Tutorial Tuesday | Shadowing Transparent Items

May 31, 2016

Have you ever noticed that the preset shadows don’t work so well with vellum and other transparent elements? I struggled with it for a long time, and although I can’t profess I have mastered it all… I do have a trick or two to share with you today.

For this tutorial, I am working on a layout using River~Rose’s fabulous new collection Pursuit of Happiness…

In the following image, my layout is almost complete… and as you can see there are a couple of transparent acrylic elements on the page — the heart and the ampersand. With preset shadows in Photoshop, my layout looks like this…

Now the biggest quibble I have is that dark shadow showing through the transparent acrylic element. See how “grey” it looks? Logically, any transparent/translucent object that lets light through shouldn’t throw such a defining shadow. And that’s what we need to modify.

Step 1

First, you will separate out the shadow from the element (i.e. put it in its own layer). I do this using Photoshop CS2 (old free version of Photoshop!), and then open up my layout again in Photoshop Elements (PSE), which is what I’m showing my steps in for the screenshots in this tutorial. Once you have your shadow on a separate layer, you will press CTRL and select the element thumbnail in the layers panel. This will make the “marching ants” appear around the element, like this…

Step 2

Now, with that selection still on, you will click on the shadow to “cut away” the selection. Now you have two layers of shadow: one that shows immediately beneath the element, and the peripheral shadow that sticks out around it. We want this peripheral shadow to be pronounced — while at the same time downplaying the central part (see layer 2 in the screen shot).

Step 3

We can do this next part more than way…
a) Hide the shadow that appears under the ampersand entirely (as shown in the screen shot below)
a) Decrease its opacity (see top right of the layers panel and play with the slider till you like the effect)
c) If your transparent element is on a solid paper or background, it helps to recolor this part of the shadow in darker hue of the same color.

Play around till you are happy with the result you achieve.
Screen shot 3

And voila! …here’s my final layout. Compare this layout with the copy at the beginning of this tutorial, and see if you can see the subtle yet noticeable difference this makes…
Happiness-is-final layout

I hope you found today’s tips to be useful! If you have your own tricks about shadowing transparent items, please do share them. I would love to try out something new.

Until next time, then… happy scrapping!

About the author Shivani Sohal is a donner of many alter-egos. A finance professional by day in busy London, she morphs into a seemingly normal mum of two in the evenings and weekends. She is constantly found with her fingers in too many pies and juggling the metaphorical balls. That is living on the edge for her; aided by the two ankle biters and a darling hubby who define the warm and mushy for her. She is ferociously dedicated to memory keeping – almost immune to any nay-sayers (or equally disruptive crying children or annoying house fires!!!); keeping her head down and forging ahead at all times.

The Anticipation of Summer!

May 27, 2016

I say it every year — but man, time sure flies by! There is no way June is just a few days away! Is it even possible? My kids have an official “countdown until school is out” going… so I had to get myself in gear and get our Summer Bucket List ready!

I love the easy schedules of summer break — the “we can do nothing if we want to” attitude! I love the slower pace of life, and enjoying our lovely weather & beautiful surroundings here in Eastern Washington.

Even though my children are out of school during summer break each year, I still have to work part-time. Therefore, when creating our Summer Bucket List, we try to add a bunch of easy tasks that can be done on my work days or on my days off, as well as some fun weekend activities! I’m pretty excited about our list this year — I think everything is totally attainable (my kids can get a little crazy sometimes!). 😉

For my layout, I used a few fun summer kits:

Summer Bucket List by Laura Passage & Amanda Yi: HERE

Hello Summer by Scotty Girl: HERE

Summer Set by Rachel Hodge: HERE

Are you excited for summertime?

Join me in our forum to join the challenge that is related to this idea, above… and create/share your own summer bucket list with us!

About the Author Amie is a craft-loving dental hygienist who lives in Washington state. She loves her husband, her two kids (ages 8 & 5), and her English Bulldog… as well as coffee, baking cupcakes, daffodils, glitter & sprinkles, reading a good book, and lip gloss — not necessarily in that order.

Tutorial Tuesday | Painting Paper

May 24, 2016

Tutorial Tuesday | Painting Paper

Have you ever created a layout and decided it just needed a little more “oomph”? Or have you designed a layout and the kit you’re using has so many amazing papers that you simply have to find a way to use more of them? If so, I’ve got a quick tutorial for you.

Following is my sample page:

Tutorial Tuesday | Painting Paper

I created my page using River-Rose Designs’ Pursuit of Happiness Full Kit and the Pursuit of Happiness Extras Pack 1.

Tutorial Tuesday | Painting Paper

I created my page with the solid colored yellow paper as the background. It was a nice solid color that allowed all of the artsy elements, cluster frame and page border from the kit to really shine. The look was a bit too stark for me and I wanted to tone it down a bit so I chose another paper from the kit and “painted” it onto the background paper. Let me tell you how you can quickly and easily accomplish this look.

1. Add the background paper to your layout.

To show you where I started from, here’s my layout without the painted paper layer.

Tutorial Tuesday | Painting Paper

2. Add the paper you want to “paint” onto your background paper to your layout.

I chose the paper with the circular design from the Pursuit of Happiness kit.

3. Add a black layer mask to the paper you just added.

Make sure your newly added paper is active in the layers panel. To add a black layer mask press the OPTION key (Alt on a PC) and click on the Add Layer Mask icon in the layers panel. Since you added a black layer mask, the paper will now disappear.

Tutorial Tuesday | Painting Paper

NOTE: If you added a white layer mask instead of a black layer mask, you can easily change it to black. Simply make sure the layer mask is active in the layers panel and press CMD+I (CTRL+I on a PC) to invert it.

4. Choose a brush to paint with.

You are now going to choose the brush you want to use to paint your paper. I suggest using a paint/watercolor style brush or a soft round brush. You can access the brush tool by using hotkey “B”.

5. Make sure that the black layer mask is active in the layers panel.

The layer mask will have a white bounding box around it when it is active in the layers panel. If the white bounding box is around the paper and not the mask, simply click on the layer mask.

6. Now it’s time to play! You can begin “painting” in parts of the paper.

Make sure that white is your foreground color in the color picker then simply “paint” on the layers mask. As you paint, if you want, you can play around with the opacity of the brush or change the shape dynamics in the brush properties. Once you’re happy with the painted layer, if you want to change it up a bit more, you can adjust the layer opacity or the blend modes for the newly painted paper layer. The sky’s the limit here!

Here’s my layout before and after painting the paper.

Tutorial Tuesday | Painting Paper

Fun right?! Feel free to ask any questions in the comments or, if you have any other related tips you want to share, I would love to hear them as well!

Until next time … happy scrapping!

Barbara About the Author: Barbara is a member of the creative team here at The Digital Press. She is a wife, mom to two teenage kids (a 19 year old boy and a 16 year old girl) and a dog (an adorable 9 year old Soft Coated Wheaton Terrier). In her free time she loves to digi scrap, take photos and hang out with her family.

Hybrid Saturday | Making A Flipbook

May 21, 2016

I have seen a lot of rise in snail-mailing lately, and one of the ways to do it is by sending flipbooks. basically a flipbook is a folded book with bits and pieces from the sender to the recipient. Usually a flipbook also includes a mail tag or a series of questions or requests, which the recipient would forward with the answer to another recipient or sender. Making flipbooks is very fun and it uses your physical and digital stuff in a new way.

For the project I am showing to you today, I used Dark Before the Dawn Collection by Scotty Girl Design for the papers, elements, and cards…

Start by printing out 6×6 inch pieces of paper. Since I don’t have a double-sided paper, I print out 6 pieces of 6×6 papers, 3 of each patterns.

Glue the papers so it becomes a double-sided paper. You can use liquid or dry glue, I tend to work with dry glue because sometimes liquid glue warps the paper.

Create hinges by taping one piece of paper to the other using a washi tape. You can also reinforce this by running a strip of adhesive before taping down the washi tape.

Next is up to you on how you would like to decorate your pages. I printed out journal pages and also embellishments from the kit, and then hand-cutting them to fit the pages.

That’s it! Pretty easy right?

Indah About the Author Indah has been a hybrid crafter for almost 10 years. She also loves collecting stamps and stickers.

Journaling Challenge | Vorfreude

May 20, 2016

Vorfreude

Hello friends! It’s Farrah here today, and I’m hosting a journaling challenge related to the anticipation of things to come.

Whether you are anticipating a baby, planning a big trip, or even just looking forward to the summer… it’s fun to document the anticipation. The German word vorfreude means “the intense, anticipative joy derived from imaging future pleasures.”

For me, the time I experienced the most profound vorfreude was when I was pregnant with my second child. It was a huge surprise after having gone through infertility and then BAM! What?? I found myself pregnant. We decided to wait until the baby’s birth to learn the gender… but that didn’t stop me from wondering about it and thinking about it (as well as many, many others aspects of a new baby that create intense anticipative joy!). I have created many scrapbooking layouts about this, but here is one of my favorites…

08.14.09-grow

I have a journaling challenge for you today… related to this idea of excitedly anticipating something. I invite you to come check out the challenge in the forum, and join in! You can earn TDP challenge points, while also completing a layout for your personal album. Win-win! 🙂

About the Author Farrah Jobling is a member of the creative team here at The Digital Press. She lives in Denver with her amazing family — Mike, Nicholas (9), Claire (6), Hope (2 yr old puppy) & Kringle (5 mo old bunny). She works from home as a photographer and enjoys scrapping her personal photos.

Tutorial Tuesday | Libraries

May 17, 2016

If you are like me and working on multiple albums at the same time, you will no doubt have experienced the following problem — in which you cannot remember the basic technical specifications for each of your albums. For example… you may be working daily on a pocket-scrapping project, and then also go back to do a page in your recipe book and find that you have forgotten what font you were using (or what shadow styles you were using, etc.). It’s frustrating to constantly need to go back to a previously-completed page to check out all this information before you can start a new page, right?

If the above description is you, then I have a great tip – Setup Photoshop CC Libraries.

I discovered this feature early in the year and now use it on a regular basis.

So what are libraries?

Libraries can be used in many ways, but for me they are basically collections of style presets for the photo books/albums that I am working on. They can be accessed in the top right-hand corner of the page, and are on a tab next to “Adjustments” and “Style” (*NOTE* to enable libraries you may first have to select Window/Libraries).

Here, you can see how I have setup my “Project Life 2016” library…

As you can see, I have added the “character” and “layer styles” that I regularly use to this library collection… but you can also add things such as “colors” and “smart objects,” as well.

HOW TO DO THIS

1. Set up your Libraries

Click on the Libraries tab, and then click anywhere in the text box to bring up the dialogue with “Create New Library.” Select this option and name your new library. You can set up as many libraries as you like. For myself, I have created libraries for my “Project Life 2016,” “Penang Travel Book,” “Recipe Book,” and “One Little Word Book.”

2. Add items to your Library

There are 2 methods that I use to add items to my libraries.

The first is to add all styles from a document. I used this at the beginning of the year when I had started my “Project Life 2016” book, and already had some complete pages. To do this… open your completed layout and (after you have created your library) select the first icon with the upward arrow at the bottom of the libraries panel. All styles from your page will automatically be added to your library. You can then go in and modify them by right-clicking on each library style item.

The second method — which happens to be the one which I use more often — is to add items individually to the library. To do this, you select the layer in the layers panel of the style you wish to add to the library. Then just click on the relevant icon at the bottom of the libraries panel to add it to the library. If you mouse over the icons, you can see there is one for Graphics, Character Style, Layer Style and Color.

Now comes the fun part…

3. Use your library of styles

I find the easiest way is to apply the style after adding the photo or text to a page. For example, I add text to a page using any font. Once text input is complete and text layer is still selected in layer panel, all you need to do is click on the font style you want to use in the library and the font automatically changes. Simple!

You can also apply the effect across multiple layers. So, for example, I have created my own templates for “Project Life 2016” …but each photo layer has a shadow layer style. To use these templates for my flat graphic style this year, I open a template in Photoshop, select all photo layers and then click on the “Grey Stroke no shadow” layer style within my library. This year’s stroke style is now applied to all my photo layers, instead of last year’s shadow.

Isn’t this easy? It’s such a time saver, too.

I hope that you find using Libraries as helpful as I have. Enjoy!

About the author Carolyn lives with her partner, eldest daughter, and 3 rescue dogs on 5 acres of paradise in the hinterland of the Sunshine Coast, Australia. Her camera, along with an assortment of lenses, is never out of sight. When not taking photos, she loves cooking and gardening and, of course, scrapbooking.