms so that the complete flower is visible above the green frame.

























I like this a whole lot better and now feel that I am able to complete the layout.

























This is now coming together!!  I have added some more embellishments to the layout and now all I need is some word art!

























Above is the completed layout.  It is really very simple.  The most difficult part of digital scrapbooking in my opinion is knowing how to do things.

Anyone is welcome to contact me directly and ask questions but I do have to point out that I use the latest version of Adobe CC and am not too familiar with Photoshop Elements and am not at all familiar with any other non-Adobe product but of course will help where I can.

I do hope you all like my layout and of course my grand daughter too.