Club Scrap Blog Hop April 2015 Botanicals

Well here we are again and what an absolutely lovely kit for the month of April.  The colors are so appropriate for April - what with the beginning of spring and Easter and Mother's day coming up.  As soon as I saw the first spoiler for this kit I absolutely knew what I was going to do for my blog post.

Of course in the middle of preparing my notes I did the Shatterproof challenge and made some layouts using this wonderful Botanicals kit.  Here is just one.

The rest of them have been posted in my gallery in the Club Scrap Forum and on Facebook.

Anyway, enough of that - here is what we are doing this month.  I figured that this topic had not really be visited in the past.

Negative Space!

or 

White Space!

What both refer to are areas on your layout which do not have anything in them.  It does not have to be white but what is important is the arrangement of your photos/elements/text etc. 

As a design factor, negative space is used to add symmetry to your layout to make it look clean and natural.  Negative or White space should be used to align or balance elemental objects to make them look more pleasing.

Here is an example.

Generally speaking the design factor is not really important to me when I digi or paper scrap.  I tend to go with what feels good probably looks good and of course, with digi scrapping you can always delete!

So now we are going to construct a layout using the Botanicals kit.  I am off to find a photo now.

Here it is!

Open a new blank 12" x 12" document with a transparent backgound at 300 ppi.

You could use the rule of thirds for making negative space layouts and get really technical about it but I tend to go with my gut and put the focal photo somewhere off center and build from there.  You will see in the next photo that I have decided to use a mask for this photo.

I felt at this point that I would build a quick template to use here.  So here is what I have so far.

It is already coming together quite well.  Now I have added the photo and a couple of additional elements to the template.

Now the time has come to experiment with background paper to see what will work with this.  After much trial and error I found that the lovely pink worked well so here it is with the paper added!

Now for a little embellishment and a few words.

And here is the final layout.

I do hope you like what I have done with negative space and will play around with this on your own.  

Your next stop on the hop is:

http://shonascraps.blogspot.com/2015/04/BotanicalsBloghop.html

Club Scrap Blog Hop March 2015 - 50s Kitchen

It's that time of the month again but before we get started I wanted to thank all of you for the comments and love you have left me.  It really does mean a lot to me.

Anyway, today I thought we could take a look Making a Silhouette!

There are lots of different ways to make silhouettes but I think this method is probably the easiest. First you have to select a suitable photograph and desaturate it.  When selecting the photograph, find one that has some contrast but not too much fine detail.  Here is the photo I have chosen prior to doing the desaturation.

You will see that this image is "almost" a silhouette already!  Also to do the desaturisation go to Image>adjustments>desaturise.  Hit enter and you get this!

At this point I applied a levels adjustment layer to give a tad more contrast.

Concentrate on the silhouette shape you want to keep and do not worry about the background.  The background stuff can be erased later.  You just have to make sure that you have a fairly clean outline to select.

You can see that the girl is actually sitting on a rocky precipice and I am going to select the girl with the rocky outcropping.  Use the quick selection tool to select the silhouette.

Here you can see that I have made the selection.

Duplicate the selection once you have the marching ants by using controlJ.

Here you can see that I have 4 layers.  The original photo turned off.  A copy of the original photo desaturated.  The photo with an applied levels mask on it and the selected silhouette portion.  Now you can tidy up around your selection.  You can see that I have some "hairy" bits in various places and I am going ahead to tidy those up.  To do this you can use a variety of ways.  I have chosen to a hard edge brush as an eraser.

Now you have to fill the silhouette with black.  To do this press D so the foreground color is default black, fill the shape and then copy the black shape to a new transparent background and save it as a png on a transparent background.

You are now ready to start playing!

Here is what I came up with. 

I do hope you enjoy my blog post this month.

Your next stop is: http://debduzscrappin.blogspot.com/2015/03/50s-kitchen-blog-hop.html

February 2015 Club Scrap Blog Hop - London Calling

Good morning everyone

Back on 1st February I was totally into the idea of downloading this kit but like many of you, my download kit pointed to Constellations!  Needless to say, I did not have to wait too long for this glitch to be fixed and want to give Julie a shout out for being on top of this for all of us.

Anyway, I downloaded the kit and ended up having all kinds of problems installing it so I have only just managed to get it all installed to take a look.  All I can now say is Wow!

So now what do I do with all this loveliness?

I thought it would be a good idea to revisit using masks in a creative way and what did I see - we got an absolutely gorgeous mask in London Calling.

Now for a photo.  

You can see that I have played around a bit with the photo and that the orientation of the photo is somewhat different than that of the mask.  Never fear.  All will work out.

Bring the photo onto the mask and create a clipping mask.  Add a stroke frame - in this case white around the photo.

Now open up your London Calling papers.  Chose one that you feel will work with your photo and place it under the photo but above the clipping mask.  Make the clipping mask and here you will see that I have changed the paper completely.

To do what you see go to the image menu and match color - you can then play around with the sliders until you get something that you like and hit ok.  Once done you will have something like what you see above.  At this point, merge your visible layers in order to preserve the transparent background.

Open a new file 12" x 12" on a transparent background at 300 ppi.

Bring in your merged photo and mask and close out the original.

Add a background beneath the photo/mask layer.  In this case I have darkened the background considerably to make the photo/mask layer pop.

Now you can have all kinds of fun playing with stamps and embellishment to complete the layout.

Here is my completed layout.

I hope you have enjoyed the process today and will come back to my blog again.  Your next stop is:

http://debduzscrappin.blogspot.com/2015/02/london-calling-blog-hop.html

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/