Christmas Cards for a good cause!

My church, and my son's playgroup are raising funds, as well as toys & non-perishable food items, for City Team Ministries. My favorite radio station- Classic Rock 102.9 WMGK also raises money for City Team throughout the holidays. Since money is tight in our house this year, I've decided to use my talents to try to raise a little more money than we would be able to donate otherwise. I've designed these 4 quick page Christmas cards, in order to donate the profits to City Team. (after paypal & etsy fees)

The cards can be purchased at my etsy shop here

You can learn more about City Team Ministries here

For those that are not my regular readers & don't do digital scrapbooking: THESE ARE NOT ACTUAL PAPER CARDS, THEY ARE DIGITAL FILES (.png). You drop in your photo in a program like photoshop, or photoshop elements & print it out. I just want to be sure no one orders these & expects cards to come in the mail. :) There will be an email sent with a link & a password to download the files. Please do not order these if you do not have some type of digital scrapbooking software. It's been my experience that programs like Microsoft photo editor cannot read large 300 dpi files.

Not a digi-scrapper? or don't need a Christmas Card? If you would like to make a donation to City Team Ministries, there is a link at the bottom of their homepage to make a secure online donation.

another new layout...

...for another oscraps challenge, surprise, surprise!

all the papers & elements are by Annie Manning of Paint the Moon Designs, except the alpha, by Holliewood Studios-

new layout

another oscraps challenge page- papers, frame, & string elements from Holliewood Studios (her papers are used as clipping masks on the swirls as well), swirls from Debra Tope, and circle embellishment from Danielle Young.

NEW KIT!

**UPDATE: sorry!! i tried to put a password on the download, but it wasn't working, so i thought the password didn't take- the password is: septkit
sorry about that**


please leave a comment & tell me- would you buy this kit if it was for sale? it's a freebie, but just wondering if i'm getting there yet.

you can download the papers here
and the elements here
as always, please leave a comment if you download!

took a short break to add some products to my etsy shop

did you know ikea sold fabric??? my friend Ashlee tipped me off to that. they have the BEST stuff! check out the new skirt pattern in my shop, more fabrics to come soon-

fashiondeeva's shop <-- check it out!

tutorial

Some friends have been asking how I do some of my photo edits, and I thought it would be easier to do a little picture tutorial than to try to explain in words. Everything I know I learned from sites like thepioneerwoman.com, escrappers.com, and photoshopessentials.com, so these are not MY tricks, they're just tricks I've picked up along the way. I tried to show a variety of the different techniques I use, but I don't do all these steps to all my photos. In fact I didn't add a "screen" layer to this photo, which I usually do, but the levels adjustment was enough to brighten this picture.

So here goes, my first tutorial-

here's the before:

First I add an adjustment layer- see the half black half white circle at the bottom. I'm going to choose "levels".

I drag the white slider to the left just a bit to brighten it.
then with my background layer selected, I hit control J to duplicate the layer & I change the new layer's blending mode to "soft light" & adjust the opacity to my liking.
Then I add another adjustment layer- Hue/Saturation, and I drag the saturation slider to the right to make the colors pop (don't worry, i'm not letting the skin color stay neon like that)...
with that menu still open, I chose "reds" from the drop down & drag the slider back to the left to make the reds less saturated. (I sometimes tone down the yellows too)
I don't like how bright the highlights are on his face & the diaper is too white, so i select the layer mask of the "levels" layer & paint over those parts of the picture with black. MAKE SURE THE LAYER MASK IS SELECTED & NOT THE LAYER ITSELF!

Next I do the eye pop- use the magnetic lasso to outline the eyes (under the regular lasso tool)

Then right click & choose "feather" set it to 10 pixels

go to Filter: Sharpen: Unsharp mask...then adjust it to your liking.

then you can either go to the image menu or hit control m for curves, and adjust the curve to brighten the eyes.

Then I'm going to crop it, just cuz I think it looks nicer that way ;)

And finally, this is the tip everyone was asking about- the inked edges...so simple- just the "inner glow" layer style. First I double click the background layer to rename it (cuz it's locked until you rename it). then I double click it again to bring up layer styles (or you could go to Layer: Layer Styles: inner glow). It defaults to a pale yellow with "screen" as the blending mode. If I want a light color edge I'll keep it at screen, but if I want to do a dark color, in this case, black, I change the blending mode to "multiply" then I adjust the opacity, noise, choke, & size to my tastes.

and ta-da...actually, I did this at like 1 in the morning, and now that I'm really awake it's looking too yellow. I might go back & adjust his skin tone again.

a whole lot of new layouts!

TaylorMade Designs is in the oscraps spotlight this week... all the elements are either from or inspired by her designs...i'll list underneath each layout which elements are from TaylorMade Designs.
word art & photoshop actions (scraplift from one her templates)

paper (scraplifted word art)

paper & template

paper & word art

the paper pack I promised

here is the psychedellic paper pack I was working on. I finally finished!



download here

another multi-part challenge at oscraps

I spent a full day on each of these layouts. Templates make me really work! all the templates are by Melanie Colosimo. The orange paper is by Paislee Press (it's been recolored) and the blue paper is by Genevieve Sass. I did the baseballs. (If i can come up with some other baseball embellishments I'll do a freebie with them). The swirls in the last page are from Flergs (her blog link is on my link list, she's awesome!) and I did the flag background, stitching & border. I'll be working on a 4th of July kit later on.

The pics from the Mets game were taken with my new camera...I LOVE the zoom lens! We were on the top level of the stadium & I was able to get that close!

latest challenge page, and an upcoming kit!

I just finished my favorite layout this month, it's for the designer spotlight challenge at oscraps, the templates are from Sue Cummings, the paper & inked edges are just layer styles from photoshop. They're meant to be viewed side by side, but you get the idea-

I'm working on a paper pack right now, it's really psychedellic! It will be up soon.

the other half of the previous challenge

the other half of the challenge was hosted by TaylorMade, and it was about your family's dreams. so my little Moose's dream is to be the next McCartney...template by TaylorMade, frame by flergs, and lyrics by Lennon/McCartney-

a new challenge page

I found this challenge through oscraps, but it's on one of their designers blogs- it's by Paislee Press. She has the nicest, more is less kind of stuff, which seems to be my thing, cuz i never know what to do with too many embellishments. the word art is by TaylorMade (who is hosting the other half of the challenge, which i have to get to work on!) and the swirls are by Peppermint Creative.

new layouts

my latest challenge entries for oscraps designer spotlight, it was a 2 parter this week, a template challenge & a crop challenge-

papers by Paislee Press
swirl by Megan Farrow (Flergs)
blanket stitch by Gunhild Storeide
stitched circle by Drehi from faithsisters.com
poem from http://www.scrapbook.com/poems/doc/18311/6.html

everything from Paislee Press except alpha from Michelle Coleman of LittleDreamerDesigns.com

Alphas!

I was playing around with some alpahs, but forgot to do numbers for the first one. But hey, it's a freebie, so I threw it in anyway. enjoy-

download here

busy, busy, busy

I've been working on so much lately, that I haven't had time to post!

So here's the latest- from the oscraps designer spotlight challenge- everything is from the blueberry fields forever kit from Becky Vosberg...ironically I used it for Beatles stuff (strawberry fields, blueberry fields...I hope everyone picked up on that, lol).



His shirt says "still mad at Yoko". thanks to my friend Alison for sending me the link to the online store selling it, we LOVE it! We've gotten so many comments. We were at the library for story time and the librarian got such a kick out of it, she sent all her co-workers over to see.

And this is from the previous oscraps challenge- a template challenge. everything is from Genevieve Sass, except the triple frame which is from Leah Riordan, but I covered it Genevieve's paper.

I've been working on some alphas, I'll post those as soon as I finish!

a new challenge page

for the latest oscraps challenge- everything is by Melgan Designs-

not sure about the problem downloading the butterfly papers

There were some comments that the second batch of butterfly papers wouldn't download. I downloaded them myself on the other computer & they worked, so I'm not sure what the problem is. If anyone is tech savvy & has any suggestions please let me know!

another new kit!

i've been busy lately, and here is the latest...

you can download the papers here & here

and the elements here


please leave a comment if you download!

FINALLY a new kit!!

I finally finished a kit...the one I previously mentioned that wasn't coming together has been abandoned temporarily. My baby & a bunch of our friends' babies are about to turn 1 (or have turned 1 already) so I made a party kit...there's one for girls & one for boys!

download the girls' papers here

download the girls' elements here

download the boys' papers here

download the boys' elements here

Please leave a comment if you download & please share if you used any of my kits or templates! I've only seen one layout done with one of my kits...it was awesome, I'd love to see more!