Club Scrap Blog Hop October 2015 - Big Top

Well it is that time of the month again.  Usually I have my blog post ready to rock and roll within a couple of days of receiving the kit.  This month I have been totally uninspired and stumped as to what to do.

It is currently 23rd October and I actually have the seeds of an idea germinating in my mind so I thought I better get this idea on paper so to speak and see where it goes.

I have felt for quite a long time that the complete digital templates that come with our kits are very much under-used and almost never altered so I thought that we could take a look at altering one of the templates and creating a new layout.

Open up one of the templates.

You will see that there are several paper elements, a ribbon, a tab, a frame and a couple of photo mats.  You will also see that there are several layers in the layers palette at the right bottom of my screen.

At this point, I have removed the title tag and the tab at the top of the photo by clicking the eye to the left of those items in the layers palette to turn them off.

Here I decided to replace the rectangular photo matte with a brushed mask which I created for another project.

Now we are beginning to see a completely different flavor to the template.  The structure remains the same but we are now entering the world of a more art journal style.

At this point, I thought that I would select my photo to use on the mask so opened up my circus photos.

None of those photos feel right for the layout even though they are all of the model circus at Ringling in Bradenton Florida, so I have closed up that whole folder and gone looking for something else that I think will work.

As an aside here, it was Ariauna's 17th birthday today.  She has grown into such a tremendous young lady and I am sure that many of you will remember seeing lots of layouts of her through the years.

Anyway ... I have now found a photo I would like to use and added it and clipped it to the mask and turned off all the other part of the layout.  The reason I have done this is to check that there are no harsh lines on the photo.

I am not sure if you can see it but there is a harsh line at the top of the photo which I am going to soften.  To do this I selected a fairly grungy brush, adjusted the size and used it as an eraser on the photo and the mask.

Now is the time to turn on all the other elements in this layout.

The fun part is about to begin.  I still don't care for the title block or the tab on this layout so they will be turned off.  Also, you can see that the photo I selected is a vertical format - we will fix orientation later on.

Here I have opened up 4 papers which I think will work with the photo I chose.  Clip the papers to the layer masks of the papers and then use the layer styles menu to make drop shadows to add some depth to each layer.

You will see that I have not used a background paper for layer matte 4.  I like the way it looks with just a white fill.

Leaving the black and white photo mattes also works with this photo and I think the subjects do stand out well.

Now to finish off the layout.  I selected one of the stamps that came with the kit and a fiber.  Added both to their own separate layers and then used a gradient to color the stamp.

I do hope you like the finished layout.

Your next stop is:

http://carpe-memoria.blogspot.com/2015/10/big-top-blog-hop.html

Club Scrap Blog Hop September 2015 - Transformations

Yesterday I was out most of the day and only managed to download, unzip and install this totally glorious kit in the middle of the afternoon.

You have probably all seen the several layouts I have already made with this fabulous kit.  Jill P commented in the middle of the first page of the Transformations digital thread that "You must be enjoying this kid".  When I get so prolific I am definitely enjoying the kit.

Here we are a few days later and what do I see on the blog but a time treasured technique using bleach, so I thought I would create my layout doing the digital version of this.

Here is the photo!  Mr. Wonderful and my youngest stepdaughter are enjoying one of their most "favorite" activities.

As usual open up a new canvas.  Mine is 12" x 12" and transparent background at 300 ppi.

Now for the background.  This is called digital bleach.

You will see from my layers palette on the right here that I have two background papers stacked.

To create the digital bleach open up the borders and backgrounds stamp sheet and choose one or two of them and make them into brushes.

I am just going to use one brush (the gingko leaf).

You can see I have selected the stamp using the lasso tool and gone to the edit menu and selected define brush preset > enter and you have created your brush.  The magic is now going to happen.

To create digital bleach you need to play around with the flow and opacity settings of your eraser brush.  What you see now is the opacity at 100%, 75%,50% and 25%.  You can see this quite clearly in the bottom right corner.

You can gradually build on this by using a combination of digital bleaching and regular digital stamping using the same brush to create the border you can see here.

Once you are happy with what you have created, you can start adding more embellishments and build your layout.

Here is the complete layout.  I hope you have enjoyed this very simplified version of digital bleaching.

Your next stop is:

http://dishingwithjanet.blogspot.com/2015/09/these-cards-rock.html

Club Scrap Blog Hop August 2015 - Woven Strands

So the digi kit got here on 1st August.  It got downloaded, unzipped and installed and ... I started a thread in the forum almost immediately.  In my haste to get a layout up, I did not name the thread correctly.  Apologies.

The good news is that there are lots of layouts and cards already in the thread.

As always I am slightly stumped as to what to do for you all this month but I know that I will find something.  After all it is only the 3rd of August today!!!

Now it is 6th August and I have an idea which I hope you will all like.  What I am going to do is the technique challenge for August.

First off, open a new blank canvas 12" x 12" and transparent background.

Now open up a whole bunch of background papers which will be used for color selection.

What we are going to do is "paint" a new background using the colors in the background papers as our palette.  You will need to open up your brush palette now.

I have made a start here using two of the background papers with a round fuzzy brush and just dotted the transparent background randomly.

Continue doing this while at the same time varying the brush size until you have the background completely covered.

I am accelerating the process here a bit and have added a layer filled with just white.

To do the shaving foam technique digitally, go to filter>pixellate>mezzotint>medium lines and you get this:

Now to to filter>blur>radial blur and set the slider to 100, blur method to zoom and quality to best and apply this as many times as you like until you are happy with the result.

Here I have applied this filter twice and really like the soft result.

Duplicate the layer and remain on the original layer and go to filter>distort>twirl and set the angle value to what pleases you in the new dialog box.  You will see a sketch of the twirl angle in the bottom right of the new dialog box that appears.

Go to the new layer and do the exact opposite of what you just did on your original layer.

Alter the new layers blend mode to lighten, merge the layers and voila!

Now you can go ahead the build a layout or card or other project.

Here is the finished layout.

I hope you have enjoyed my creative journey.

Here is another that I did using one of the Qddl pages that came with the kit this month.

Your next stop is:

http://cathyjgray.typepad.com/the_artful_gamut/2015/08/woven-threads-blog-hop.html

Club Scrap Blog Hop July 2015 - Cantina

Well it is that time of the month again.  I am starting my blog entry a tad early this month because I have had my thinking cap on ever since I saw the spoiler for the July kit.  You all know that I absolutely love bright colors and Cantina promises to be a sure winner.

Anyway, while I am pondering the new kit (which will be here in a couple of days), I thought I would let you all know how grateful I am for all the love that you leave me each month.  It means such a lot to me and encourages me to continue with my monthly blog for Club Scrap.

Here goes for July.  Here is something that I came across a while back but could not decide what photo to use for it.  Now that Cantina is here I have chosen a photo that I think will be much enhanced by the lovely colors and textures of this wonderful kit.

Here is the photo.

As always, open up a blank new document with a transparent background.  I have already selected a background and placed my photo on it.

You will see that I have roughened up the photo at the bottom.

Now add another layer and type some text. I have chosen Forte regular from my font library and resized my text to make it really pop.

An aside here - fonts are rather temperamental and can cause crashes.  They also take up a lot of space.  What I do fairly regularly is clear out the fonts that I just do not use.  By doing that, my font library becomes a whole lot more manageable.  Also I keep all my downloaded font zip files on an external hard drive so I can always find the font again if I need to.

Going back to the layout, I thought it would be fun to do something a little different.  My version of photoshop has a solid 3D component so I thought we could do 3D for the big title.

When you hit yes a whole lot of magical stuff happens!

Here you can see that I have been playing around with textures and gradients.  I think that enough has been done with this title now.

Enough fun!  I added one of the beautiful overlays and now I really think that this is done.

I do hope that you have enjoyed my creative exploration.  Please bookmark my blog so you have it as a reference.

Meantime, your next stop is:

http://jmp1022.blogspot.com/2015/07/club-scrap-blog-hop-july-2015.html

Club Scrap Blog Hop - June 2015 - National Parks

This month I thought I would do something completely different.  I know that many of us are into art journalling and that so many of the books that we make lend themselves to this totally freeing art form, so we are going to make a digital art journal page here.  

Of course page size does not matter so whatever canvas size you are comfortable with works for art journalling.  Most people like to use bigger pages but for this blog I decided to make a slightly smaller page.

As always, open a new blank page on a transparent background.

I chose 8" wide x 10" high.

Now open up a bunch of papers, elements, stamps etc.  and start on your creative journey to build your page.  Art journalling has no recipe, it is all to do with how you feel.

Now it is time to make a start on building my art journalling page.  At this point I have absolutely not idea what direction this will take.

So now I have a background in place and have overlayed it with a CS Texture from 2010.  You can find Volume 1 in the digital store.

Here you can see that I have started building up my background using various papers, textures and layer styles.  You can really get some super depth by playing around with the various styles and filters that come with photoshop.

Now you can see the page building up.  Also I will be rotating it to landscape soon.

I decided to rotate clockwise.

Continue to build until you are happy with what you have.  Here is my final page.  Most of what I used came from the National Parks kit and I also used some elements from my stash.

I do hope that you have enjoyed my little creative journey.

Your next stop on the hop is:

http://shonascraps.blogspot.com/2015/06/MogramCards.html

Club Scrap Blog Hop May 2015 - The Blues

First I would like to thank everyone who has taken the time to leave me a bit of love.  Your comments mean  the world to me.

Now I would like to get into my post for this month.  Many of you have probably seen a lot of layouts from me in our gallery.  That's because I really like this kit.

Anyway this month I thought I would do a variation on a time-honored process.  Years and years ago we used to have sepia photos in our albums.  What I am going to show you is how to do a digital cyanotype.  

I found this photo in my stash.  In this case, I chose a photo that is black and white but if you choose a color photo you can very easily convert it to black and white.

To make the photo a cyanotype, go to Image>Adjustments>hue and saturation and hit enter.

At this point you will see a new dialog box at the top of which is a drop down box saying preset: default.  Click on the down facing arrow and select cyanotype.  Hit OK.

Now you have a cyanotype photo to work with.  Here you can see I have already put my cyanotype photo

onto the layout I am going to build.  Now you can go ahead and select papers and elements and other things that you are going to use to build your layout.  In this case, I want to use a mask beneath the photo.

Here I have selected a mask from my stash and placed it over the photo.

Now it is placed where I want and resized.  Move the mask to below the photo and select the photo.  Go to the layer menu and select create clipping mask and hit enter.  You now have your masked cyanotype.

I always do a merge down here so that the photo does not become detached from the mask if I want to change the order of layers in the stack.  Here I have selected and placed the background I want to use and resized the photo so that it fits across the width of the paper.

I have added a bow and a sprig of leaves and have selected a stamp to use.  I have made the stamp into a brush by selecting it and going to the edit menu and going to define brush preset.

And now for the final layout.

I do hope you have enjoyed this tutorial and my final layout.

Your next stop is:

http://carpe-memoria.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-blues-blog-hop.html