Viva Artistry New Kit - Sail Away! + FREEBIE

ViVa Artistry has a new kit coming out tomorrow (1 June) called Sail Away...and it's gorgeous!

Here is my LO I created...and I turned it into a quick page (with and without word art).
Also I'll be back tomorrow with the wave template I used for it:)

Click the preview for the download.

Melissa's Templates - FREEBIES!

I'm a bit late posting but oh well...better late than never!
So for SA's Birthday Crop a couple of weeks ago, my good buddy Melissa made some cool template freebies! A gorgeous LO template and a cute little bird! Here is my LO made with the template and you can find links for them on Melissa's Blog. :)

Photo Masks FREEBIE!

I love masks at the moment...not only do they look great, but they are so quick and easy to use!
But they are all squarish shaped (well...most that I have seen). And a lot of the photos I want to mask are full length people or just skinny photos. I don't want all the cluttered background so I have been distorting to get the shape I want. It works but it's not ideal!

So I made a few masks with my Sweetmade brushes and I was impressed by my results! lol
And so here are 3 very different 'skinny' masks for you. And I have made a LO from each to show how they can be used.

Just place your photo above the mask layer and press ALT+CTRL+G to clip. Then resize or move your photo till it looks good!
For the third LO, I masked the photo first then merged the 2 layers. Then I used the same mask across the entire page and clipped the photo and a pp to it.

Click the preview to download...enjoy :)

Super Scrappy Day!!

Yay!! Today I had a fantastic scrappy day! lol

Firstly I got an email from Digital-Crea announcing their 1 day sale....so I went shopping!! 3 kits for 1euro each and I was a happy girl! lol
Then I get an email about a CT application...and as I went to open it I prepared myself for another rejection...but it was a YES!!!! I am on the CT for ViVa Artistry now and I can't wait to get my hands on their goodies!
AND THEN..... I get an email from my lovely friend Shannon from The Scrap Addicts and she has made me this beautiful page for our digi LO swap!! Woohoo!!
I love this page...it looks just like something I would make myself! lol
Thankyou so much Shannon...you know I love it, but I'll say it again...I LOVE THIS LO!!
And now Mathew is at cricket...so I am going to scrap!

What a day! :D

SUTUCS Toot!!

Yay! I am so excited as I can finally reveal my SUTUCS LOs!!
Congratulations to all the winners and place getters...the talent in this competition was just amazing!

And I am so happy with myself as I made the final 10 for week 6!!! WOOHOO!!!!
Here is my Week 6 LO....
Week 5...
Week 4...
Week 3...
Week 2...
Week 1...the only one I wasn't happy with. I just ran out of time with this one!

And my avatar! lol

SA's First Birthday FREEBIE!

I have a new freebie that I made for The Scrap Addicts 1st Birthday Crop this weekend!
It is available for everybody at the Scrap Addicts digi shop and feel free to drop in and join us too!

Tutorial: Stroke Tip - Bold Titles

Love a particular font, but it's just too thin to stand out on your page?

Want to click BOLD...but it just doesn't exist?

Just stroke it in the same colour. It will look just as if you have bolded it, but you can control how thick it gets!

When you are happy with it, create a new blank layer to merge down to and then you can add layer styles or clip as normal.

SA Birthday Crop!

Come join us for a fun filled weekend to help us celebrate our 1st Birthday. You must be a registered member so please make sure you register in time. We have challenges, games, make and takes and prizes. You will have a fabulous time. We have wonderful friendly members!

Tutorial: Drop Shadows basics

Ever wondered how digi pages sometimes look so real? Well when you look at a paper LO, you don’t notice them but there are shadows everywhere. They are subtle but they are there and our brain interprets the shadows as making the layout 3-dimensional and therefore … real.

So to imitate reality in digital scrapbooking, you need to get the drop shadows right. There are no set rules, and some people like them bigger or darker than others so play around and see what you like.
The instructions are very different for PS and PSE so I will treat them separately.

Basic guidelines: Thinner elements that are close together need thin drop shadows. For example a piece of paper sits very close to the cardstock, so has very little shadow.
Thicker elements or those that you want to stand off the page, need bigger shadows. For example a chipboard alpha or if you want the look of a flower lifted up with a pop dot.
In real life, shadows are not pure black, so your digital shadows should not be either. Either lower the opacity so that the underlying colour and texture shows through, or make the shadow a darker hue of the element underneath it. For example, if your flower is on a red paper, your shadow would be a very dark red colour (if your program allows coloured shadows).

PSE 6 (and hopefully the other recent versions)
Click on the layer of the element you want to use. Under the Effects Palette, click on the symbol for Layer Styles. In the drop down menu, click Drop Shadows. Double click LOW, then double click SOFT EDGES. This will give you a nice, basic drop shadow which you can then adjust if you want to.

To adjust your drop shadow, go to the Layers palette and double click the ‘fx’ icon. (This only shows if you have used an ‘Effect’ on your layer.) A menu will pop up where you can change the size of the shadow and the distance. Increasing the size will soften it, and increasing the distance will make a bigger shadow ie your element ‘pops’ off the page more.
You can also change the opacity and lighting direction to give you even more control.

PS
Click on the layer of the element you want to use. At the bottom of the layers palette is a Layer Style icon – an ‘f’ in a circle. Click it and choose Drop Shadow and a pop up menu will appear. Firstly click on the black box at the top. Use the eye dropper tool to click on your underlying element – ie the paper etc that is directly under the element you are working on. Now change your colour to a much darker tone by clicking underneath the point it gave you. Now adjust your distance and size following the above guidelines. The distance will move the shadow away from your element – imitating an element lifted off the page. The size will soften your shadow to make it more realistic. Sharp lines are only for the midday sun which is unlikely to shine on your digital layout!

Without shadows:
With shadows:

Where's my baby gone?

Kalan had his first haircut today! I didn't really want him to have his hair clipped so short for the first one, but since we had an outbreak of lice in the house, it seemed the sensible thing to do!

And I was so busy taking cute photos, that I forgot to get a lock of hair! I had to fish some out of the bin afterwards! lol

Pickle Pick!!

Woohoo!! I joined the forum at Shabby Pickle at the beginning of April and did a couple of challenges and one of my LOs was picked as the Pickle Pick!!

Mine's the 6th one :)