Digital Scrapbooking Freebies

Tutorial Tuesday (Photoshop Elements)

January 10, 2023 by Jan

It’s the Snowy Season! (Fancifying a Font)

If you’ve thought about taking part in the Font Challenge this month, you probably live in North America and have lots of snowy photos you can work with. Snowy Season is a showy font with lots of visual interest. It’s an all-caps font with scaled lower-case characters, a full set of numerics and the most commonly-used punctuation, which makes it a great title option. I think it would make for difficult reading as a journaling font though. Today’s tutorial will show you how to make the snowy parts of the font look like actual snow! Read on…

Before we get into the meat of the tutorial I want to welcome all the new GingerScrappers who have joined us in the last while and give an overview of Tutorial Tuesday. The first two Tuesdays of the month will focus on techniques that elevate our 2 dimensional layouts into 3D masterpieces. The third Tuesday is Challenge Spotlight day, when I share YOUR layouts and discuss what makes them special and interesting. On the fourth Tuesday, I provide a Quick Trick that will speed up your workflow. When I create these tutorials I want them to be achievable by anyone, with any amount of experience with digital scrapping. To that end, I typically provide both written and visual instructions of every step in the process I’m demonstrating. If you already are proficient you have my blessing to skip over all the extra instruction. I try to use free or software default fonts and styles wherever possible so you’re not having to shop before you can play. Most tutorials are for Photoshop Elements, which is the most commonly used software and what I work with. There are usually multiple ways to accomplish a task. I like to Work Smart, Not Hard, so I’ll show you the easiest/fewest keystroke ways, and include keyboard shortcuts where they exist. I work in Windows but recognize that there are a lot of Mac people out there. So any keyboard shortcut will include the appropriate function keys for both PC and Mac. For example, the keyboard shortcut for Merge Layers is CTRL>E for PC users and CMD>E for Mac users. So when I include Merge Layers in a tutorial it will look like this: CTRL/CMD>E. The other function keys that are part of keyboard shortcuts are the ALT (PC) and OPT (Mac) keys. Make sense? Now for today’s tut!

Our winter began a full 6 weeks early than usual and brought us a LOT of snow. I like to think outside the box when it comes to titles for my layouts and sometimes will do a Google search for related words, phrases or synonyms. That’s how I came up with this one. Notice the transparency inside the snowy bits. If I just used the font as is, whatever is behind my title will show in the snowy areas. Not what I want!

Before I can manipulate this title, the text needs to be Simplified. The actual text itself will no longer be editable so make sure it’s spelled properly and it says what you want it to say before you Simplify. One way to do this is to click Layer tab on the taskbar that sits at the top of your workspace then choose Simplify Layer. Or right-click on the text layer and choose Simplify Layer from the drop-down menu.

I made a Copy Layer of the title so I could work on a Copy and not the original. There are several ways of doing this. Click Layer>Duplicate Layer… on the taskbar. Or right-click on the layer then choose Duplicate Layer… from the drop-down menu. Both these will open another menu where you’re asked where the duplicate layer will go. In this instance, it’ll go into this project, so all you’d need to do is click OK on that pop-up. Or easiest for copying layers within the same project, CTRL/CMD>J will just do it all.

Here’s the pop-up I mentioned above.

Now I’ve made the original title layer invisible so I can see what I’m doing to the Copy Layer. Just click on the eyeball to close it.

I’m going to remove everything but the snowy areas from the title. I added a Layer Mask to it by clicking on the icon at the top of the Layers Panel that looks like a gray circle in a blue square. Why a Layer Mask? It lets you hide parts of a layer but not make them actually disappear. It gives you the most control you can have over what happens to your image. More later.

This is where Elements puts the Layer Mask. You want to be sure you’re working on the MASK and not the LAYER itself. When you look at the Layers Panel you’ll see a blue line box around the active part of the layer. Be careful to make sure you’re on the MASK.

Next, activate the Eraser Tool. You’ll have another reminder that you’re working on a MASK because the Color Picker will show black and white. It there are any other colours there, you’re NOT on the mask. If you remember “White REVEALS and Black CONCEALS” it’ll help with your task… but this mnemonic is referring to what’s BEHIND the object you’re masking. The magic of Layer Masks is that it lets you erase things, but if you accidentally remove a part you wanted to keep, it’s not really gone. For example, sometimes my track-pad sticks and my cursor goes haywire, erasing EVERYTHING it touches. To recover that stuff, I just toggle my colour from white to black and reveal it again by rolling my cursor over the oops. Toggling between foreground and background colours is easy, just click the X key.

Make sure your snowy areas are completely enclosed with a thin border of your font colour. It’ll save you a lot of grief later.

This is what you’ll be left with on the Copy Layer once you’ve concealed all the non-snow areas. Zoom in and go over all of it while you still have the ability to correct any little issues. Once you’ve moved on to the next step it’ll be too late…

Now, to be able to play with this layer, the Layer Mask has to be integrated into the layer by Simplifying it. Same steps as for the initial title.

As soon as your Layer Mask was integrated, your Color Picker will have returned to whatever colours you’d had there before. Set your foreground colour to white: you can either click your cursor on the upper left corner of the palette or you can type “ffffff” into the hex code # box.

Now to fill the snowy areas with white. I tried my preferred method of New Fill Layer>Solid Color>Use Previous Layer as Clipping Mask but all it Filled was the outline. In retrospect, that might have worked just as well as what I ended up doing. Keep that in mind as we proceed. I used the Paint Bucket to click-and-fill the snowy areas. This method is imperfect, sometimes leaving areas unfilled around the edges. That can be overcome by Filling again. As you can see from the screenshot, there’s still a navy blue outline that detracts from the look I want. Here’s where it might have been better to use the Fill Layer process, THEN the Paint Bucket. Live and learn!! Instead, I worked unsmart…

I essentially did the same thing that using the Fill Layer>Paint Bucket method would have done but with WAY more steps. I covered up the blue outline with a Stroke. Edit>Stroke (Outline) Selection…

To expand on the EXTRA steps I took, I had to experiment to find the right size and location for the Stroke. I settled on 6 pixels and Inside to conform to the contours of each snowy shape.

Okay, that looks a lot better. Still a few areas where the Stroke didn’t quite cover the outline – another reason to advocate for using the Fill Layer>Paint Bucket route.

Now to add some dimension! I experimented to find the right combo for this step. Click the Styles button at the bottom of the Layers Panel then go up to the drop-down menu at the top of the Layers Panel and choose Bevels. These are stock Styles that came with the software.

I got the best results with the Simple Inner Bevel as shown. I know it makes the snow look like toothpaste, but Styles are adjustable! Double-click on the fx icon on the layer to open the adjustments menu then push the Size slider to the left until it stops looking like it’s sitting in your bathroom sink. To reduce the glaring shadows, decrease the Opacity of the beveled layer to 66% or so.

Now make another Copy Layer of the snow. We’ll add some glitter to it so it glistens like real snow. CTRL/CMD>J. (Learn the keyboard shortcuts! They’re amazing!!)

Ugh. Let’s get rid of the glop. Right-click on the layer then choose Clear Layer Style. That’ll remove the bevel from the Copy Layer.

You may already have some fine white glitter loaded into your Styles collection. I didn’t have the one I wanted so I went to my Styles folder by clicking on the stack of lines to the top left of the Styles Panel and chose Load Styles. This is where your software stores Styles; if you’ve purchased some to coordinate with your kits this is where Elements will look for them. I’ll put together a tutorial on managing Styles later. For right now I’ll just give you the bare bones.

Here’s the result of applying fine white glitter, then decreasing the Opacity of that layer to 60% so the contours of the layer below are visible.

The finished title! I’m really happy with how it looks. Next time I’ll learn from my errors and skip a few steps!

See you next week. Which Challenge will be in the Spotlight?

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

Tutorial Tuesday (Individual Style)

November 15, 2022 by Jan

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.

Filed Under: Be Inspired, Behind the Scrapbook, Challenge Spotlight, Creative Style, Digital Scrapbooking, Digital Scrapbooking Freebies, GingerBread Ladies, Tutorials Tagged With: challenge spotlight, Tutorial Tuesday

Designer Spotlight: November 2022

November 6, 2022 by Jan

Memory Mosaic and Polka Dot Chicks

Now that the first-of-the-month insanity dust has settled, let’s get to know this month’s Spotlight Designers, Joy aka Memory Mosaic, and Tammy aka Polka Dot Chicks. [Editor’s note: It’s Joy‘s birthday month!] These two ladies sat down with me (and Tammy‘s 18 month-old grandson) to do a little Q&A session. What follows is a transcript… to minimize confusion, I’m taking the “O”.

O: Thanks so much for chatting with me and letting me give our readers a peek into your lives. I like to get the meat-and-potatoes out of the way first, then get to the sweets after, so I’ll throw you a softball. How long have you been designing?

J: I started designing in 2015.

T: Since 2008

O: So a good, long time! Joy, what led you to designing?

J: I will admit, when I started digital scrapbooking, I didn’t think I had the ability to do design work. In 2013, I started as a CT member for a designer. She taught me a few basic things that started to give me more confidence, to try more. In 2015 I made my first kit. I will admit, when I look at it now, it wasn’t very good. But, it was the start, and I’ve been doing it ever since.

O: Boy can I relate! I came to digital scrapbooking in about 2010, and those first layouts were so… awful! When I found my first digi home and started working through their challenges, my skills grew and so did my confidence. I never dreamed that I’d be doing what I’m doing now. What does your design space look like? [Editor’s note: Tammy is wrangling her little person ATM.]

J: This past year, I have tried a couple different places. I now have a small office that I work in a lot. It has an old tall secretary, some books shelves and a dresser with some baskets and file organizers. I still take my laptop out to the living room and work and sit on the sofa while watching TV. I hardly ever can just sit, and watch TV, most of the time, I am always doing something else at the same time.

O: I’m the same! Multitasking is like breathing for me. Where do you find your inspiration?

J: A lot of my inspiration comes from my everyday life, childhood memories/experiences, and my family.

O: I think you’re speaking for most of us. Do you have a favourite kit in the GS Shop? I know, it’s like asking you which one of your kids is your favourite. It changes from day to day!

J: One of my favorite kits right now is “Artsy Bits #6“. I love making kits with a “vintage feel” and “grunge”. I was challenged last year to come up with some “Art Journaling” kits. And I started making my Artsy Bits collection. This last one is my favorite. I love the colors and just how it came together.

O: Art journaling is a difficult thing for me. I never feel like I’ve done it well. Strong work! Oh, Tammy‘s back. Hey Tammy, Are you more likely to dance or sing in the shower?

T: Sing – even though I can’t sing! What about you, Joy?

J: Sing. I am not the most coordinated, and I would probably fall if I tried to dance in the shower. LOL!

O: I’ve asked that question a few times. And I’ve done both. Immediately followed by a trip to the hardware store and some no-slip strips for the shower pan. 🙂 Here’s another softball. What colours do you like best, and which make you shudder?

T: My favorite colors are red, pink and black/gray – well technically my favorite color is plaid but I am quirky. My least favorite colors are orange and green.

J: I love blues. I like to mix it with red/burgundy. I also really like blue and yellow together. These colors feel calm and happy. My least favorite is mustard yellow.

O: I don’t love orange or yellow. Tammy, you know plaid’s technically not a colour, right? 😉 Do you have a green thumb, even though you don’t like green?

T: I can keep indoor plants alive. I have a philodendron that I received when my grandma passed away in 1992 and it’s still alive
and now has an offshoot. Big plant is named Papa Phil and the off shoot is Phil Jr.

O: I’ve gotten pretty good at gardening, indoors and out. I bought a foot-tall fiddle leaf fig at Costco a couple of years ago and now it’s four feet tall, with branches everywhere. But I waited to long to clean up my flowerbed and got caught by a snowstorm. Too late now. Pray for me? Crazy question alert: If you could only eat one meal every day for the rest of your life, what would it be?

T: Steak, mashed potatoes, green beans & creme’ brûlée for dessert.

O: Yum! If you could have a super power, what would you like it to be?

T: To clone myself to be able to help out my kids/grands when they all ask at same time…lol.

O: YES!! If I had a clone, one of us could be cleaning up the yard while the other grocery-shopped. Oh well. Can you play a musical instrument?

J: I play the piano… not very well, especially considering all the money my parents spent on lessons. I started taking lessons when I was 6 and pretty much took them off and on through college. I did play in church when we were missionaries in Ecuador.

T: The radio! Nope. Not musical at all unlike all my kids.

O: I took piano lessons for a couple of years but we didn’t have a piano so I practiced at the school. Didn’t work so well. What would your dream car be?

J: Honestly we have only had older used cars for a long time, so I would say, my “dream car” would be a “new car”. You know one with all the new “bells & whistles”. But, for now I am happy to have a car that runs. 🙂

O: Been there! My current vehicle is a seven-year-old SUV with room for both people and my son’s wheelchair. I think my next one – when the day comes – will be a hybrid. I travel too many backroads with no services to feel safe going all electric. What did you want to be when you were small?

T: A nurse or a teacher.

O: Did you know that nurses are also teachers? That was my favourite part of my job, teaching parents about what was making their child sick and what we were doing to fix it. Aside from necessities, what one thing could you not go a day without?

J: My laptop. I am on it every day. It is what I use to make my designs, and I use it for other work.

O: Me too! If you had a warning label, what would yours say?

T: Caution: Will start snort laughing when cracking up…. lol.

O: Last question, I promise! What celebrity would you like to meet at Starbucks for a cup of coffee?

T: Any of the actors who played James Bond but Pierce Brosnan would be at the top of the list.

O: <fans herself> I can see it! Well, thanks again for giving our GingerScraps community a little glimpse of yourselves. Before we go, I’d like to remind everybody that not only are the ladies providing this month’s Daily Download (found right here on the Blog!), they’re also hosting the Designer Spotlight Challenge and have some coupons for all of us! Check ’em out.

See you all again next month for the December Designer Spotlight.

Filed Under: Be Inspired, Behind the Scrapbook, Creative Style, Daily Download, Digital Scrapbooking, Digital Scrapbooking Freebies, Feature Designer, GingerBread Ladies Tagged With: Designer Spotlight

Tutorial Tuesday (Individual Style)

October 18, 2022 by Jan

Challenge Spotlight: Minikit

Hey GingerScrappers! It’s time for another Challenge Spotlight. This month I’m going to take you through the October Minikit Challenge Gallery. This challenge is hosted by the Polka Dot Chicks, Tammy and Shelby. The Challenge revolves around a minikit they design and provide to participants at no cost. Participants can use all of the kit, or only part of it, and are allowed to use a template. Here’s a look at the October kit, which coordinates with this month’s Buffet colour palette.

Let’s have a look at the layouts that have been posted up to now. The layouts are in the order they were posted to the Gallery and are linked through the member’s user name so you can pop into the Gallery and leave them some praise, if you should so desire.

First up is sparky_mom with a special event announcement. She’d used the entire kit, tucking part of the wavy string under her photo strip and using the large circles on her background as journaling blanks. Congratulations, family!

NHSoxGirl went minimalist with her layout, using the paper with the huge circles as a border for her large-and-in-charge photo.

Alasandra has used the whole kit, with a large-circle paper divider and the paper with the triangles on it cut in triangles to repeat a theme.

MarilynZ has added a word cloud, a soccer ball flair and a silhouette to her minikit. She slightly recoloured the photostrip. Using the large-circle paper as her background compliments the soccer theme.

The big-circle paper is pretty popular! Branma has it in her background too. She’s created a sweet little cluster with the flower elements and anchored her photos with the brads. Cute pup!

AnnieA has a cute series of photos in her photo strip. She’s used everything, with the big-circle paper forming more of a border around the tiny-heart paper. The cluster in the centre ensures the eye goes right to the photos.

I LOVE dhariana‘s use of white space here. I can see she resized the papers, adding a border mask to the tiny-heart paper in the background. There’s only a single photo, and every piece of the kit is visible. Very pretty!

The only part of the kit fontaine didn’t use was the paper with the triangles on it. She recoloured the photo strips and used them as ephemera, using the Paint Bucket to fill her background with the russet colour from one of the big circles. And her photo is masked so it spills over onto the paper behind it.

I so admire people who can use bold prints like these with such great results. Big, bold prints scare me! But not willow… she’s used them very nicely here, and turned one of the circles into a frame for her title.

PixyGirl has used it all, cutting the sides of the photo strip off, recolouring them yellow and using them as paper strips to anchor her photos. The photo strip makes another appearance, but separated into three independent frames.

I’ve never seen this effect jenazs has created before. It looks as though she’s turned her elements into overlays, allowing the papers’ patterns to show through. She has recoloured some of the flower elements with colours pulled from the papers and her photos and turned the brads into flair. Very interesting.

There’s a good amount of white space in this layout by mum23ms. She’s added some ricrac (maybe created using one of our tutorials?) and some splotchy paint behind her photo cluster. She clipped the big-circle paper to the photo strip – it took me several looks at it to figure that out!

Last but not least, we have this very inventive layout from Tbear. She’s used the whole kit, but in some unusual ways. The triangle paper has been snipped into tiny triangles, and scattered like confetti with some super-shrunken brads. The twine has been turned into stems for the flowers. The tiny heart paper has been desaturated somewhat and the big spot paper has been made smaller, duplicated and laid end-to-end to create a border along the bottom. I think this is my favourite of them all.

The first half of October has been unusually summery here in the Okanagan valley. But I see the forecast is showing a sudden descent into much chillier weather, bringing rain with it. I’m actually looking forward to it!

How many of last week’s fonts did you download? I picked up 14 of them! See you next week with a Quick Trick.

Filed Under: Be Inspired, Behind the Scrapbook, Challenge Spotlight, Creative Style, Digital Scrapbooking, Digital Scrapbooking Freebies, GingerBread Ladies, Spotlight Challenge, Tutorials Tagged With: Tutorial Tuesday

Tutorial Tuesday (Fonts)

October 11, 2022 by Jan

October-y Fonts

PDF VERSION : https://bit.ly/3MB8f2u

The calendar says it’s fall, although where I am it’s still quite summery – I’m wearing shorts and flipflops, which is very much NOT October in Canada. The leaves are changing and the nights have a chill to them. So much inspiration for layouts, right? How about we look at some autumn-themed fonts for titles and journaling. And some dingbats too. All of them are free, from dafont.com and are linked so you can go right to them if you choose to grab them.

Autumn looks a lot like a vine, and is legible enough for journaling. It includes numerals and symbols as well as some alternate characters.

Autumn Pumkin is a more streamlined script that is also very versatile.

I like Autumn Leaves as a title font. It’s all upper-case, with a bunch of alternate characters and can be customized in so many ways.

Sketchy Autumn Dingbats can be incorporated into titles, filled with colour and turned into stickers or just resized and used much like a brush. The dingbats attached to the upper-case characters are different from the lower-case ones, so there are 52 sketchy little pics.

I like the simplicity of A Day in Autumn. It looks a little twiggy, a little leafy and is very legible so suitable for journaling. It has numerals and punctuation but no alternate characters.

LCR Autumn Harvest Dings is a limited collection of sketches. The characters A-P have dings attached. Don’t you love that scarecrow silhouette?

Falling is just a nice, curvy, script font; the only flaw is that it doesn’t include numerals.

KR Fabulous Fall is another 26-dingbat collection filled with leaves and other symbols of fall.

I think Harvest Fall would be ideal for subtitles, journaling and wordstrips. It has numerals, symbols and alternate characters galore!

WM Leaves 1 is another A-S dingbat font that includes a perfect Canadian-flag maple leaf. Yes please!

Tanaestal Doodle Leaves 01 looks like folk art. It includes 54 different shapes – upper- and lower-case and the period and comma keys have shapes attached.

Now, let’s do Hallowe’en! CF Halloween is up first. It’s an all-upper-case font with numerals but no punctuation.

I think Halloween Witches Script it my favourite, even though it doesn’t include the witch’s hat, spider or ghosts. It’s elegant and can (obviously) be combined with dingbats to make really fun text…

Dingbats like these! Freaky Halloween has it all.

Freaky Story is both creepy and refined. It’s another all-caps font, with the special characters hiding in the lower-case keys. It includes numerals and punctuation too.

Halloween is another fabulous assortment of dingbats you could use to customize your other fonts. What’s neat with this one is that the B, C and P keys give you the word “Halloween” plus some ghosts, bats, spiders and drippy blood. And it’s the only dingbat set I’ve seen that also has images attached to the number keys. Check it out!

Halloween Bell has 26 more themed dingbats.

I can see Spooky Halloween as a title font, can’t you? Unlike the other fancy fonts, this one DOES come with the fancy characters and you don’t even have to hunt for them. Numerals only though, no punctuation.

Halloween Rules doesn’t include those funky little skulls. I think it’s a cute-but-creepy, legible option.

I like Tricky Night for titles or subtitles. But don’t exclude it from journaling – it has numerals, punctuation and a bunch of alternate characters.

Last but not least, Spooky Webbie is cute, but still Halloween-y. It’s also the full package so you can use it for whatever your little heart desires.

Did you see anything that inspires you? I hope so!! Next week is Challenge Spotlight time, so I’ll be doing a Gallery crawl as soon as I recover from Canadian Thanksgiving…

PDF VERSION : https://bit.ly/3MB8f2u

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

Tutorial Tuesday (Potpourri)

September 27, 2022 by Jan

UNZIP Me Dahling! Updated

PDF Version : https://bit.ly/3dRjg2U

It’s been a bit of a gong show at our house recently (my parents and 2 of my siblings have been down with COVID) and I’m running about 3 days behind. So rather than give you a nothing-burger tutorial, I’m going to update an older one that might come in handy in the very near future.

I don’t know about you but I will never have too many digikits!! But being a digikit hoarder has its downside… All those kits have to be unzipped and organized. Who has time for that? And then there’s Digital Scrapbooking Day (well, more like DSWeek!) coming up in no time, with all the fantastic new products it brings with it. That you’re going to want to play with right away. What to do, what to do?

I’ll be the first to admit that my downloads folder is a mess.

I’m trying to develop some better work habits, and keeping on top of unzipping is one thing that would really make a difference. So I’m going to show you a terrific app I found that lets me unzip multiple files with only a few keystrokes. It’s called Extract Now (clickable link) and it’s FREE! I work in Windows, but there’s a Mac version too. I’m guessing it’s similar in layout and behaviour, but I can’t say that for sure. I’ve tried a few others, one of which carried a virus… and this is the one I liked best for its ease of use. It’s on my taskbar now for ease of access. The menu looks like the image below. (For newer readers, WSNH is code for Work Smart, Not Hard!)

There are several ways you can customize the performance of the app. I don’t use a lot of them, but the ones I do use include letting it check for its own updates and turning off the sounds. I’m surrounded by noise all day every day (if you’ve ever lived in a housing development under construction, you’ll know what I mean), so I don’t want a bunch of added noise in my environment if I can turn it off.

In the Process tab, you can tell it what to do with the zip folders after they’ve been extracted. At first I had the app delete them as soon as they were extracted, but I had to retrieve some stuff and now I manually delete them.

This is where Extract Now really shines. You can designate exactly where your unzipped files are sent by using the Destination tab. I had it set up to extract everything into a Downloads subfolder, but found I left things in there forever and eventually forgot about them. The Help button is really useful at showing you how to customize the app for your purposes.

I create a new folder for each kit I’ve downloaded. If you’re into keyboard shortcuts, hit CTRL/CMD>Shift>N and you’ll have a new folder you can call whatever you want.

Over the years I’ve refined how I manage my digikits. They all go into their own folder, which later becomes a subfolder within my store folders. I name them all with the same format, designer’s name and kit name spelled out in full. That makes it so much easier to find what I’m looking for later, and it helps too with credits when I post my layouts to various galleries.

I select all the zipped folders for each kit by clicking on the first one on the list, CTRL/CMD>clicking on the last one and voilà!! Then I can open up Extract Now and drag them onto the menu.

When I click on Extract, a submenu opens asking me where I want the files to go. This is when I find the new folder I’ve created for the kit in my Downloads folder and click on it.

Click on OK to All and the app goes to work.

You can watch the progress as your files are extracted. When all the files are successfully unzipped, you’ll see green check-marks next to each one and there’s a new button activated at the bottom right. Click on Clear and all the files are removed from your app workspace. I can extract several dozen files in a matter of a couple of minutes with this useful tool.

Like I said, I choose to manually delete the zipped folders from my kit folder, which is super-simple because they’re all still selected. After I minimize or close Extract Now, I only have to right-click on the selected files and choose Delete from the menu.

We all have much better things to do with our time than extract one file at a time, right?! Give it a try and see what you think. (You can always remove the app if it doesn’t work out for you.) October 1 will be here before we know it. Now go get your scrap on!

PDF Version : https://bit.ly/3dRjg2U

Filed Under: Be Inspired, Behind the Scrapbook, Digital Scrapbooking, Digital Scrapbooking Day, Digital Scrapbooking Freebies, Theres An App For That, Tutorials Tagged With: Tutorial Tuesday

Tutorial Tuesday (Photoshop Elements)

September 13, 2022 by Jan

Realistic Folded Paper Shapes

PDF Version : https://bit.ly/3qGmUPF

I got a message from one of my most faithful readers, Karen Hampton, the other day. She had downloaded the Sweetheart template freebie that went out in Neia’s newsletter and was disappointed to find that although there’s a cute folded-paper heart on the layout, clipping a paper to the layer didn’t also recreate the folded-paper effect. She said she thought she could do it herself, but was very unhappy with the results. She was on the right track, but may have missed a couple of nuances. She asked if I’d do a tut, and here we are!

My example will start out showing a newsprint background paper that disappears a few steps in. You’ll probably figure out for yourself why that happened. 😉

Open up a canvas. Mine’s 12×12, as usual. Drag and drop a background if you want. Or don’t. We’ll start out with the Custom Shape Tool, aka the Cookie Cutter Tool. Pick a foreground colour that you can easily see. I’m going with the absolute most simple options here but if you want to, use the Tool Options to get a perfect shape. I’ll use the heart, since the template has a heart, but this’ll work with other shapes too. To more easily see the changes made with each step I’m going to use a plain, solid red paper. The technique works just as well on patterned paper too.

I dragged out a good-sized heart using the Custom Shape Tool. Note the solid line around the edge of the heart. That is one clue that the heart is a Smart Object. Another clue is that there’s a little icon in the lower right corner of the Layer Thumbnail that doesn’t show up on layers containing dumb objects. Before we can manipulate anything about that shape other than to resize it, it must be Simplified. In more recent versions of Elements, there’s actually a Simplify button in the Tool Options.

If your version doesn’t have that, you can accomplish the same thing by right-clicking on the layer to activate it and choosing Simplify Layer from the drop-down menu.

Here’s my red paper. To Clip it to the shape, right-click on the paper layer and choose Create Clipping Mask. If you’d rather use a keyboard shortcut, CTRL/CMD>G works with versions Elements 14 and previous. If you’re using Elements 15 or newer, that shortcut Groups Layers – which could be useful but doesn’t do what’s needed here. For you, the keyboard shortcut is CTRL/CMD>ALT/OPT>G.

Once the paper is Clipped to the shape, the two layers can be Linked by clicking on the little grayed-out symbol on the left edge of the layers, which keeps the layers together if one is moved or resized. I prefer to Merge them into a single layer so I don’t leave part behind or do a bunch or work on the wrong layer. Click>SHIFT>click on the layers to activate them then right-click and choose Merge Layers or CTRL/CMD>E.

To create the appearance of a fold, we’ll use the Burn Tool. The icon looks like an “OK” hand signal (or half of Heidi Klum‘s opera glasses, for those of you who watch America’s Got Talent). Select a small hard round brush from the Brush Picker. 20 pixels is a good size. Set the Range to Shadows and the Exposure to 100%. What this Tool does is darken whatever it covers, but keeps the underlying colour.

This is a hot tip: When using the Dodge and Burn Tools, to get the smoothest transitions, start your action OUTSIDE the object you’re altering. The effect will only be applied to the actual object on the active layer – it won’t touch anything underneath it! And to create a straight line, click>HOLD THE SHIFT>click. So I started my shadowy fold line by clicking off the red paper at the centre-top V on the heart (the upper + sign), held the SHIFT key down while I moved the cursor to below and outside the pointed end of the heart and clicked again (the bottom + sign). As long as you keep the SHIFT key pressed, Elements will know it’s drawing a line between clicks.

Still working with the Burn Tool set to Shadows, change the Brush to a BIG soft brush. You can resize your Brush two different ways. One is to use the slider in the Tool Options. The other is to use the keyboard. [ makes the brush smaller, ] makes it larger. Choose a brush size that covers about 2/3 of one side of the heart.

I like to have the utmost control over everything (Type A/OCD/ADHD??) so for this step I’ve turned on the Grid. View>Grid or CTRL/CMD>’ This way I can be sure the shading is oriented properly and that I’m starting and stopping in a straight line.

This screenshot expands on what I was saying about starting the Burn OUTSIDE the heart. I have my big, soft brush overlapping the fold by a bit (I think it looks more realistic, but you can line up the Burn with the fold if you want). I’ve shifted the left edge over 2 spaces past the fold. Click>HOLD THE SHIFT DOWN>click and there’s a nice shadow there.

If 100% isn’t quite as shadowed as you’d like, simply KEEP THE SHIFT KEY DOWN, move the cursor back to the first position and click again. If you click without holding down the SHIFT key you’ll be starting a new path and will be making work for yourself. Does that make sense?

To make the right side of the heart look a bit curved, change to the Dodge Tool – the one that looks like that paddle the optometrist uses to cover one eye. Keep your big soft brush but make it about 25% smaller than your Burn brush was; set the Range to Highlights and the Exposure to about 20%. Repeat the same steps you used to create the shaded part. One pass should be enough. Can you see the curve?

Once you’ve figured out your light source you can position your heart and add a nice cast shadow. And that’s it!

Let me know how this works for you. I’m always open to questions and suggestions through Private Messages. [User name ObiJanKenobi] See you next week!

PDF Version : https://bit.ly/3qGmUPF

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

BREAKING NEWS!!

September 8, 2022 by Jan

Designer Spotlight Bonus Goodies!

Dani and Neia asked if I’d pass this on. For tomorrow (September 9, 2022) ONLY, subscribers to their newsletters will have the opportunity to grab some bonus freebies. Here’s a sneak peek to whet your interest.

Need links? Dani’s newsletter sign-up is HERE.

Neia’s newsletter sigh-up is HERE.

Run, don’t walk!!

Designer Spotlight: September 2022

September 3, 2022 by Jan

Neia Scraps and JB Studio

How can it be September already? This month we have a dazzling duo in the Designer Spotlight. Edneia, aka Neia Scraps and Dani, aka JB Studio have joined hands and talents for us and we’re not going to be disappointed! I had a chat with these amazing women and want to share what I’ve learned about them with all of you. Let’s go!

J: First we’ll do the whys and wherefores. Neia, what made you decide to design?

N: When I first discovered digital scrapbooking, I was pregnant with my youngest daughter. Today she is 11 years old. I love drawings and cute little things and I got completely involved with this world. I had time, a computer and a lot of willingness to learn at my disposal. I started making pages and courses and soon I was designing my own products.

J: I’ve been a fan for a long time! Dani, how long have you been designing?

D: Since September 2007.

J: That long? I had no idea!! Happy 15th design-iversary. Neia, what do you use to create your designs (program, additional tools, etc.)?

N: I use a desktop computer, my most used programs are Photoshop CC and Illustrator CC. I still use a scanner, a graphics tablet and I have a Canon camera.

J: Dani, can you describe your design workspace for us?

D: I’m blessed that in the new house I have an entire room for myself. So now I want to make it an inspiring creative studio, I’ll paint the walls and buy furniture and hang art on the walls. I worked in the family living room for long years. So this is a great achievement for me. Besides my laptop, I have lots of notebooks and pens and washi tape and brush pens because I bullet journal.

J: That’s fabulous! I have a dedicated room for my crafting too, but it’s still stuffed full of boxes and badly needs organization. So. Much. Work. So let’s change the subject. What is your favorite kit currently in your GS store and why?

N: Take Note is my favorite kit right now. I had fun creating it and it has elements that I love. I love characters and I love pink.

D: This is such a hard question because I love creating and each creation has its own special meaning to me. Recently, I created Empty Nest which reflects my own thoughts and feelings when I think that my daughter is almost turning 18. I also created a collection I’ll be releasing soon at Gingerscraps named Be Strong which reflects the emotional overwhelming moment I’m living now. It’s more like a reminder to myself to take care of myself and be strong because it will pass soon. Most of my designs reflect my own feelings and thoughts and they are also a way to inspire others.

J: Dani, those both sound quite special. I’ve already bought Empty Nest, so I’ll keep an eye out for Be Strong. What one word would your friends and family use to describe you?

D: Unique. I think that’s because I have a unique view of things and life.

N: Fun!

J: Both are sterling qualities, don’t you think? Now, let’s talk about your perfect vacation.

N: What doesn’t end? LOL … Well, my favorite places are Orlando, Florida and the North Coast of my state of São Paulo.
D: I don’t think I can describe ONE perfect vacation. I like to experiment and experience. So the one I describe would be perfect for the first time and I would like to do it differently in the next one. LOL

J: You’re both in Brazil, right? I have a dear friend who grew up in Porto Alegre who now lives in Canada. I think I should put Brazil on my bucket list. Here’s a curve ball for you. Are you more likely to dance or sing in the shower?

N: I’m sure I can do both, very badly I confess, but yes, I do.

D: Sing, sing, sing. I love singing.

J: Do either of you have a green thumb? What do you grow?

D: Not yet. This is in my plans to have a beautiful garden here in the new house, too. I cannot dedicate myself to that now and we have a young dog who would destroy it all. So, when it’s the right time I want to start gardening. I want to grow flowers and also some vegetables because I like cooking.

J: Having a blank canvas where you want a garden to be is both a blessing and a curse! So. Much. Work. Can you tell my Long-COVID fatigue is getting to me today? Pshhh. Here’s a thought… If you could have a super power, what would you like it to be?

N: I wish I had the power to heal any kind of illness or injury or anything that might be wrong on any neurological/psychological level.
D: I too would like to be able to heal people. My daughter has diabetes and my mother has a rare type of rheumatism. Sometimes I feel useless, there’s nothing I can do to avoid their pain.

J: Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could just make it all go away? What about food? Dani, do you have a favourite meal, one you could eat every day for the rest of your life?

D: This is easy – Japanese food: especially sushi.

J: Nope, not for me!! Tempura maybe, but sushi is not for me. Neia, If you had a warning label, what would your say?

N: Beware, it looks harmless but bites if provoked! 🙂

J: What celebrity would you like to meet at Starbucks for a cup of coffee?

N: In 1995 a band called “Mamonas Assassinas” was very successful in Brazil. I was 15 and I couldn’t go to any of their shows. They were a very irreverent and fun band. It was a meteoric success that lasted a year and they tragically died in a plane crash at the height of their career. To this day I miss them because it felt like they were part of my life. I would love to sit down with them, have a coffee, have a good laugh and say goodbye. They were great and made the childhood and youth of millions of Brazilians much better!! and i just wanted to say thank you!!!

J: They sound amazing! I think they could be compared to Canada’s Bare Naked Ladies. What did you want to be when you grew up?

D: A singer and actress.

J: Lots of little girls were right there with you, I think. What’s the best compliment you’ve ever received?

N: My daughter said I’m a great mother. Not because I let her do whatever she wants, but because she feels like talking to me and knowing that I love her.

J: Aw, that’s so sweet! One of my daughters said something similar years after she became an adult. It almost made up for all the years she thought I was a witch. 😉 I’ve taken up enough of your time, so I want to thank you for chatting with me. Best wishes for a very successful September.

Before I end this post, I want to remind you all that not only are Neia and Dani providing the September Daily Download called One More Chapter, they’re also hosting this month’s Designer Spotlight Challenge! And….. being the generous souls they are, they’re also discounting their stores, 40% off with NO COUPON CODE needed. I think I need to go shopping… See you all in October! <editor’s note: I apologize for the formatting on this post. I’ve played with it for nearly an hour trying to fix it, but without success. Sorry!>

Tutorial Tuesday (Photoshop Elements)

August 30, 2022 by Jan

Turning a Font into a Sticker: Reprise

PDF Version: https://bit.ly/3BgqBlm

Did you know that my very first Tutorial Tuesday Blog post appeared on August 30, 2016? Six years!! So I thought it might be fun to re-run that first post (with maybe some tiny updates) just to see how far we’ve come. Ready?

Aug 30 2016

GingerScrapper Heather requested some help with creating eye-catching titles, so this little lesson will focus on turning a font into an outstanding sticker. Over the next few weeks we’ll go into more detail on how to really jazz up your layouts, so stay tuned!

The very first step is to figure out what to call your layout. You want to choose something that works with the topic, but you don’t want it to be “Joey’s 8th Birthday”… where’s the excitement in that? Instead you could go with “Today He’s 8!” For the layout I created to help with this lesson, I looked up some surfing terms, looking for a hook. I came up with “Rippin’ the Foam”.

I like to build my titles on their own work space – there are fewer distractions and I can see clearly what I’m doing – so I always open a new file <CTRL/CMD+N>. (I use keyboard shortcuts, they really speed things up, but if you’re not comfortable with them, go ahead and do things as you usually do.) The size of the work space can be whatever you want, because you’ll be able to resize your title when you’re ready to use it.

As you can see, I’ve already chosen the colour for my title. I decided to work with the two fonts selected by Jennifer of Leaving a Legacy Designs for the August challenge, since I hadn’t done it yet. Using Sacramento I typed out “Rippin’” but found it to be a little anemic for a title. To beef it up a bit, I simplified the text <right-click on the layer and select Simplify Layer from the drop-down menu> then I selected the text by <CTRL/CMD+click> on the thumbnail (the little image in the Layers Panel). Once I got those little ants marching around my text, I went to the SELECT tab menu and chose Modify>Expand and put the number 3 in the box.

That pushed the line of ants out by 3 pixels, which was just enough. (Sometimes you have to play around to get it right, so don’t forget that CTRL/CMD+Z is your best friend.) Next I used the Fill Tool (the paint bucket) to fill in the space created in the last step. You’ll notice that there’s a very thin line inside the filled space so just keep moving the paint bucket around and clicking until all the space is filled in. Now I had a nice, fat word but it was a little umm… meh. So my next step was to change the foreground colour in my colour picker to a medium-dark gray.

In the EDIT tab menu, I chose Stroke (Outline) Selection…

… set the value to 1 and chose Center.

2016-08-29 (9)

That puts a very thin gray line around the edge of the text. To continue on achieving the sticker look, I changed the colour of my foreground to white (ffffff) and I again selected the EDIT tab menu, only this time I put 6 as the value and selected Outside for the location.

And this is the result.

Now we’re cookin’! I changed the font to the other featured font for August, RNS Camelia and added the rest of my title in black. It needed a little nudging to get it where I wanted it – that’s part of the process. deciding what looks good. I chose not to include that part in the sticker because I wanted it to look like I’d written it on the layout. At this point, I had two layers on my work space. With the Rippin’ layer selected, I added a Drop Shadow Layer Style and tweaked it so it was close to the sticker, sort of sharp and fairly dark. <Double-click on the fx icon on the layer in the layers palette, then use the sliders to adjust the size – sharpness of the edge, distance -width of the shadow and opacity – darkness of the shadow until it looks good to your eye.>

Once that was done, I merged the two layers together so I could move the title in one piece onto my layout. Now, knowing that I didn’t want my title to “float”, I selected the background paper layer of my layout to drop the title onto. It needed to be adjusted for size and placed where it looked best then ta-da! it was done! As you can see in the very first photo above, if I’d just used the font by itself, my title would have been lost against the patterned paper in the background. With a few simple steps, I made it so much better!

There you have one very basic method of adding interest to your titles. The tutorials to follow will build on this lesson and add a lot of cool techniques to your skill set. I hope you’ll continue to suggest topics for future lessons so you can grow your skills to match your imagination. (This part made me LOL. 273 tutorials and counting!!)

PDF Version: https://bit.ly/3BgqBlm