Club Scrap Valentines Blog Hop

Hello everyone!

Happy Valentine's Day to you all.

Many of you know that it is not only this very special romantic day but it is also my wedding anniversary.  So I thought it would be apposite to dig into my photo archives and work up a layout with one of my own wedding photos.

First off, open a new blank 12" x 12" document.  I always do this with a transparent background at 300ppi.

For the background, I have selected papers from 2011 LoveInk and 2012 LoveBlooms and blended three of them together.

Once blended, I have added a stamp from my stash.

Opened a photo from my own wedding and overlayed this photo on top of the stamp and created a clipping mask.

Then I went back into my wedding photos and found one that I felt would work with the layout I was creating.  Also I went to see what extras I could find to use and found a perfect cluster from Love Blooms.

Added the photo behind the cluster and erased the excess.

Added some brushed hearts to the background layer and here is the final layout.

I do hope you have enjoyed this very simple and quick layout.  Your next stop is:

http://debduzscrappin.blogspot.com/2015/02/valentines-day-blog-hop-i-love-canvas.html

Club Scrap Blog Hop January 2015 - Constellations

Happy New Year everyone.  I do hope that you all had an amazing holiday and are ready to get started crafting again.

So lets get started right away with Constellations.  I thought it would be cool to "cartoonize" a photo for a layout with this kit.

First open up a new file 12" x 12" at 300 ppi and transparent background.  Then find a photo that you would like to use and open that up too.

I am hoping that Tricia, Brenda, Kay and Karen will not mind me using this cute photo of the four of them which I found the other day!

Anyway, drag the photo onto the blank layout and close the original.

With most photos you will want to increase the overall contrast; go to Image>Adjustment>levels and using the input levels sliders, adjust to your liking.  For this I used 25 for the black, 1.13 for the grey and 220 for the white.

You want to end up with a strong contrast but not too dark.

Now we are going to add some film grain to the photo.  Go to Filters>Filter gallery>artistic>film grain.  For this I used grain at 5, highlight area at 0 and intensity at 10.  Hit OK.  Then duplicate the layer twice.

Rename the second layer to Screen and use the blend mode of screen also.

Rename the third layer halftone and apply a half tone pattern to this layer.  Go to Filter>Pixellate>Color halftone

Set the max radius to 4 and leave everything else at default and hit OK.  Set the blend mode of the third layer to darken and hit ok.

Here you can see that the graininess of a newspaper cartoon has magically happened.

Now go to layers>merge visible and you have your cartoonized photo ready to be used in a layout.

I added a stroke to the outside of the photo also.

Now for the completed layout using this cartoonized photo.  I used two papers, an embellishment overlay and stamp from Constellations.  The balloon came from Comics.

I do hope you like what I have done here and will consider using cartoonization in the future.  If your photo is not quite what you expected or is slightly blurry this is a wonderful solution to enable you to use it.

Your next stop is:

http://debduzscrappin.blogspot.com/

Club Scrap - December 2014 Blog Hop - Reunion

I do hope you all had an extremely Merry Christmas and that Santa brought you all some goodies.

This month I am going to attempt to do something totally different.  This is called Paint Splatter Portrait and I thought that the Reunion kit would be awesome to use for this.

First up, open a photo, duplicate the image and convert it to black and white and then close the original photo.  I am using a photo of my estranged daughter and grandson for this.

Next open up a new image 12" x 12" with a white background.

Now move your photo onto the new canvas you have created and close out the photo.

Next you are going to use a levels adjustment layer to blow out most of the whites and darken the blacks.  Go to Layer>new adjustment layer>levels.

Click the toggle lever on the right and slide it towards the middle to increase the white; click to toggle lever on the left and slide it to the middle to increase the black.  At this point be careful not to go too far with either of these adjustments so that you maintain features on the faces.  Once you have done this hide the background layer and then go to layers>merge visible.

Now you need to add a layer mask.

At this point DON'T PANIC!!

Hopefully your photo will have disappeared.

Choose a brush and set your foreground color to white.

Click on the black mask in the layers panel and begin brushing and/or stamping.  You can adjust the flow and opacity of your brush at any time.  What you are seeing here is a fuzzy round brush "revealing" some of the photo below it.

Here is what I ended up with for this photo and now comes the fun stuff.

I wanted to make a new gradient fill layer so I created a new fill layer above the layers I have worked with so far and made a gradient using the colors from the Reunion kit.  Once you have the gradient set the property of it to overlay or soft light.

Make a new layer and do your gradient.  I have further adjusted mine using the blend options and lowered the opacity of the gradient a bit.

Now you can complete your layout as normal.  I have actually made brushes out of some of the stamps from the reunion kit and will be applying those on their own layers at their own opacities shortly but right now I am looking to see what extras I can use to make this layout work.

Here is what I ended up with:

I hope you have enjoyed this creative process and something totally different.  As always your response means a lot to me so please ask questions if you want to.

The next stop is:

http://craftycolonel.blogspot.com/2014/12/club-scrap-reunion-blog-hop.html

Holiday Blog Hop - Just in time for Christmas 2014

Needless to say, as soon as Karen posted about the holiday blog hop I knew that I had to be part of it, I guess I have to be part of everything but with the new kits that came out the week before Thanksgiving, it really was a no brainer for me to let Karen know that I was in!

Anyway - here is my offering.

Over the years of digital scrapbooking and card making and other digital activities, I have come across many many templates and projects which I have collected.  Here is just one of them.

This is a template for making a small box.  The base is 2.25" square and the height is 1.5" for each side.  The template makes the most adorable pyramid box which can hold some candy goodies or other goodies if you like.  

With the advent of our new Christmas kits I thought it would be very cool to make a little box up with a gift tag with the name of each of the people who are going to be celebrating Christmas with us this year.

So here you can see I have pulled in a background paper and added Mr. Gnome from the original Gnomes collection.  

At the same time I am creating tags with the names of all who will be at our Christmas dinner.

Now for the tag.  Opened up a new blank piece of paper and pulled in Mr. and Mrs. Gnome.

There are many different ways to make a tag now.  What I have done is found a good tag shape and used it as a mask to make the tag.

At this point I extended the length of the tag so that I had room to put names at the bottom.

Here you can see the tag in place with the box ready to print, cut, score, fold, fill and finish ready to enjoy.

Printed 6 copies.

Cut and scored each one and inked the edges of each tag and stamped each person's name using tiny alphabet stamps.

Filled each box with Hershey's Christmas kisses and added black waxed linen thread into the holes at the top of each peak.  Here is the first finished box, tag and all.

And all 6 finished boxes which will be used as place holders for our special Christmas dinner.

I do hope you have all enjoyed my entry into the Holiday blog hop.

Time to wish you all an extremely Merry Christmas and point you in the direction of the next stop.

http://clubscrap.com/2014-holiday-blog-hop/

Club Scrap Blog Hop - Lakes - November 2014

Well this month I figured I would do a tutorial about how to make a special background using punched out circles but our very own Ron beat me off the mark with a great tutorial about turning Julie's punched circle backgrounds into a digital treat.  So the thinking cap went back on and it has been really hard to come up with something that works well with such a tremendous kit.

Here goes.

Have you always looked at layered sketches and wondered how they work?  Well I am going to help you along with your first try at them.  With a little information about the sketches and how to work with them, and some step by step instructions on how to complete a layout using a sketch - you will soon be playing with every sketch that Club Scrap provides to us.

Here are some examples of sketches which I have randomly chosen from previous kits.

Since you do not have to worry about design, you can really focus on kit selection, and making your pages come to life with color, patterns, journalling and of course most importantly your photos.

An important thing to remember is that the sketches are not concrete.  You don't have to use everything in a sketch and if you want to delete a row of brads or a piece of paper you can.  The sketch is to help you get started along the creative process and you can make it your own any way you want.  You can replace or trade any element or paper any way you want to.  You can resize anything or change anything to make the layout truly your own.  Most layered templates do not include layer styles.  Personally I add those once I have my photographs in place.

For the Lakes kit I have chosen to use a sketch that came with a kit in the past.  Some of you may remember October 2008 - Private Eye.  I felt that the sketch I have chosen works well with the photo and Lakes kit so please forgive my creative license of using this sketch instead of one from Lakes. 

Since the photo I want to use is portrait orientation I will rotate the sketch 90degrees clockwise.  Go to Image, Image rotation, 90 degrees clockwise and hit enter.

What you get looks like this.

Open up the paper you would like to use as your background and move it over to the layered sketch (either drag and drop or copy and paste).

Once you have your background in place you can add your mat and the photo you are using.

You can see here that the sketch has a suggested placement for a fiber.  I am not going to use a fiber like this so I just hide that particular layer.  Meantime, I have opened up the digital extras that came with the Lakes kit.  I pretty much know what I want to use for the layout but here is the selection of what we got.

The left facing fish are going to be on the layout but reversed and resized.

At this point I want to add layer styles.

Now all I need is some journalling and I have chosen a stamp from those that came with the kit.  I also added a fiber and here is the finished layout.

I do hope you have enjoyed this tutorial on how to use the wonderful sketches that are provided to us by Club Scrap.  Your next stop is

http://craftycolonel.blogspot.com/

Club Scrap Blog Hop October 2014 - Homestead

Today I thought I would show you how to create a digital quick page that you can save to use time and again.  So with no further ado open up a new blank canvas with a transparent background.

Once that is done the world is your oyster so to speak.

Now select some of the papers and elements you would like to use.  At this point you can start building your quick page.

Here you can see that I have two different papers stacked and have used the rectangular marquee tool to select (rectangle surrounded with marching ants).

Go to edit and you will then be able to "cut" the selected rectangle out of the paper that his highlighted in the layers panel.  Duplicate this set of actions and you will create a "hole" in which to put a photo.

Wouldn't you know it, but CS has come up with a perfect cluster to go along with our newly created hole.

I have decided that the background paper (patterned) is too loud so went back and changed the opacity a bit.

Add your photo.

Select your stamp and in this case I thought that picking a color from the cluster was cool so used that.

Apply your layer styles at this point if you wish and you now have a finished layout.

Here is the finished layout with the photo and layer styles applied.

Now that you have a really pretty layout you need to remove the photo that you have tested your layout with.  What I typically do is turn off the photo using the eyeball in the layers panel.

To make this layout usable as a quick page, you will need to save it as a merged file.  A word of caution here - if you go ahead and flatten your layers at this point, your hole will not remain transparent.  So you need to go to Layers>merge visible.

The file type that is best is a .png which will give you the most color information at 300ppi.

This is the dialog box which appears when you go to save.

Once you hit the save button you have a quick page that you can use again and again.

Here are some examples.

As you can see - quick pages can be used for many different types of photos.

I hope you all enjoy my little tut on how to make a quick page.  Of course you can make these as simple or as complicated as you like.

Your next stop on the blog train is http://craftycolonel.blogspot.com/