Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Personalizing Patterned Paper

Hi Everyone,

I thought I would show you a neat way to personalize your patterned paper. This is only one of many but it is very simple and very fast.

While I was creating my layout I was finding that I liked the look of the Black and White paper but I wanted to add more colour to my design. To fix this situation I changed the white on my paper to a sky blue that I pulled right from one of my photos. This adds a splash of colour and really draws the eye to the central photo on my layout.

For this technique I used the Creative Memories Black and White Power Palette. I find it works best because there are two distinct colours (black and white). The first step is to choose a paper you like (in my layout is is Paper number 4). Then go to your Format Ribbon and click on Filters. You will get a pop up that has a number of effects you can apply to your paper. Click on Threshold. I left my slider bar setting at 128 and just focused on my colours. There are two boxes with colour in them, a low colour and a high colour. You can now select any colour you want and make it your low colour or your high colour. Just click on the drop down menu beside each box and either select a predetermined colour or sample a colour from your layout. For my example I sampled a blue from one of my photos and made it the high colour. I left the low colour (black) alone. Now I have a blue and black paper instead of white and black with just a few simple clicks!




Recipe:
Paper- Creative Memories Black and White Power Palette
Fonts- SBC Distressed Typewriter and SBC Stone Inscription
Template- www.Pixels2Pages.net

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Long time, no posts. . .So Sorry!

Hi Everyone,

My sincerest apologies for not posting in months. I don't have any excuses for abandoning my blog.

Lately I have been busy with digital scrapbooking. I have started to get caught up and am now working on pictures from April 2010! I have almost completed my London trip from last year and thought I would share some of my layouts. I have tried out a few new techniques thanks to Pixels2pages.net. If you haven't been to this site I highly recommend it. Inspiration is everywhere!

This first page I am quite proud of. The blueprint came from the Pixels2Pages website (they are no longer allowed to share blueprints as of January 2011) and I just made it my own. I am really pleased how the large picture of Big Ben looks. I don't often cut out certain objects from pictures and play with the softness and opacity but this turned out really nice. I used my wand tool to cut around big ben, then I softened the edge using the filters tool, finally I changed it to Sepia and brought the opacity down so it blended nicely with the background.



This second page is one of my all time favourites. Everything was working in my favour the day this was created. I wanted to try out the Pixels2Pages challenge #33 called Single Photo Collage. I loved this photo I took in St James Park and really wanted to showcase it. This technique was perfect! For full instructions and pictures to go along with them please click on the link above.