Digital Scrapbooking Freebies

Tutorial Tuesday (Photoshop Elements)

February 4, 2020 by Jan

A-Tinting We Will Go

How did it get to be February already? The older I get the faster time flies. The last week has really kicked my butt, let me tell you. So I thought we’d try something very simple but incredibly beautiful today. I love this photo (from Pixabay) but I think it could be even prettier in black and white. With a little hint of tint…

In Photoshop Elements there are several ways you can convert a colour photo to black and white. Probably the easiest is to click on Enhance>Convert to Black and White (CTRL/CMD>ALT>B) as shown. Or you could use Enhance>Adjust Color>Adjust Hue/Saturation then pull the Saturation slider all the way to the left. But… using the method shown gives you some added options that don’t involve fiddling.

When you use the Enhance>Convert to Black and White tool, this menu opens. The default setting is for Scenic Landscape, but there are multiple style options you can choose from.

There’s a slight but visible difference when I change the style to Portrait. The image is a little sharper and the contrast is a little higher. For this technique, that’s perfect.

I plan to blend this photo into the paper shown below. It’s from January 2020’s Daily Download, Toujours from Key Lime Digi Designs and The Cherry on Top. I’m going to choose a colour from it to tint my photo.

I decided that the soft green would be lovely, so I grabbed my Eye Dropper tool and clicked on the spot shown.

Next I clicked Layer>New Fill Layer>Solid Color. The green that I chose is the foreground colour so it will be the colour used.

I made sure the Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask was selected.

The Color Picker still opened so I had the chance to verify the green is what I want.

And there it is… the Fill Layer. Now what?? As you can see there are two separate layers there, with the colour layer on top. I changed the Blend Mode to Color.

If you’re of a certain age, you might remember the days when the colour on those old tube TVs would go wonky and everything was really green. Look familiar?

So I lowered the Opacity of the Fill Layer to 51%. Now there’s just a faint green glow.

I had already chosen a masked template that would work nicely with this photo. It was a freebie from Promethean Concepts in the A Love for Layout Templates Facebook group in December 2019.

Here’s a tip for ensuring the part of your photo you most want included within a mask makes it onto your layout. Rather than dragging and dropping it ON TOP of the mask, clipping and fiddling with it, try dragging and dropping it UNDERNEATH the mask and moving it around.

It isn’t exactly perfect, and I know I don’t want any harsh edges visible. I didn’t know this trick until just recently, but when using a mask like this it’s possible to use the Clone Stamp tool to extend a photo out to the edges of your mask.

I wanted more of the pearls and her hair inside the mask, so before I started playing with the Clone Stamp, I clicked Image>Transform>Skew to adjust the shape of the mask just a bit by pulling the lower left corner down and to the left, the lower right corner just over more to the right.

Then I moved the photo layer ON TOP of the mask and clipped it in place. I’m going to Clone the window, curtains and the top of her head to cover up all that pink that’s still visible from the mask. Once I’ve done that, I’ll use the Healing Brush tool to make the Cloned areas less obvious.

And there’s my finished blend. I’m pretty pleased with it, and with how little time it actually took to get the effect. I’d say 20 minutes, tops!

My finished layout looks like this:

Will you give this a try? Shout-out to Ulla-May for the inspiration.

Filed Under: Be Inspired, Behind the Scrapbook, Daily Download, Digital Scrapbooking, Digital Scrapbooking Freebies, Tutorials Tagged With: Tutorial Tuesday

Tutorial Tuesday (Photoshop Elements)

November 26, 2019 by Jan

Hybrid Pillow Box

Have you ever wished you could customize your gift boxes and make them really personal for the intended recipient? Well, have I got a treat for you! And once again, the credit goes to calgirl (Steph). She found a printable template online for a pillow box and thought I could bring you a great seasonal tutorial for doing it digi. I thought it would be a lot more complicated than it ended up being, and I even managed to come up with a layered template for your crafting pleasure. You can grab it here: Dropbox

The template is on a letter-sized canvas so it can be printed on standard (inexpensive) cardstock. You can easily resize it a bit bigger or a lot smaller, and really make it your own. When you’re ready to print it you can either turn off the top (instruction) layer or delete it altogether.

So, go to your stash and decide what you’re going to use for your special pillow box… papers and embellishments for the occasion. I used Aimee Harrison’s A Rustic Christmas kit. Turn off that top instruction layer for now, or go ahead and delete. You’ll know what to do without it.

Drop your paper on top of the bottom layer. You’ll still be able to see the guidelines.

Then Clip (right-click>Create Clipping Mask or CTRL/CMD>ALT>G) your paper to the template.

Using the guidelines, add in your embellishments. If you’ve added a tag or a label, pick a pretty font and type in your sentiment. What could be better than NOT to need a tag or label? Once you’ve got your clusters and what-have-you in place, add in your shadows. All that’s left is to print it, cut it out from the cardstock, score it and fold it up. A little dab of glue along the very top edge to hold it together and you’re DONE! You can use a bone folder, or a stylus or a totally dead ballpoint pen to do your scoring. If you’re worried about the guidelines showing on your finished box, you can decrease the Opacity of that layer down to barely visible. Or… If you want, you can put the guidelines on the back simply by flipping over the paper and running it through the printer again. Just turn the rest of the layers off and everything will line up perfectly.

I make jewelry for gifts, and I think this would be a perfect way to present them. In a custom box with my signature on it! How many ways can you think of to make this work for you??

Filed Under: Be Inspired, Creative Style, Digital Scrapbooking Freebies, Let's Get Crafty, Party/ Event, Tutorials Tagged With: Tutorial Tuesday

Tutorial Tuesday (Photoshop Elements)

November 19, 2019 by Jan

Paper-to-Digi 3D Emboss

I’m back!! I’ve recovered about 85% from my unfortunate tumble and should be all there again soon. Thank you all so much for your kind wishes for my speedy healing, I’m positive it helped. (I think that’s my post with the most comments ever!)

Before we get started, I want to apologize for the lack of consistency with the images I’m sharing with you. I’m still not happy with the way this laptop does screenshots and wish I could go back to how my dead one did it, where I could hover over a control so you could actually see what I was selecting. But alas. Add that to the changes WordPress has made to their blogging software, and now I’m also having to resize every image before I write the text. It’s a real drag!

Okay, so. Another suggestion I got from calgirl (Steph) via YouTube video was to show you all how to create a deep 3D embossed look with digital tools. I had to play around a bit to make this work the way it looked in my head, and I think I succeeded. I’m working against a solid cardstock background using a nice blue one from Ooh La La Scraps‘ Pocket Full of Sunshine. I’ll also be using a brush – on a separate layer, of course!

The brush I used is from Brusheezy, one of a free set called Frosted Flakes. (linked) I’ll use it at full size. The Opacity isn’t totally important, as you can see it’s set at 65%. I’m going to stack the brush until it looks dark and sharp enough for the technique.

Here’s what the first click created. I think it has a lot of 3D potential, don’t you?

I kept clicking until I had an almost solid image, a total of 5 clicks. I used white to make the steps easy to see as we go along.

This is another non-essential step. I enlarged my brush image to make everything more easily visible. You do you!

Then I made 3 copies of the brush layer. At this point, I thought I’d use them all, but I ended up only using 3 total. It’s always better to have something and not need it rather than need it and not have it. Onward.

I turned the visibility of the copy layers off, because this is a bottom-up technique.

My next step was to click on Styles and choose the Bevel set.

For the bottom brush layer I used the Simple Pillow Emboss option.

You can see that there’s some texture there now. I clicked on the fx icon on that bottom layer to bring up the Style Settings menu. Then I added an Outer Glow of 13 pixels at 50 % Opacity. The Bevel is set at 27 pixels. Now, this is a matter of taste, and I found that the Outer Glow added some depth that wasn’t there with just the Bevel.

With the second brush layer now visible, I CTRL/CMD>clicked on the Layer Thumbnail (the little picture on the left side of the column) in the Layers Panel to Select the edges of the brush. Selecting an object brings up the marching ants.

To enhance the 3D effect, I decided to shrink the second brush layer a bit by Select>Modify>Contract.

I opted to Contract by 10 pixels, meaning that the outline of the brush will be moved toward the inside by 10 pixels all the way around.

Then I Inverted the Selection by Select>Inverse (or CTRL/CMD>Shift>I)

And then I Cut away the outer piece of the Brush layer that was now Selected through Inverting. Edit>Cut (or CTRL/CMD>X)

Just like on the first brush layer, I used a Bevel, this time the Simple Emboss as shown.

See the new texture that adds?

I also tweaked this layer, adding an Outer Glow of 29 pixels at 49% and adjusted the amount of Bevel to 15 pixels.

Now on to the third brush layer. I think you know what’s coming. Select the outline again.

This time Select>Modify>Contract to 15 pixels.

And then Invert the Selection (CTRL/CMD>Shift>I)…

and CTRL/CMD>X away the Selected area.

Hit it with the Simple Emboss Bevel.

Adjust the Style Settings to add an Outer Glow of 29 pixels at 50% and the Bevel at 30 pixels.

I realized that I’d gotten the effect I was looking for without that 4th brush layer. I could have left the resulting image as it was, which would look like a very detailed 3D white paper die cut, but I wanted to see how it would look as a true embossing of the blue paper. I opted to add a copy of the paper layer on top of all my brush layers, in case I changed a Blend mode for the paper and lost the original blue. Here I’ve toned down the Opacity of the top cardstock layer to 78% and it looks pretty much like I’d expect an embossed blue cardstock to look.

I don’t know if doing this step made much of a difference to the overall effect, but I added another paper layer and changed the Blend Mode to Color. What do you think?

Have a look through your brush collection to see what you have that might work for this and give it a whirl!

Filed Under: Be Inspired, Behind the Scrapbook, Digital Scrapbooking, Digital Scrapbooking Freebies, Tutorials Tagged With: Tutorial Tuesday

Tutorial Tuesday (Potpourri)

June 25, 2019 by Jan

Summertime Funtime Fonts

So… I finally got around to updating the master link list for all the Tutorial Tuesday posts yesterday. This is TT post #139!! Amazing… that I’ve found that much to yammer on about! While I was going over the list, I realized that I haven’t done a post with summertime fonts and such. Here in the northern hemisphere, we’ve just past the summer solstice and welcomed the formal season. We’re under a huge bank of rain clouds and parts of Alberta and BC got snow on the 21st, so we’re not feeling summer love right now, but I’ve got a baker’s dozen today, a mixture of fonts and ding bats, all found free at dafont.com.

First up is this font, ironically named Summertime. It’s pretty and would be an amazing title font for garden photos, weddings and other celebrations.

Next up is a fun font with some alternate characters from some of the letters, like that cure sun for the “O”.

If you live in the parts of the world where temperatures soar in the summer, (or you have annual forest fires 🙁 )this font might catch your eye.

This one made me almost spew my coffee. It looks just like I did at work last Tuesday! But I think it could be super for titles.

Think about doing this one in a dark red, and you’ve got a great picnic layout title. Or a cookout, if you go for gingham tablecloths.

This one I threw in because two big celebrations are coming up fast. Canada Day and Independence Day. So fireworks are a natural.

This one and the next are different takes on a similar theme. I can’t decide which one I like better.

Can you?

Now for some ding bats. Ding bats are little mini line drawings that can be used in the same way as a font, but with very interesting and fun results.

These are all very summery and could be used in so many ways.

This set could be used for more adult layouts. They’re solid, but by duplicating the layers, it would be easy to change colours and add glitter.

Same for these ones. I’m an avid gardener and have scads of garden photos. I’ll have to think about how I can use these.

This set has a mixture of images. The cactus could be incorporated into a desert layout title with that Summer Fire font. Amiright?

This set looks like so much fun! A day at the beach…

I have one last piece of news to add to this week’s post. Tomorrow is my last day of work in my real job. After 24 years of pediatric critical care nursing, I’m retiring. So I’ll have more time for hobbies… <does the happy dance> which is great timing, because I jumped on the Adobe sale for Elements 2019. Time to learn a few new tricks! (More to come on my retirement plans when I have them firmed up.) Have a great week, see you right here again next Tuesday!

Filed Under: Be Inspired, Behind the Scrapbook, Creative Style, Digital Scrapbooking Freebies, Fantastic Fonts, Tutorials Tagged With: Tutorial Tuesday

How to use Distressed Patterns and a Freebie

March 9, 2019 by Karen Schulz

Hey everyone! Today I’m here to talk about patterns. Subtle or bold, distressed or not, patterns add so much to a digital scrapbook page.

With the use of Blend Modes and Opacity Levels you can convert a plain paper to a pretty paper. Here’s how:

In Photoshop CC or Photoshop Elements, open a background paper.
Place a Pattern on the layer above the background paper.
Experiment with Blend Modes and Opacity Levels of the Pattern.

Yes. It’s really that simple. Sure there are other things you can do to add even more interest, but basically, that’s it.

Here is a simple cardstock paper with a Distressed Pattern in Normal mode on the layer above the cardstock.

snickerdoodle-deslgns-how-to-use-patterns-01

In the image below I’ve changed the Blend Mode of the pattern to Multiply and lowered the opacity to 26%. The result is a soft and pretty look.

snickerdoodle-deslgns-how-to-use-patterns-02

By changing the Blend Mode to Screen, and increasing the opacity (to 73% in this case), we can get a totally different look:

snickerdoodle-deslgns-how-to-use-patterns-03

Here’s another example. I changed the blend mode of the pattern to Hard Mix and lowered its opacity to 47%. I added a Color Balance adjustment layer to it, tweaking some of the colors. Now we have a totally different paper from the one above.

snickerdoodle-deslgns-how-to-use-patterns-7

Don’t restrict yourself to plain cardstock though. Here is a paper from my This is Me April kit.

snickerdoodle-deslgns-how-to-use-patterns-04

It’s a pretty paper by itself, but if you wanted to add even more interest, here’s something you might try:

Add a pattern on a layer above a paper
Experiment with Blend Modes and Opacity Levels. In this case, I used Color Burn and lowered the Opacity to 84%
I added a Mask to the Pattern, and brushed away a majority of the pattern, just leaving it near the top of the paper to add more interest.

snickerdoodle-deslgns-how-to-use-patterns-06a

There are just so many ways to play with patterns!

These patterns are provided in PNG format, which gives you the ultimate flexibility!

Distressed Patterns 01 & 02

Available at here in my Commercial Use Store

Take advantage of the 40% sale on these products, valid through March 14th.

And here is a freebie for you to experiment with. Just click on the image below to download!

Experiment and have fun!!

Filed Under: Digital Scrapbooking, Digital Scrapbooking Freebies Tagged With: Digital Scrapbooking, Digital Scrapbooking Freebies, Snickerdoodle Designs, Tutorials

4 Ways to Add Color Pop

March 2, 2019 by Karen Schulz

Colorizers, by Snickerdoodle Designs, are a new product here at Ginger Scraps. But what are they and what do you do with them?

Colorizers by Snickerdoodle Designs

Hi! I’m Karen, of Snickerdoodle Designs; and I’m here today to show you how to use my Colorizers to easily add color to your digital scrapbook papers, text, elements, and shapes.

I’ve prepared a 2-minute video to show you how easy Colorizers are to work with. Take a look at the video, and then scroll down for 4 additional ways to add color to your digital scrapbooking projects.

1. Changing the Color of an Element

Many designers include graffiti, doodles, or other graphic elements in their digital scrapbooking kits. They are usually provided in papers or colors that coordinate with the designers kit, which makes them super easy to use. But if you love a specific graphic and want to use it with a kit of a different color palette, using a Colorizer is a fast and easy way to achieve that goal.

Here is a piece of graffiti from This is Me November Graffiti. While it coordinates beautifully with the kit, it is also a piece that could easily be used on any scrapbook page with a simple recolor.

snickerdoodle-4-ways-to-use-colorizers-tutorial-1

We could add a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer, to change the color, from brown to blue in this example.

snickerdoodle-4-ways-to-use-colorizers-tutorial-2

But if we wanted to add multiple colors to the design element, using a Colorizer is a quick method. Place a Colorizer above the graffiti and clip the Colorizer to the mask, and you’re done! The variegated color adds a unique flavor to this piece.

snickerdoodle-4-ways-to-use-colorizers-tutorial-3

2. Coloring Black Stamps

Stamps can add great interest to our pages. Most often they are black or gray in color. We can blend them into our backgrounds, colorize them, and apply Styles to them. Another quick way to color black elements in with Colorizers.

This is an element from “You Color my World.” In the kit, it is colored, but I have made it Grayscale for this tutorial. I am going to use Colorizer #8 from Pack 1 to quickly color this Stamp.

I clipped the Colorizer to the stamp and experimented with Blend Modes. We can get a variety of different effects, based on the color of the stamp and the color of the Colorizer that we are using. In this example, Hard Light gives the best result. Sometimes just clipping a Colorizing to an image adds enough color, so you don’t need to do anything else. How easy is that?

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If you really want to play and experiment try adding a Levels or Curves Adjustment, or a Brightness / Contrast Adjustment. Or use 2 Colorizers – one Colorizer for half the stamp and a second Colorizer for the other half of the stamp.

3. Coloring Grayscale Backgrounds, Basic

No matter what type of grayscale background you have handy, whether it is plain or patterned, using a Colorizer is a quick way to create a lovely background paper. Place a Colorizer on the layer above your grayscale background and experiment with Blend Modes of the Colorizer. (Grayscale paper from Crumpled Textures 01).

4. Coloring Grayscale Backgrounds, Advanced

If you want a little more fun with the Colorizers, start with an artsy, mixed media background. The texture I am using for this example is from my Artsy Textures 01, #6. I placed the Colorizer on a layer above the grayscale texture and changed the Blend Mode of the Colorizer to Screen.

Next, I merged the grayscale texture and the Colorizer to create one layer. I placed the merged layer above a Crumpled Texture and changed the Blend Mode of the merged paper to Difference.

It was way too dark for my taste, so I added a Levels Adjustment, followed that with a slight Curves Adjustment. I was happy with that result.

Colorizers were designed to give you a multitude of options. You can get fabulous results by just using one Blend Mode, or you can use multiple techniques to get the effect you want. The key to using Colorizers is to play, experiment, and just have fun!

Go ahead! Give it a try! Here’s a sample for you to experiment with. Just click on the image to download.

If you would like to download a PDF of this tutorial, you may do so here: 4 Ways to Add Color Pop.

Filed Under: Digital Scrapbooking, Digital Scrapbooking Freebies, Tutorials Tagged With: Digital Scrapbooking, Digital Scrapbooking Freebies, Snickerdoodle Designs, Tutorials

Tutorial Tuesday (Fontography)

January 22, 2019 by Jan

Fancy and Fun Fonts for Wintery Layouts

As much of the Northern Hemisphere is being walloped by heavy snow, high winds and frigid temperatures (which basically would be Wednesday here in northern Alberta 😉 ) I thought I’d compile a collection of free fonts y’all can use for your winter layouts. Sound good? Each of the fonts I show you will be linked to the source so you can find ’em quickly!

My favourite go-to website for free fonts is dafont.com. They have such a huge assortment of fabulous fonts and dingbats!

Like Snowtop Caps, which also includes numbers and punctuation.

Winter Fall is a rounded font that would be great for a wintery title, but it only includes a small number of special characters and no numerals.

Iceberg is chunky but still rounded. It also only has a few punctuations and no numerals.

Winter Flakes has it all! It includes some dingbats too, so it’s pretty much perfect.

Igloo Laser is a modern-looking all-caps font with numerals and a few punctuation characters.

Snowflake Letters would look smashing with a bevel and a clear, glossy style on it. It’s all-caps, with numerals and punctuation.

You could use Snowhouse for journaling; it’s a script font with numerals and some punctuation, and includes a large variety of special characters.

Snowinter is another super-title font, with all the goodies one would need.

I like Kingthings Christmas a lot. It’s a complete package with awesome potential.

I think I’m going to build a tutorial about how to use Ice Cold to its best advantage. It’s got some serious title charm!

CF Tuques is just a fun font for winter. (I’m super-happy the designer spells “tuque” correctly!) No numerals or punctuation though.

Now how about looking at some dingbats. Don’t know what a dingbat is? Basically, it’s a symbol, shape or drawing accessed through your alpha keyboard.

Winter has a collection of line drawings of winter things, like snowmen and snowed-in houses. It’s pretty cute!

DH Snowflakes could be used for borders, dividers or backgrounds. Lots of possibilities!

Faux Snow is another snowflake dingbat set with unique shapes.

And so is WW Flakes.

KR Snowpeople has an assortment of snowmen and snow-women.

I invite you to check out the vast collection of fonts and dingbats at Dafont. I know you’ll find lots of inspiration there!

Filed Under: Be Inspired, Behind the Scrapbook, Creative Style, Digital Scrapbooking, Digital Scrapbooking Freebies, Fantastic Fonts, Tutorials Tagged With: Tutorial Tuesday

Tutorial Tuesday (Photoshop Elements)

October 30, 2018 by Jan

One Hand in my Pocket… and the other one’s holding a Journal Card!

(with apologies to Alanis Morrisette)

After my last tutorial on pocket scrapping, I thought about what my next topic should be, but I didn’t think about it too hard, since my mind was pretty busy scheming and dreaming on other things, being on ‘vacation’ and all. So it wasn’t until yesterday that this notion popped into my brain. What a segué! Have you ever REALLY wanted to use a template that includes a journal card, but the kit you’re also dying to use doesn’t have them? I have lots of kits I truly love, and quite a few templates with spaces for journal cards, but the two don’t always work together. BUT! I can make my own journal cards… and so can you!

I’ve made this little clipping mask for you to make it super-simple. Click *here” for the download. It’s got nice rounded corners and you can resize it to whatever will work best for your layout.

I selected a few papers and elements from the GingerBread Ladies‘ All Things Hallowe’en (it has a couple of journal cards, but I wanted to make my own.) Then I started layering on my choices.

I’m not going to show you all the options for borders; I’ve discussed them all in other tutorials, and they’re pretty basic.

The WSNH (Work Smart, Not Hard) shortcut for turning on and off the Grid: CTRL/CMD>’

So now I have 3 papers clipped to my card shape.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with different Blending Modes and Filters. It’s your card and you can do whatever you like.

I added in a moon using a brush from Brusheezy. If you’re interested, the set of 20 is found *here*.

The witch is seriously spooky! Because journal cards are only 2-dimensional, shadows aren’t necessary, but feel free to add them if you want. Just take care not to make them too obvious.

Bevels are great tools for adding dimension. I used a small one on the spiderweb just to make it a bit more visible.

My finished card looks pretty neat, don’t you think? Now to save it so I can use it again later.

I saved my card into the folder where the kit lives so it would be easy to find again. I gave it a simple name and saved it as a .png file so the rounded corners would stay rounded when I want to use the card.

Saving it as a .png using the Smallest/Slowest Compression preserves detail the most, but it also results in a larger file. It’s not necessary to Interlace your image.

What do you think? Will you make your own journal cards? It’s a lot of fun…

Filed Under: Be Inspired, Digital Scrapbooking, Digital Scrapbooking Freebies, Tutorials Tagged With: Tutorial Tuesday

Tutorial Tuesday (Photoshop Elements)

October 4, 2016 by Jan

Making Templates Work For You!

You’ve probably heard a million times that templates really speed up your scrapping, but if you’re new to digiscrapping you might wonder when that kicks in. October’s first Challenge Template from Kimberly of Leaving a Legacy Designs is a perfect way for me to show you how. Why? Because it has several repeating paper blocks!

Once again, I’m going to tell you how I do things but of course you’re going to follow your own practices and do things in your own way. When I’m getting ready to create a (non-CT) layout, I select my photos first. I create a new folder for the layout so everything I plan to use is in one spot. (Later I delete the copied files and just keep the finished layout. Otherwise I’d need a million EHDs to store everything!) Then I search my (enormous) stash for a template that will work with them and copy it into the folder. Once I’ve decided, I choose the kit I want to use. For this layout I used Ooh La La Scraps’ October Buffet kit Creepy. I count up the number of different papers, represented by different coloured blocks or circles, the preview shows, and then add one or two more to that number just in case my selections don’t work the way I want them to. Then I go to my kit and start selecting papers, flowers, leaves, stitches, staples, and whatever else I want to include. They’re all copied into my working folder… this is the longest part of the process. Then I’m ready to go! I open the folder contents into PSE and get going.

As I mentioned before I start at the bottom. Feel free to do whatever works for you.

In the screenshot above you’ll see there are 3 papers and 3 paper mats in the layers panel. Below, you’ll see I’ve started clipping papers to the various shapes in the template.

This is where the time saving comes in. The process is the same for whatever is repeated on the template. Remember I said I use keyboard shortcuts? This is where they really come in handy. Rather than right-clicking on my paper layer then selecting Create Clipping Mask I use CTRL/CMD+G to clip the paper to the shape. The next step is to duplicate my paper layer. Rather than right-clicking on the paper and selecting Duplicate Layer.. or selecting it from the drop-down menu from the task bar, I use CTRL/CMD+J and get the same result.

The screenshot below shows you the duplicated paper just above the previous paper shape. Drag and drop the new paper onto the layer just above the next template shape of the same colour, in this case, a dark yellow gold. The keyboard shortcut for that is CTRL/CMD+] (Can you guess how to move the layer back down? 😉 )

Keep doing this series of steps > Copy, Move Up, Clip > until all the template shapes of the same colour have the same paper clipped to them. Then continue to clip papers to shapes in this manner until all the shapes have papers clipped to them. The screenshot below shows what your workspace looks like once the duplicated paper has been created but before it’s been moved into place and clipped. See how it covers up a lot of the template?

Here’s where there’s another speedy tip that comes in handy. As I mentioned, you can follow the exact same process for those flower shapes, stitching lines, ribbons and so on. The template’s symbols are more for size and placement of objects rather than carved-in-stone directions, so you can cover those shapes with just about anything. Drag and drop your element into place on the template and size it to your liking. Here I’m using a white flower. The speedy secret?

Copy the layer style > right-click on the shape layer and select Copy Layer Style > from the template’s symbol layer then paste it > right-click on your element layer and select Paste Layer Style > to your element. Do this the first time you add an element to the layout and then you won’t have to do it again later for each individual item.

This template has a number of identical flower shapes so I copied the white flower – WITH the shadow layer style included – and moved them into place on the template, moving them up the layers panel so they’re in the right order in the cluster or stack. I also adjust the angles on some of them so they look more naturally arranged (shown in the second screenshot below).

Once the elements I want are in place on the template, I delete the template’s symbol. (Remember to work on a copy so you don’t end up throwing out the whole template!)

Speedy tip – you can delete multiple layers at one time by selecting them all in the layers panel > CTRL/CMD+click on the layers until they’re all selected > then right-click on any one of them to select Delete Layers from the drop-down menu.

When positioning small items like buttons on templates, it sometimes helps to put them underneath the symbol’s layer in the template so you can have a better idea of size. I like my buttons small so this tip is one I use a lot.

When you’ve added all your chosen papers and elements to the template, you’re done! All of your layers are shadowed (as long as you’re using a pre-shadowed template like this one, of course) and it’s probably taken you under an hour. My final version of this layout is in the gallery. I hope you’re able to follow along with this speedy tut and come to love templates as much as I do!

Filed Under: Digital Scrapbooking, Digital Scrapbooking Freebies, Tutorials Tagged With: Tutorial Tuesday

Free Fonts for your Digital Scrapbook Layout

February 27, 2016 by GingerScraps

Good morning scrappers! I don’t know about you, but I love me some fonts. I am always looking around for some great and fun fonts to add to my stash. So, with that I am bringing you some of the latest that I found. There isn’t any kind of theme to go along with these fonts. They are just some fun, pretty and interesting fonts. They would work great for your titles or just for some journaling. Below the image you can find the links for these fonts.

gingerscrap_digitalscrapbook_fonts