Oh boy do we have fun for you! Today starts our big Buffet Blowout in the store! 50% off all buffets today through December 15!!
Remember spend $10 in the store and get this great kit for free!
Let’s see what our designers have for us this week!
How are your challenges going? Complete 10 challenges and get this kit as a reward!
Don’t Let Your Text “FLOAT”!
PDF Version : https://bit.ly/3ju3KfO
Have you ever wanted to run some text across an element, like a piece of washi tape, a paper ribbon, or even just over a crease in your digital paper, but then look at it and think, “Well that looks like garbage…”? Odds are you feel that way because the text isn’t grounded to the element and looks like it’s floating. Kathi (granny5pics) was in that situation and asked if I could help. This is it!
My example uses a piece of crumpled washi from Cheré Kaye‘s portion of the Beautiful Struggle collab she created with Aimee Harrison and Cindy Ritter, and a very creased label from Cindy Ritter‘s Autumn Treasures. Killing two birds with one stone, as it were.
After I typed out my text and positioned it where I wanted it, I Simplified the layer so that Elements will allow my changes. My method for Simplifying is to right-click on the layer then choose Simplify Layer. It can also be achieved by clicking Layer>Simplify Layer.
Next, I chose the Dodge Tool – the one that looks like the paddle the optometrist uses to close one of your eyes. This tool lightens the area it’s used upon; I like to start with less, then work my way up to more. My settings were Range: Highlights, Exposure: 30% (I adjusted that after I took the screenshot) and 45 pixels for my brush size. Note that I’m working on the text layer, not the tape layer, so the changes I make will only affect the text. I ran the Dodge brush over the parts of the text that are over top of areas where the light creates highlights, the creases on both the tape and the label. For straight lines like the creases in the label, click your Tool at one end of the area you’re working on, hold down the SHIFT key and click just past the other end. Don’t worry about going past the edges of the text; the Tool will only affect the layer you’re on. If you have text that crosses the same crease on multiple lines, you can do all of them in one pass.
Next I switched to the Burn Tool, the “OK” sign, and used similar settings. This tool darkens areas where it’s used. Again, I like to build the effect, because it’s easier to see when to stop. This time, I ran the brush over areas where the text crosses shadowed areas of the tape and the label. I adjusted the Size of the brush to suit the width of the shadowed areas by using the [ key to make it smaller, the ] key to make it larger. Zooming in and out let me see if I needed to go over any areas again.
Here’s a close-up. The arrows point out the areas where I’ve made my adjustments. I can see some dimension beginning to be visible.
I kept Dodging and Burning until I was satisfied. Then I planned how I was going to show the edge of the tape where the ink from my pen wouldn’t have reached the paper below.
The tear at the left edge of the tape is jagged so to help me out, I CTRL/CMD>clicked on the tape layer’s thumbnail to Select the edge, but kept the text layer as my active layer. Then I used a very small Eraser brush to erase a narrow bit of my text. I also shaved a thin strip along the bottom edge of the tape.
If I’d decided it still needed something, I could have used the Smudge Tool – the flying fickle finger of Fate – to gently push the top edge of the text toward the high crease on the tape, knowing that the Smudge Tool blurs the image a bit. But it looked right to me so this is what I’m happy with.
Here’s a Zoomed out look. Can you see the way the text seems to follow the contours of the tape and the creases in the label?
Here they are, side-by-side. I think you’ll all see it now!
PDF Version : https://bit.ly/3ju3KfO
Scrappin’ Serenity (aka Christie)
How can it be the end of the year already? But here we are… getting to know Christie, whose business name is Scrappin’ Serenity and trying to slow down the clock. We recently chatted about what she’d like you all to know about her, and as usual we started with the essential stuff. Here’s a transcript of our conversation.
J: So tell us Christie, how long have you been designing?
C: I started out doing Freebies in 2009 and opened my first shop in March 2010! Wow! I can’t believe it’s actually been that long already!
J: That IS a long time! It’s about when I started giving digital scrapbooking a serious look. Time sure flies! What made you decide to design?
C: I loved making Scrapbook pages, so I decided to dabble in design. And then it became a self supported hobby!
J: It’s always a good thing when your hobby pays for itself. What does your design workplace look like?
C: Currently my workspace is on my laptop, wherever the puppy is. It’s all eyes and hands on deck with her! lol.
J: Oh boy, don’t I know exactly what you mean! They’re cute and cuddly… and can’t be trusted for a second. That segués nicely into asking you to describe your perfect vacation.
C: Anywhere there is a large body of water, my husband, and not a lot of people!
J: Have you found such a place? It sounds exactly like my son-in-law;s happy place. He’s been known to swim in the Atlantic Ocean in April. Is that what would you’d do if you won the lottery?
C: First I would pay off our house, cars, camper, and any other debt. Put money aside for my kids to go to college and start their adult lives. Sell my house, and live a nomad life in my camper. 🙂
J: On an isolate beach somewhere! Are you more likely to dance or sing in the shower?
C: Definitely Singing! lol.
J: Whenever I ask that question I flash back to myself doing both at the same time. I have a Bluetooth speaker in my bathroom that I play my favourite music with and there really is room in the shower enclosure for me to dance! If I remember correctly, the last time was to Walker Hayes’ song AA. But back to you! If time travel was possible, would you go back in time or ahead? Why?
C: I would go back in time and visit with my Grandma and tell her all that she’s missed.
J: I think most of us would love to have the chance to see people we really miss. What are your most favorite and least favorite colors?
C: I LOVE Purples, Teals, and Black. I always tend to shy away from Yellows and Oranges.
J: I don’t love yellow or orange at all, so I’m with you! What would your dream car be?
C: We actually bought my dream car a couple years ago. A 1967 Mustang…just need to get her fixed up, and running, and a new paint job!
J: No kidding?!! That’s incredible. I drove my sister’s boyfriend’s ’67 Mustang convertible once. Such a cool car. If you had a warning label, what would yours say?
C: Runs on Coffee, Chaos, and is Fluent in Sarcasm!
Thank you for sharing these glimpses into your life, Christie! I’m going to remind our readers that Christie is providing the December Daily Download this month, in addition to hosting the Designer Spotlight Challenge and her usual monthly Font Challenge. AND… she’s got a coupon at the same time that her entire store is on sale at HALF PRICE for the entire month!! Check it out… there are some gems in there.
See you all in January for the next installment of Designer Spotlight!
It’s Friday again and that means more goodies in the store. Our wonderful designers have some really cute kits this week.
Remember, spent $10 in the store and you will receive this beautiful collab as a gift.
Now let’s get a peek at the new items in the store.
It’s early in December but have you jumped on those challenges yet? You get a reward for completing 10 challenges, but do you know how it all works? Check out this post in the forum for all the details and then start scrapping: Challenge Reward System Info
You get this great collab as a reward for completing those 10 challenges.
Goodness! Here we are at the beginning of December. How did that happen? If you like Christmas kits, you are going to love all the goodies in today’s newsletter.
Let’s start off this month with our Buffet Bundles. One easy click to add bundles of Buffet goodies to your cart.
There are so many great kits this month Remember with the Buffet, all kits use the same color palette so they can be mixed together to create your perfect kit.
Remember any $10 spent in the store gets you this great collab. Who loves all things {vintage christmas}?
This collab was created by: Craft-tastrophic, Cutie Pie Scraps, Memory Mosaic, and Polka Dot Chicks.
It includes: 1 Alpha {Uppercase, Lowercase, Numbers & Punctuation}, 62 Papers, and 94 Elements.
I love the colors in the December Monthly Mix. It’s always great to be {home for christmas}.
The Monthly Mix collab was created by: ADB Designs, Alexis Design Studio, Karen Schulz, Tami Miller Designs, and Tinci Designs.
It includes: 1 Alpha {Uppercase, Lowercase, Numbers & Punctuation}, 49 Papers, 75 Elements, and 4 12×12 Template {page, png, psd, tif file formats}.
Now to the December Daily Download Sneak Peek. This month’s Daily Download is from Scrappin Serenity! Make sure you are checking the blog every day to get all the pieces of this kit!
We are excited to have a new guest designer join us this month.
Bio:
I am a mom of two college-aged daughters. I began my scrapbooking journey while they were very young. I found myself constantly photographing their childhood and wanting to cherish every special moment. In doing so I learned of digital scrapbooking and became connected with it as I held a previous passion for art and was inspired by how I could combine my many photos with beautiful graphics to relive and preserve these memories. In later years I’ve ventured off into some other creative projects but I found myself missing my roots of digiscrap, so I’m very happy to be back as a guest here at GingerScraps.
Are you ready for the December challenges? Remember any 10 completed challenges gets you this great kit.
This collab was created by: Connie Prince, Lindsay Jane, Magical Scraps Galore, PrelestnayaP Design, and Trixie Scraps.
This collab includes: 1 Alpha {Uppercase, Numbers & Punctuation}, 43 Papers, 105 Elements.
Let’s see a few layouts from our amazing store CT using the challenge reward collab.
Custom Christmas Cards – a Re-view
PDF Version : http://bit.ly/3XM3OHp
Well, I knew it would happen sooner or later. I overdid it last week and have been dragging my butt around for the last couple of days. My brain has been MIA… Not even 12 hours of sleep has helped; I still feel like I’m running through wet concrete. Instead of just posting a sorry-there’s-no-tut-this-week message, I’m going to update an older, but still timely, tutorial for you. Have you seen the price on commercial Christmas/Chanukah cards lately? Crazy. It’s just crazy. So why not make your own?
I’m going to show you how to make 2 personal Christmas cards from 1 sheet of cardstock. The resulting cards are 4 1/4 inches by 5 1/2 inches. You can get 50 envelopes that will hold these beauties at Michaels for $8 (Canadian, so about $5 in the US).
If I would have been thinking I could have skipped this step by putting the dimensions in reverse in the New Document screen. But I didn’t so I had to Rotate the canvas 90°.
Next I snapped a line across the centre of the page, and another from top to bottom. I used the Ruler and the Pencil Tool. To snap a straight line in a project, select the Pencil Tool and set the size of the line you want. I wanted these lines to be faint, so I went with 1 pixel. Line up the cursor with the halfway point along one side of your canvas. You can see a moving dashed line on the Ruler so you’ll know when you’re in the right place. Click once just barely inside the edge of your canvas. Then hold down the Shift key and move the cursor to the same spot on the opposite side and click again. It’s just that easy. Then do the same with the top-to-bottom centre point. These are guidelines for placement of elements and for cutting and scoring later.
Then I opened up the folder where I’d collected the objects I wanted to use. I have a photo taken several Christmases ago, a 3D snowflake from Lindsay Jane‘s Snowed Under kit and a mask from PrelestnayaP‘s December Wishes.
Working in the lower left corner of the canvas, I opened up the Shape Tool, chose the Rectangle, set a Fixed Size of 5.25 by 4 inches and chose a darkish green colour.
The resulting rectangle will fit inside the guidelines for one card. and by Simplifying the layer, I can make adjustments to it as needed because it’s now a Smart Object.
The next step is to add the mask. I resized it to fit inside the green rectangle completely.
The photo went on top of the mask and was resized to approximately the size I’d need. I want the deer and some of the illuminated snow visible later.
Clipping the photo to the mask is simple. Right click>Create Clipping Mask or CTRL/CMD>ALT>G for more recent versions of PSE or just CTRL/CMD>G for versions pre-15.
Final position tweaks included a little shifting and a little more shrinking.
I chose a gold colour from my photo to use for the sentiment. Here’s where all those amazing fonts you have in your stash will come in handy. You can make this text as personal as you want, even making it family- or person-specific. But it still looked like it needed something. So I CTRL/CMD>clicked on the green rectangle layer’s thumbnail to select the outer edges of the rectangle. Then Select>Modify>Contract.
I pondered for a nanosecond how much I should shrink my selection and settled on 25 pixels.
And then I added a Stroke to the new selection. Edit>Stroke (Outline) Selection
I then used the same gold as for the text and added my Stroke. The position for this isn’t a make-or-break thing, so don’t obsess over it.
Yes, I think that’s what it needed.
The final step for this card is to add a trademark to the back. I went with the green for this.
Knowing that it’s on the BACK of the card and should be readable with the card right-side-up, I Rotated the text 180°. Alternatively, I could use that tip Pam K posted from a few weeks ago: Click the Image tab>Rotate>Flip Layer Vertical. Much easier!!
I’m going for 100% honesty here… I saw a card like this second one on Pinterest so I’m not taking credit for the idea. (Ignore the typo on the screenshot please!) I added a new blank layer to the stack and Loaded some watercolour Brushes. These are from a set of 20 free brushes from Brusheezy. I chose 3 shades of wintery blue for the brush area.
I layered the brushes, each on its own layer so I can make adjustments to just one – or all – if I need to.
For a bit of contrast I chose an aqua for the topmost brush layer.
I added in the snowflake and sized it appropriately. But it wasn’t quite enough by itself. So I added a Layer Style from Ooh La La Scraps‘ In the Frosty Air collection.
It still was missing something so I turned off the snowflake layer for a second and added a white paint splatter. That makes a big difference!
A few words and it’s pretty much what I was looking for.
A trademark on the back in the dark blue and it’s finished! [Just Copy the trademark layer and nudge it into place.]
I saved the file as a .png so the printer wouldn’t need to add a white background to everything. To turn this into cards, I’ll load up my printer with white cardstock and print several copies. Using my guillotine cutter I’ll cut the cards apart on the top-to-bottom guideline and score then fold along the side-to-side guideline. I choose to print my sentiments for the inside of the card on resume paper (it’s a bit fancier than regular printer paper) and trim to fit the inside of the folded card. Word art would be perfect for this! Here’s a handy tip for searching in the GingerScraps Shop. On the left side of the Shop home page there’s a Search box. Type the theme/word you’re looking for in the box, then click on Advanced Search. When the Search panel opens up, untick Product Title and SKU, then type Word Art in the Search in Category box as shown. Magically, you’ll have a handful or so of results – only word art that relates to your key words! It’s fabulous.
Another option is to use a sentiment stamp and ink in a colour to match the front of the card. All that’s left is to sign them, pop them into their envelopes and mail them! Best part? There’s still time to make a stack of them and get them in the mail!
PDF Version : http://bit.ly/3XM3OHp
Happy Black Friday. We’ve got a large newseltter for you today so we’ll just jump right in.
Remember if you spend $10 in the store, you get this great kit free.
Happy Shopping!!!
Quick Trick: Auto Colour Correction
PDF Version : http://bit.ly/3GTAA3e
With Thanksgiving looming over all our American members, it’s pretty convenient that today’s regularly-scheduled tutorial is a Quick Trick.
Today’s Quick Trick is another CS/CC-to-PSE workaround. Colour correction can be a bit of a time suck in Elements. But this little trick is brilliant! It uses an Adjustment Layer to accomplish in a couple of steps what can take MANY steps in any other method. The colours in this photo were so much more vivid in real life and just didn’t make it into the camera. So let’s give it a whirl.
Click Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Levels. All changes to the photo will happen on the new layer, so if you don’t like the change you can save the original as is.
I like to Clip the mask to the previous layer. It isn’t essential, but it does ensure that the two layers move as one. Click OK. The dialog box in the upper corner will come into play in the next step.
To access this hidden menu, hold down the ALT/OPT key then click the Auto button. As the screenshot says, the default setting is Enhance Per Channel Contrast. For this tutorial we’ll select Find Dark & Light Colors and Snap Neutral Midtones. You’ll see what’s happening to the image in real time behind the dialog box. If you think you might use this trick again, it can be set as a default so that when you click Auto in the Adjustment Layer menu, Elements will automatically do all these steps.
Here’s the result. It’s subtle, but definitely better. The artemesia in the background is whiter, the pink coneflower is pinker, the centaurea montana is bluer, there’s more definition in the leaves and the green cast is gone! No tinkering, just boom!
Since I’ve gotten some feedback about a side-by-side look, here it is!
That’s it. That’s all! Happy Thanksgiving to those celebrating this week. And remember, football is just a game…
PDF Version : http://bit.ly/3GTAA3e
Happy Friday everyone! I hope you have all had a great week. I’ve been on vacation part of the week and it’s gone entirely too fast.
Remember if you spend $10 in the store, you get this great kit free.
Let’s see what our fabulous designers have for us this week.
Have you grabbed the November Monthly Mix yet? It’s perfect for those Thanksgiving or fall family gathering pictures.
How about those challenges? We’re just over halfway through the month. How are you doing. Remember if you complete any 10 challenges, you get this kit as a reward.
Challenge Spotlight: Created With Rewards
Here we are, at the third Tuesday of the month again. Crazy how time flies!! This month our Challenge Spotlight falls on Created With Rewards. For those unfamiliar, each month our GingerBread Ladies – the GingerScraps Design Team – work together to produce two Rewards kits, one for completing 10 Challenge layouts and one as a Free-with-Purchase. The Created With Rewards Challenge requires participants to use only the previous month’s Rewards kits; templates are the exception – they can come from anywhere. For October 2022, the Free With Purchase kit is called Bootiful; the Challenger Reward is We Are Family. Let’s see how our intrepid GingerScrappers have risen to the occasion. The layouts are in the order they were posted; each is linked to the Gallery – click on the scrapper’s nom de plume and you’ll jump right to the Gallery, where I hope you’ll leave some words of praise.
Our first layout is from Dovedesign. Her layout has a good portion of white space. She used Bootiful and took it off-theme, which is awesome!
Next up is this CUTE little Hallowe’en layout by Jill. I really like the spiderweb base for her paper cluster. She too used Bootiful.
For this layout, becky_a has used a block style to anchor her photos and added some seasonal clusters. Bootiful is getting lots of airtime!
Ah! Finally We Are Family makes an appearance. I like how hiddenartist has stacked papers in several ways and positioned her clusters to frame her photo.
I love how fontaine has used blended masks to such good effect here. The green and orange contrast beautifully and the little Bootiful witch and warlock are cute additions.
See how kabrak1207 has turned a very theme-specific kit into an all-purpose one? Without the word strip and sticker, it’s hard to tell this started out as a Hallowe’en kit.
This looks like greenfiend27 went to a lot of trouble adding all those little bats! I think they’ve been cut from the background paper and individually shadowed. Impressive!!
I love how Katherine Woodin used the Hallowe’eenie kit for a fall layout that has no Hallowe’en flavour at all.
What a clever riff on the donuts mum23ms has in her photos!
Here’s another mainly purple layout using Bootiful. The pops of orange breoni has added, along with vignetting some photos, give the layout depth.
Look at all the spookiness angbrey has injected into her layout! I love how the elements move the eye around and right back to the photos.
Here’s another look at We Are Family. The way gadawg83 has echoed the bluebonnets in her photo with her tiny-flower borders is perfection.
Tbear has used some incredibly inventive techniques here to give the impression that the beaker has bats painted onto the glass. And maybe I’ve been watching too much paranormal investigation TV, but I think I see a ghost flying out of the test tube!
Tamsin McAtee went for complementary colours here, with her orange and blue palette. I like how she picked out the brown from the ceiling in her photo and included it in the elements she used from We Are Family.
Our last layout comes from mom2triplets04. She too has used We Are Family and kept her layout simple, focusing on the photos and her journaling.
I find it fascinating that more than 75% of these layouts were created with the Free With Purchase kit. It tells me there was a lot of traffic in the shop in October, and that’s fantastic! It’s also really interesting to see how different scrappers’ visions are when it comes to using a single kit. It’s inspiring!!
See you next week for Quick Trick Tuesday.