Don’t be afraid of patterned papers!

I’ve been asked a couple times before HOW I’m able to use patterned papers as my background on my pages and still use lots of elements. I think a lot of scrappers are afraid to scrap with patterns. I, personally, base a lot of my digi purchases on whether or not the kit has some rockin’ papers. I LOVE patterns!!!

Here’s a page I scrapped last night. I used Birthday Boogie by Miss Mint at Peppermint Creative. I bought this kit last year mainly because I was totally in love with the patterns! I also loved the elements, of course, but I was sold by the patterns that were all so different, yet totally complementary. I didn’t use a single solid paper on this layout - all patterns! I don’t think this LO would have been nearly as fun if I used a solid background!

Baby Steps: If you’re the kind of scrapper that mainly uses solids for backgrounds, start off with replacing those solids with a subtle pattern. Baby steps. What do I mean by subtle patterns? Well, ones that aren’t too busy or have really contrasting colors. Try a soft damask paper or small polka dots. The layout below uses a subtle damask pattern - the paper is monochromatic and as far as patterns go, this makes it easy to work with. This page uses Strength by Lauren Grier.

You can take it a step further by including bolder patterns on your page while still using a soft pattern for the main background. Heather used a nice subtle pattern as her main background here and then used some more busy patterns on the little cut up pieces on her page.

Go a little crazy: Once you’re comfortable with that, then give a really bold paper a try! This page by Tanya is a really great example. She used a crazy awesome pattern, which really communicates the”crazy cat lady” message. She also broke up the pattern a little bit by using some solid kraft paper and a soft polka dot paper.

Ingrid totally ROCKED the patterns here! I love that she wasn’t afraid to use a bold pattern and use lots of elements. Seriously. WOW!

Sheana went really bold with this page. Notice that she also broke up the pattern a little too by using those yellow mats.

I used a super fun pattern on this page - but made sure the picture didn’t get lost in the pattern by matting the picture.

Megan did the same kind of thing with this page. I LOVE the background, but it doesn’t compete with the photo because of the matting job she did. The lace also adds a nice visual touch.

Scale it down: You can also place your bold pattern on top of a subtle pattern and scale down the pattern a bit. This page by Sheana is perfection and I love the layered background papers!

Layer it up: You can still use all your fave elements on top of a patterned paper! You can still layer up the elements!

A great example by Angie…

Patterns on top of patterns: Yes, you can layer patterned papers on top of other patterned papers (like my cupcake page up top). Get adventurous!!

Work WITH the pattern: You can use the pattern as a guide for your page design. I used the sunburst on this page to ground my page design.

And this page by Kellie just knocked me off my chair! Talk about amazing! Love how she worked with the paper here!

Alrighty! Hope this inspires you! Now go use up those beautiful patterned papers that have been just sitting on your hard drive.

I am IN LOVE!!! DH decided I could FINALLY upgrade my camera as my Christmas present this year… and he let me have it early! I’ve been playing with it for a week now and I seriously am still as excited today as the day I opened up the box!

I got the Canon Rebel XSi body (no kit lens) and the Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens. LOVE. IT. The image quality on this camera is SO MUCH better than my point & shoot… and I can actually bump up my ISO and with this lens I can open my aperture much wider than I could on my old camera.

I got this camera on December 1st… perfect timing for the December Daily project! Taking photos every day is certainly helping me get used to all the new controls and settings! Here are a couple fave photos I’ve taken….

I’ve had several people ask me on FB how I achieved the bokeh in those pictures of my daughter in front of the Christmas tree, so I thought I’d share here!

*disclaimer: I’m not a professional photographer… so I hope no REAL photogs are reading this and shaking their heads at me. lol

First, you need a basic understanding of ISO, aperture, and shutter speed and how they work together and how you adjust them to get the proper exposure. Understanding Exposure is a great book for beginners. I also found some of the photography articles at 2 Peas in a Bucket to be really useful in learning the relationship between these: ISO, Aperture, and Shutter Speed and Exposure. Once you understand those, practice shooting in Manual. I think a lot of people are scared to shoot in Manual, but once you understand the relationship between ISO, aperture, and SS it really isn’t that hard and you will learn to LOVE having all that control over your settings to get better photos.

So, to get that bokeh I try and make my daughter stand several feet away from the tree (3-5 feet) and turn on the Christmas lights. I did shoot during the day, but I didn’t have a lot of natural light, so for the second picture I set my ISO at 800 and opened my aperture up wide (f/1.8) and adjusted my shutter speed to get the proper exposure (1/125 ). Generally, I try to keep my shutter speed faster than that (1/200 or faster) because my daughter is always moving, but it ended up working this time. By opening up the aperture, it not only helps me with the low light situation, but also helps me get that nice blurry background and get the cool bokeh with the Christmas lights. When my aperture is open like this though, it creates a shallow depth of field. So, I had to step back a little bit to make sure my daughter’s face was in focus (rather than just getting one eye in focus…lol).

I have to say, I’m gonna be sad when my tree has to come down because it really makes for some pretty pictures!

Alright, I planned on doing this tutorial MONTHS ago… finally got around to it today!

Layer masks are AWESOME! You can use them to mask parts of an image… this has a similar effect as using your eraser, except you never actually lose any parts of your image. If you use a layer mask to “erase” you can later bring back the part that you “erased.” Cool, huh?

PSE does not have layer masks… UNLESS you download a plug-in! Go download Grant’s Tools (make sure you DL the one for your version of PSE). You install these tools just like you isntall actions or layer styles. Here are the instructions that the site gives you for installing, but you may need to install them a different way depending on your version of PSE and your OS. I have PSE 5 and Windows Vista, so I installed it under C:/Program Data (I had to reveal hidden folders)/Adobe/Photoshop Elements/5.0/Photo Creations/Special Effects/Grants Tools. Make sure you have a folder dedicated to Grant’s Tools. The next time you open PSE, Grant’s Tools will show up in your Artwork & Effects palette (same place you find layer styles/dropshadows/actions).

ALL SCREENSHOTS ARE CLICKABLE SO YOU CAN GET A CLOSER LOOK.

So, I’ve got this ribbon and a tag. I want the ribbon to look like it’s threaded through the tag hole. So, I click on my tag and then apply the layer mask to it by clicking on the Masks Layer icon under Grant’s Tools in my Special Effect palette and press Apply.

Once the layer mask is applied, your layer will look like this in the layers palette. Notice how the mask is selected (you can tell by looking at the corners of the white icon)? Everytime you click on another layer and want to go back to this layer, you’ll need to actually click on the mask’s icon to activate the layer mask if you want to mask parts of your element. Does that make sense? hehe… once you play with it, you’ll understand.

I only want to mask the part of the tag that will be “covered” by the ribbon. To guide my masking, I’m going to select the ribbon by first activating my layer mask and then holding down CTRL and then clicking on the ICON of the ribbon layer in the layers palette. Now you’ll see the “marching ants” around the ribbon on my canvas. This means that when I mask my tag that I’ll be limited to that selection… or it will not “erase” parts of my tag that I don’t want it to.

Layer masks work with black and white. You will use a black brush to “erase” or mask and a white brush to unmask and bring things back. So, I make sure my layer mask is active and that I have the marching ants selection, then I set my foreground to black and my background color to white. Once my foreground is set to black, I select my brush and brush over the tag and the selection I want erased.

See? It only masked the part I wanted it to! Now it looks like the ribbon is threaded through the tag.

So, what do I do if I later decide I want to move that tag somewhere else? If you had actually used your eraser to do this, that part of your tag will be lost. Since I used a layer mask, I can bring back the part I masked! So, I activate the layer mask and set my foreground to white and brush over the tag to bring it back! Easy as pie!

Was that confusing? It might sound confusing, but once you actually use a layer mask, you’ll totally get it! I use these ALL THE TIME. Layer masks are absolutely fabulous!

I just whipped these screenshots up this morning for some of my Sweet Shoppe girlies, so I thought I’d come share with you too! Oh, and this paper is a TEENSY sneak peek of what’s comin’ at ya on Monday!

I am using Photoshop Elements 5 for this tutorial… but I’m sure it’s good for lots of PSE versions and all the PSCS versions. A girl at SSD easily adapted it and she was using PSP.

If you haven’t used the Dodge and Burn Tool, you are missing out! It is so awesome! I use it A LOT in my design work, but it’s super useful for scrappers too. The dodge tool is great for creating or enhancing highlights, and the burn tool darkens. For this first tutorial, I am going to show you how easy it is to fold a corner of paper!

ALL SCREENSHOTS ARE CLICKABLE SO YOU CAN GET A BETTER LOOK.


So, I’ve got my paper. I want to fold that upper right corner. I grab my Lasso Tool and select the Polygonal Lasso (circled in the screenshot). I click and drag to create the diagonal cut across the paper then click again once I reach the edge, drag it up to the corner and click again, then drag it back to where I started to create a closed triangle.

Next, I cut this selection to a new layer by hitting SHIFT+CTRL+J. Then I rotated the corner 180 degrees.

Now I’m going to grab my Dodge and Burn Tool (it’s marked in the screenshot below). I set it to BURN by selecting the hand up along the top toolbar. I’m working with a paper that is midtone, so I set the Range to Midtones. If I was using a very light paper, I’d set it to highlights…. or if I was using a very dark paper, I’d set it to shadows. I always keep the exposure very low (around 8%). I kept my brush fairly large… you can play with the size… it will depend on the size of whatever you’re working on. Then I brushed the edge of the corner to help make it look folded. I like to keep my exposure low and just build up the burn by brushing over the area until I like the way it looks.

Then I grabbed the DODGE tool (right next to the Burn Tool). I also set this to midtones and an exposure around 8%. I used a smaller brush this time. Then I brushed a little farther from the edge to try and make the fold look more curved at that point. Do you see how it’s highlighted now?

Then all I did was put a drop shadow on my folded corner! That’s it!