Caffeine for the soul

The strangest thing happened to me today and I am not sure how to describe it, it was almost like an epiphany. It was nearing the end of the day and I was feeling icky. I thought I looked bad, I was feeling run down and I really could think of nothing to look forward too. And to make matters worse I began to feel overheated while in the Tim Horton's line. I mean really overheated! It was overall just a bad scene.

However I began to feel better almost as soon as I got out of line, and I realised I didn't want to take the bus today. So I set out across the parking lot and all of a sudden this feeling came over me, I felt wonderful. Flashdance flooding through my busted MP3 phone, a Iced Cap in -20 degree* weather on the half-hour walk home, I had never felt more alive. I wanted to dance and I had a new bounce in my step. I was confident and happy, no excited with what lay ahead.

So that's the story behind the inspiration for my latest layout. Its the fist one I've done entirely about me, and not a particular event.


*Iced Cap - short for Iced Cappuccino. One of Tim Horton's better selections; -20 degrees Celsius

Happy Scrapping ♥

Even more stuff!

Lots of great new stuff in the Shoppe!

I'm getting organized now, so expect more to come. Happy scrapping ♥

Edit: The shoppe is acting up right now, so all my display images looks the same. They're not, I swear. There are different products. I'm trying to fix it, but in the meantime, bear with me please.

Tuesday Tutorial: Selecting

Hey everybody! How was your holidays? I hope you and your family enjoyed them as much as I did (hence the lack of tutorials). As a welcome back we're going to go over how to select things in Photoshop and I also have some new products available in the shoppe.

What you'll need:
Photoshop
A photo or image or some sort

Tools Used:
Lasso
Polygonal Lasso
Magentic Lasso
Magic Wand
Marquee's

OK, here we go,

Lasso Tool

There are three types of lasso's in Photoshop 7. The original lasso, the polygonal lasso and the magnetic lasso.

The original lasso works much like an exacto knife might. You drag it along the edge of an object until you've selected the area you want.






This can be tricky to do though, which is why I prefer the Polygonal lasso. With the polygonal lasso, you click somewhere to make a starting point and when you release, there is a line extending from where you clicked to where your cursor is moved. Click again to make a corner and go a different direction. You can even do rounded edges this way, by making lots of "starting points".

Finaly the Magnetic lasso tool will "stick" to all the pixels of a certain colour. First click to make your starting point then move your mouse around the edge of your object. When you come to a sharp corner, or if your line begins to bow in on you, simply click along the edge to make
another point.

With all three Lasso's, double click when you get back to the beginning. If you double click before this photoshop will automatically connect the start and end points with a straight line.
Magic Wand
The magic wand is one of the easiest to use and perhaps the most annoying. It will select all the pixels of a single colour (and colours very close to it) with a single click. However this does not work well with photographs or anything else with blending and subtleties to it as you are likely to end up with lots of area selected that you didn't want. To use it, you simply click on a spot that is the colour you want to select, all the pixels that Photoshop recognizes as the same or very similar in colour will be selected until another colour gets in the way.

Marquee's
Marquee's are very straightforward. You just pick the shape you want, then drag it out until the area you wish to select is contained within it. This works well when you wish to simply chop things off or select big chunks.