{Project Life} Week 12 & Digital Link Up

What a week I have had… it was so fun!  Spending 5 days in Las Vegas with the friends that “live” in my computer was amazing and tiring!  I am hoping to have my pages done tomorrow evening but wanted to get this post up for anyone who is on top of things and ready to link up already!

{Thursday Tutorial} Working With Digital Stamps

Hello, Cathy (scrappycath) here to share a little tip for working with digital stamps.  Krisi has a great set of Spring related sentiments called Write It: Spring Sentiments Digital Stamps in her shop. You can add dimension to your stamps by adding color.

I'm going to show you one way to add several colors to your digital stamps in Photoshop (or elements). As usual, there's always more than one way to do things in PS/PSE. So if you have a favorite way, by all means go ahead and use it!

First, you'll select the sentiment and open that file in Photoshop.  I'm using the "lucky me I have you" sentiment. Duplicate the layer and turn off the original layer.  Working on the copy layer, use the Polygonal Lasso Tool (circled in red in the image above), to draw around the part of the sentiment that you want to separate so that you can recolor it. When you've completely surrounded the item, you'll get those "marching ants" outlining it on your screen. You can see that I've outlined the "lucky me".  From the menu choose Select > Save Selection and give it a name.  Then press Ctrl+J. This will duplicate the selection onto it's own layer.

Click on the copy layer of the sentiment to make it active, then from the menu choose Select > Load > and choose the name of the selection you just saved. This will reload the original item you encircled. Press delete to remove it. Now you have the "lucky me" and the "I have you" on separate layers.

You can add a layer above each of these and clip papers from the kit you are using to recolor them. Or you can simply fill those layers with colors and clip them.  To clip a layer to the digital stamp layers, place the layer of paper or color above the digital stamp layer, then hover the mouse between the 2 layers, press Alt+click. this will clip the top layer to the one underneath.

I used papers from the digital kit that I was working with Lucky Me by Elise's Pieces, to color coordinate the sentiment with the card I created.

Here is a closer look at the sentiment.

If you want to keep a copy of the altered sentiment, be certain to choose File > Save As and save it as a layered .psd or .tif file. Be certain not to save it over the original digital stamp file.

Have fun coloring your digital stamps!

Cathy

{Project Life} Week 11–Digital Link Up

 

Well I finally got last weeks pages done – late Sunday night (well really early Monday morning). I managed to get this weeks finished tonight as well. I need to do more journaling for the second page but I will update that later.  I leave on Wednesday morning headed to Las Vegas for DigiScrapApalooza – a digital scrapbooking convention!  I am so excited to meet other designers and scrappers – plus the kids and hubby are staying home!

And this is what my pages look  like this week. I am still having an internal debate about how I am going to get these printed.  I have noticed that my pages are getting more and more simple – but that is ok with me – the moments and memories are documented which is the important part!

And a little bit closer up…

{that polka dot spot has pictures in it on the final but they are pictures of things I created for Vegas… so since no one has seen them yet I can’t share!}

Kit is from M. Martin – Geek Chic from The Digi Files # 33

Valerie Wibbins – Pocket Pages No. 3

Link up your pages here – please link back to here in your post and spread the word to other digital scrappers!

 

Linking up to

and

{Friday Fun} Egg Baskets

Krisi has a fun new template out this week just in time for Spring. There are two different sizes of egg-shaped baskets included in this template set. Here are a few examples:

From Cathy:


From Jennifer:



Here is the template we used:

{Thursday Tutorial} Shaped Cards: Spring

Hi -- Heather (isaacsmom) here. Today I'm going to share with you how to make some fabulous spring cards with one of the fun products that Krisi released last week at Scrap Orchard: Shaped Cards {Spring}. You can find it in the store here.

So first off, you choose which one of the cards you want to make, and open the file in your editing program -- I use PSE 10. This template comes in several file forms to suit lots of different needs. For this project, I used the .tiff file. I opened the digital papers I wanted to use and decorated the template. For the egg shaped card, I used the greeting "for you on Easter" which can be found in Krisi's pack of Write It: Spring Sentiments found here. Once I had the templates decorated in my photo editing program, I went ahead and printed them out. The next step is to cut them out. One of the things I found to be helpful with these shaped cards, was to actually score and fold my card before I started actually cutting out the shape. This helped the cutting process go quicker as well.

I always use my Cutter Bee scissors when cutting out my hybrid items. I love how sharp it is and also with the small blade, I can get into the little corners easier.

Once all of my cards were cut out, now we are ready for the fun part -- the embellishment. You will see in my examples shown below, I used several different items to finish off my cards. The first one here - the basket shaped card, I used some red line tape (double-sided very sticky tape) and made one stripe of the tape across the front of my card.

Then, I removed the red part of the tape to expose the other side of the sticky tape. I then took bakers twine and weaved a row of twine back and forth all along the strip of tape to create an effect of grass in the basket.

When I was finished, I used a glue dot to glue on a little digital bird that I had also printed and cut out. It really adds dimension to your card when you create things in layers like this. So, I have the printed card, the layer of bakers twine, and then the little birdie on top.

Here are two examples of basket cards I created: On the second one, I put a strip of ribbon around the whole card and then on the inside, I glued cut out Easter eggs so it looks like the basket is filled with eggs when the card is closed.

Next, I used the egg-shaped card template and decorated, printed and cut per the above instructions. On this card, I used glue dots to glue on 3 buttons. Then I added a tiny bow tied out of the ribbon you see here. It is just a very basic narrow ribbon.

As you can see, adding just these few items adds a lot of dimension.

And here is my finished set of cards. Spring is my absolute favorite time of year. I love the fun colors and the awakening of life all around as the cold days of winter pass. I can't wait to send these cards to my friends and family -- I am sure they will brighten their day!

All of the above examples were created using the digital kit Sweet Spring by WM[squared] Designs.

I'd love to see what you create using these Shaped Cards: {Spring} templates. Feel free to link me up in the comments section. Happy spring and have fun creating with these awesome card templates!

Heather (isaacsmom)

{Project Life} Week 10 & Digital Link-Up

Well life was a bit chaotic this past week and I worked Sat, Sun & Monday – which means… my pages are not done. I am going to take it all in stride and work on them later today.  I know the next few weeks will be a bit crazy and my pages won’t be done right on time but regardless I am keeping up with this project and LOVING the results. I can’t wait to get my pages printed. I want to do a photo book but am itching to have these printed for the girls to be looking at so I might decide to go with a post bound album. How are you doing your pages?

I will be back with my pages but wanted to have the digital link up and ready for those who stop by the site early on Tuesdays.  Please link back on your site so that others can see all the great digital pages created.

Finally made it back with my pages – this past week has been crazy!

 

Valorie Wibbins – Pocket Pages no. 3

Weeds & Wildflowers – EveryDayLife – from The Daily Digi digi files #27

Font – My Own Handwriting & Veteran Typewriter

 

Linking up to

and

{Tutorial Thursday} Recoloring word art

This week I released a couple products…
Write It: Spring Sentiments Digital Stamps by Krisi's Kreations
Daily Life: Daily Border Journalers by Krisi's Kreations
and
Shaped Cards {Spring} by Krisi's Kreations

Yep – three things this week – check back tomorrow to see them in action!

I want to show & tell you how to recolor the word art.

If you want to recolor the entire PNG file here is one way that you can do that (there are multiple methods to do this – but this is the way I do it).

In PSE and Photoshop -

Open the file you want to change – it is a PNG file.

Choose the color you want to change it to (using your color picker).

Go to Edit > Fill Layer. Choose a color (a drop-down menu gives you options for color, foreground color, background color, etc). You must have Preserve Transparency checked to
recolor just the word art not the entire layer.

In Microsoft  WORD
Open the file – Insert > Picture > From File to open the .png file.

With the word art selected go to Format > Picture. From the menu on the left select Picture. Find the drop-down menu called Recolor under Image Control. Select the color you want and click ok.

But… what if you want to recolor the word art in two different colors? You can do it in PSE & Photoshop.

You need to get the different parts on different layers so to do that, select the first word you want different. You can use the lasso tool or the box selection tool.

Once you have the selection around the word(s) you want follow the directions above -

Go to Edit > Fill Layer. Choose a color (a drop-down menu gives you options for color, foreground color, background color, etc). You must have Preserve Transparency checked to
recolor just the word art not the entire layer.

Here is a beautiful example from Cathy that shows the word art in two different colors.

Try it and and show us what you create – this works for both hybrid projects and layouts. Link us up and show us what you created!

See you tomorrow!

{Wacky Wednesday} Recipe: Crock pot Lasagna

Do you love lasagna?  But you don't love all of the work involved to make it?  Today I'm going to share a recipe for making lasagna in the crock pot! Yes, the crock pot!

Ingredients:
1 to 1.5 lb ground beef
1 medium onion chopped
1 can (29 ounces) tomato sauce
1 can (6 ounce) Italian style tomato paste
2 teaspoons Italian seasoning
1 container (15 ounces) part skim ricotta cheese
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
3 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
12-15 lasagna noodles uncooked (no boil kind work great)

Brown ground beef and onion in skillet until the meat is thoroughly cooked, drain.
In a bowl, stir together the tomato sauce, tomato paste, and Italian seasoning.
Add this to the meat, stir. Set aside.
In a separate bowl, combine the ricotta, Parmesan and 2 cup of the mozzarella cheese. 
Spray inside of crock pot with non-stick spray (or use a crock pot liner).
Cover bottom of crock pot with about 1/4 of the sauce/meat.
Layer lasagna noodles to cover. Break up the noodles to cover more area.
Top the noodles with the 1/2 the cheese mixture.
Top the cheese mixture with 1/4 sauce/meat mixture
Top with more lasagna noodles
Top with remaining cheese mixture, then 1/4 of the sauce/meat mixture.
Top with more lasagna noodles and finally the remaining sauce/meat mixture on top.

Cover and cook on low heat setting about 4-6 hours. ( I found it to be done at 4 hours)
Sprinkle the top of the lasagna with remaining 1 cup of mozzarella cheese, cover and let stand 10 minutes or until cheese is melted.

Makes 8 servings

You can make it up the night before and place the filled crock pot insert in the refrigerator. In the morning before you head of to your busy day, put it in the crock pot and turn it on.  Now you can have lasagna in a jiffy, even on a weeknight!

Mangia!  Enjoy!
Cathy

{Project Life} Week 9

Another week has gone by… where have the last 9 weeks gone? I am getting very excited for Digiscrapapalooza in Las Vegas in just a few weeks. If you have not registered yet – go do it now there is still time. We are going to have SO much fun!

Had fun putting together this weeks pages – next week will be tough as I work Sat, Sun & Monday so hoping I can squeeze in a little scrapping time. I am really loving that I am staying caught up and documenting life – the everyday stuff.

Here are my pages for this week – not as colorful as last week, but that green is a favorite color of mine.

Products used:

Chelle’s Creations – Spring Cleaning – love the colors in this kit & Doodle Border It (no longer available)
Valorie Wibbens – Pockets No. 3 The Basics
Font – My own handwriting and Pea Noodle Parlor

Are you doing Project Life digitally? Link up your blog (a link back is very appreciated) and share your pages with us!

 

 

Oh and if anyone is interested head over to Wild Blueberry Ink she has a freebie for Project Life and is doing a giveaway of a Cansolidator!

Linking up to

and

{Monday Mix} Tagged & Pinterest Inspiration

I thought I would just quickly share to go check out the Scrap Orchard blog today… and see a great post written by the Hybrid Bees. It talks about ways to create a quick hybrid project {and I am giving away a little freebie}.

Here is a look at the freebie – you need to head over there to get it though.

Now here are a few inspiration images on other ways to use your free tag template:

Source: espacecreatifvc.canalblog.com via Cristina on Pinterest

Source: pioneerpartyandgift.com via Krisi on Pinterest

Source: lisastorms.typepad.com via Carissa on Pinterest