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.

New Product!

I'm rather proud of these. They're name tags with fun little sayings on them, you may remember a similar thing from McDonalds ads about 4 years ago. The ads showed women in T shirts that had name tags on them saying things like "Hello I'm ... Amazing" and holding salads. I really liked them and wanted a shirt like that, this is my compromise :). I hope you like them, my personal favorite is "Hello I'm ... Up Here" lol.

Tuesday Tutorial - Selective Desaturating

This Tuesday, we're going to go over how to make part of you photo's black and white, but keep the rest coloured or vice versa. This technique is great when you want to bring attention to a certain part of the picture only, such as the colour of something or someones eyes.

Tools Used:
Polygonal/Magnetic Lasso
Desaturation


What You'll Need:
Photoshop
Your picture


Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines...

1. Open you photo. I'm going to use this photo of red tulips outside of my high school.
2. Next select the area you want to remain coloured (or if there is more coloured than black and white, select the area you wish to desturate). The easiest way to do this is using the magnetic lasso tool. This will automatically "stick" to the edges of a shape based on the pixel colour. However sometimes it gets confused and can be frustrating so you may want to use the polygonal lasso.
3. With both tools, you simply click at your starting point then guide the line around the shape. With the Polygonal lasso you will have to click again at any corners as it only does straight lines. Double click when you get back to the starting point.
4. Create a new layer of what you have just selected. edit>copy, edit>paste or ctrl+J If you selected the area you wanted to destaurate, rather than what you wanted to keep coloured, invert you selection first. select>inverse or ctrl+shift+i)
5. Select the original image in your layers palette and desaturate it image>adjustments>desaturate or ctrl+shift+u
6. Last step is to merge the two layers. layer>merge visible (or merge down) or ctrl+shift+E (ctrl+E)
   

Perfect!

Here are some examples:

Tuesday Tutorial - Easy Recolouring

So for today I'm going to show you how to quickly recolour something without having to paint over it.

What you'll need:
Photoshop
Object you wish to recolour

Tools Used:
Hue/Saturation adjustment

Lets begin

1. Open your object in photoshop. I am going to be using a paper EHI Destinations paper blue, a past Scrap Girls freebie.
2. Open the Hue/Saturation menu image>adjustments>hue/saturation You can also do this by hitting ctrl+u
3. Using the Hue slider, find the colour you like. The Saturation slider will adjust how much colour your adding, making it brighter as you slide it to the right and the Lightness slider will lighten or darken your image.

That's it :)

Tuesday Tutorial - Text with Pizzaz

This week I will be showing you how to take regular old text and make it stand out. Sure you can change the font, add some colour maybe position it better, but what about when you want to make it REALLY POP?

What you'll need:
Photoshop
clipart/picture of a small gem

Tools Used:
type
drop shadow
bevel/emboss
texture

On your marks, Set get, OG!

1. Open a new image. Any size and background you desire.
2. Using the type tool (T on your sidebar) create some text. I wrote Smile using the font Gigi, F71595.
3. Add a drop shadow. Layer>layer style>drop shadow
4. Apply the Bevel/Emboss setting and texture. Layer>layer style>Bevel Emboss Layer>layer style>Bevel Emboss>Texture
5. Open your gem picture and delete any background by using either the eraser of Magic Wand selector if it is a solid colour. I found my picture on google.
6. Drag the image onto your image with the text.
   
7. On your text image, resize and position the gem over the dot in the 'i'.
8. Add a drop shadow to the gem. Layer>layer style>drop shadow I used the default settings.

And your done. ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
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