Category: Tutorials

July 30, 2015

Hybrid: Disney Pendant

Hello all you Disney goers. Whether you have gone on that dream vacation or getting ready to go, this pendant will be perfect for wearing during your vacation (if you haven’t gone yet) or to wear as a keepsake to remember all those fun times. I have always wanted to take my boys to Disney, but it just never happened. Now that they are grown men, maybe one day I will have some grand kiddos to take. I plan to take them and then use these wonderful Disney kits to scrap all the great memories.

This is a great project to use all those scraps you have laying around. God knows I have a lot of those, but for now I will use the Disney themed kit, Vacation Magic by using Scotty Girl Design. This is a super easy project that you can create for friends and family for any occasion.

So let’s get started on the tutorial. Here is a list of supplies you will need for this project.

Punches and/or scissors
Printed background papers and embellishments
Pendants (I bought mine at Hobby Lobby)
3D Crystal Lacquer (I bought mine at Hobby Lobby – there is also a Mod Podge lacquer)
Mickey heads (I designed these in Silhouette Studio v3 but it’s easy enough that you can simply draw and cut out)

STEP 1: Cut or punch pieces you want to use for your pendant. I didn’t have a square punch so I cut the size I needed with a pair of scissors. For Mickey, I used my Silhouette Cameo to design & cut. I will show you how to do that below.

Steps for making Mickey with the Silhouette.

Draw out the circles using the circle tool on the side menu.

Now drag your bounding box around all three circles.

Finally, select the WELD icon at the top right of the page. It opens the welding options where you will select weld.

Viola, there ya have…..Mickey!!

STEP 2: Once you lay the pieces in your pendant you will add the crystal lacquer.

With one pendant, I added two thin layers and the other I filled to the rim of the pendant and they both turned out the same. You may get some tiny air bubbles, to get rid of those simply use a sewing needle to pop them. Set aside on a flat surface for at least 12 hours to dry.

That is it….Your done!! Wasn’t that easy? Now get to work on those pendants, you have 5 months until Christmas!!

About the Author: Tanya is a part of the Hybrid team here at The Digital Press. She has been hybrid crafting for at least 10 years now. She loves creating and sharing those creations with you. Her all time favorite tool is her Silhouette Cameo. She says with the Cameo the sky is the limit. Tanya has been married for 26 years and has two sons, Chris, 23 and Chance 19. She also enjoys crocheting, photography and wood working.

July 28, 2015

Make Your Scrapbooking Life Easier with Shortcut Keys

It is very helpful to have shortcut keys available when we scrapbook. Other than the shortcut keys we all already know, like “Ctrl+S” to save or “Ctrl+T” to transform our image, we would like to share with you 15 other shortcuts you can use for Photoshop. Let’s try them and you will see how they will help make your scrapping life much easier!

Fill a layer : Allows you to fill an empty layer with current background color.

PC: Ctrl+Delete
MAC: Command+Delete

Merge visible layers : Allows you to merge all your visible layers. Beware – it is difficult to separate merged layers.

PC: Ctrl+Shift+E
MAC: Command+Alt+E

Bring layer forward : Allows you to bring the selected layer to the front.

PC: Ctrl+]
MAC: Command+J

Invert selection : Allows you to select the area around an already selected image.

PC: Ctrl+Shift+I
MAC: Command+Shift+I

Select all layers : Allows you to select all layers at the same time.

PC: Ctrl+Alt+A
MAC: Command+Option+A

Select everything in a layer : When you hold the control key and click on a layer in the layers pallet, you can select everything in that layer.

PC: Ctrl+Click on a layer
MAC: Command+Click on a layer

Deselect all : Allows you to deselect a selection.

PC: Ctrl+D
MAC: Command+D

Keep proportion : Allow you to keep the proportion size of your image when you are making them bigger or smaller with your mouse, while in transform.

PC: Shift+Resize with mouse
MAC: Shift+ Resize with mouse

Create perfect forms : Allows you to make a perfect square or circle if you hold Shift down when you use a marquee tool. Can be used for cropping as well.

PC: Shift+Marquee tool or Crop tool
MAC: Shift+Marquee tool or Crop tool

Draw a perfect line : Allows you to draw a perfect line if you hold Shift down when you use the eraser, pencil, or paintbrush.

PC: Shift+Eraser, Pencil, or Brush
MAC: Shift+Eraser, Pencil, or Brush

Distort a layer : If you hold the control key when you drag the corners of your layer, you can distort it.

PC: Ctrl+Drag with mouse
MAC: Command+Drag with mouse

Align text : Allows you to align your text Left, Center or Right.

PC: Ctrl+Shift+L, C, or R
MAC: Command+Shift+L, C, or R

Zoom in or out : Allows you to zoom in or zoom out.

PC: Ctrl+Minus (-) or Plus (+)
MAC: Command+Minus (-) or Plus (+)

Fit on screen : Allows you to fit the size of your work on screen.

PC: Ctrl+0 (zero)
MAC: Command+0 (zero)

Adjust photo level : Allows you to access directly to level parameters when you want to edit your photo.

PC: Ctrl+L
MAC: Command+L

I hope you find these little tips helpful!

About the Author : Bao is a Creative Team member at The Digital Press. She has been a Digiscrapper for about ten years now. She joined The Digital Press in March and enjoys being active on the site. Her style tends to be clean & simple. Most of the time she scraps her family’s photos. She loves, however, to scrap other subjects such as flowers, nature, the environment, foods … She says hello to all of you from her big island named Madagascar, and feels blessed to live there.

July 23, 2015

Using Masks Creatively

Hello everyone. Hope you are all enjoying the sun and the fabulous summer school here at the Digital Press. I have been following all the lessons and there have been so many useful tips and tricks that I have noted down to try on!

In line with the Art Journaling week, I thought about sharing some techniques I use with masks. Now masks can seem a little intimidating at first but once you get the hang of them there is no better way to make certain adjustments to your images or layouts non-destructively. These are especially helpful when you might change your mind later, especially as I am prone to!!!

So the first technique is what I use to selectively apply adjustment layers to my photo. Take for example the one below. It was taken against a very bright background but my daughter’s face and body are a little dark. I especially want to bring out the little light rays filtering on to her face. So ideally I would like to brighten only her face a bit and not the whole picture. I use Photoshop Elements but these steps should be fairly simple to replicate in Photoshop as well.

The first thing I do is use the quick selection tool to roughly select the portion to which I will apply the adjustment layer.

Next from the adjustment layer drop down list choose the adjustment you would like to apply. In my case I chose the “brightness and contrast” . You will see a layer mask appear with the selected portion in white and rest in black. That is the thumb rule when using masks – white reveals and black conceals. This also means any fine tuning we do on this layer will only apply to selected portion. Before doing this, however, you can also further refine the selection by using black or white brushes but make sure you have the right layer i.e. mask layer selected and not the background photo.

That is most of the work done! Now play with the brightness and contrast till you are satisfied and voila there is a little more light and colour on that face!

The second technique I want to share is for realistic element placement on the layout. For example if you are using a paper clip on a stack of papers or a thread looping through a bead or button or some such element. Now the idea is that certain portion of the clip or thread should be visible and others hidden. Using layer masks again helps us do that in a non-destructive and stress free way!

In the same layout, I have now added a tag and a closed loop string. What I want is for the string to loop through the little hole on the tag.

1. First place your elements one on top of the other.

2. Now select a layer mask to apply to the string layer

3. Use a black brush and start erasing portions of string that you want to hide. You may want to zoom in to do this step.

We are nearly there ! But there is still the erased string’s shadow left which is looking quite odd indeed. To edit this, simply place the string’s shadow on a separate layer and follow steps 2 and 3 again.

I added a few more rings to that string and here is the final layout.

Hope you found these tips useful and I would love to see any layouts created using these techniques. So please do not hesitate to share or any other techniques you use to get the same effects.

About the author: Shivani Sohal is a donner of many alter-egos. A finance professional by day in busy London, she morphs into a seemingly normal mum of two in the evenings and weekends. She is constantly found with her fingers in too many pies and juggling the metaphorical balls. That is living on the edge for her; aided by the two ankle biters and a darling hubby who define the warm and mushy for her. She is ferociously dedicated to memory keeping – almost immune to any nay-sayers (or equally disruptive crying children or annoying house fires!!!);keeping her head down and forging ahead at all times.

July 21, 2015

Tutorial – Get Artsy with the Filter Gallery in Photoshop

It’s Artsy Week in Summer School and I’m here to tempt you to put your art journaling hat on by using the Filter Gallery in Photoshop. Sure, we all know how to do a pencil drawing, but did you know you can do so much more and easily, too using the Filter Gallery? With Photoshop CC 2015, you can now apply multiple effects to one image. It’s 100% non-destructive, artsy heaven! I say this as an artsy non-art-journaler.

I’ve selected two photos to work with for this tutorial. One is a pretty decent photo of my hubby and son, if I don’t say so myself, and the other is a hot mess photo of my son as a toddler. Open a photo or two in Photoshop and play along with me.

First, we need to prepare our photos: I recommend deciding what size photo you’d like to use on your layout, so you won’t need to do any difficult re-sizing of the filters on your canvas. Once that’s done, you need to convert your photo for smart filters. If you don’t have PS CC 2015, yet, (and you so should), you will only be able to apply one filter to your image. To apply another filter, you will need to rasterize your image and start again.

In Photoshop CC 2015:

In the menu bar, click Filters> Convert for Smart Filters

All this means is that Photoshop is working magic so you can add more than one filter on your photo at a time.

When the scary dialogue box appears, click “ok” (really, it’s okay)

One thing to note is that the color selected in the color palette will effect the filters. I recommend you start with the default colors picked (B&W) and explore the different filters before going a bit wild with colors. (and I do hope you get to that wild place!)

Now it’s time to open the Filter Gallery! Click Filters> Filter Gallery

To see your entire photo, in the bottom left-hand corner, click the drop down arrow. Select Fit in View.

For this photo, I selected the Stamp option. I reduced the smoothness and the lightness until I have the fewest lines, but can still tell what I’m looking at. Start with these settings and adjust the sliders until you’re happy with your image:

Light/Dark Balance: 12
Smoothness: 6

The next photo I’ll be using is already prepared. It’s an old, damaged, sad photo that was scanned. I neglected to wipe off the dust… um, d’oh! It’s the perfect photo to use with the Artistic Filters.

I started by using the Colored Pencil Filter. It doesn’t have be perfect because we’re going to add another filter on top of this one. What I want here is to really just bring out the eyes and lines of the face. I’m not worried about the background- I’ll take that out later. If you’re photo isn’t a person, the same still applies- bring out the lines that define the object. When you’re happy with your photo, click okay.

Start Here:

Pencil Width: 16
Stroke Pressure: 8
Page Brightness: 43

Go back into the Filter Gallery. This time, we’ll use a Sketch Filter, specifically, Charcoal. Again, we’re making sure the important lines are clearly defined…in an artsy way of course.

Start here:

Charcoal Thickness: 5
Detail: 2
Light/Dark Balance: 59

Click on your photo in the layers palette. Now click on Layer Mask icon. Select black as your color, use a round brush and brush out your background. You can select a different brush with a lighter opacity if you want to keep some of your background. If you brush out too much, don’t worry. Swap your color to white and brush over the area of the photo you erased. It’s magic!

When your happy with your image, it’s time to drag onto to your layout. I’m using Real Life in Pockets: Rad Lab: Elements, Papers & Word Art by Mommyish and Just Jaimee. I’ve chosen an embossed kraft paper to show off my artsy photos. If you’d like your work of art to show the background paper, choose a blending mode like Multiply or Color Burn. Then, reduce the opacity so it blends into the paper.

Here’s my finished product:

There you have it: a simple way to get artsy looks on your pages. Now, off to Summer School with you to learn more artsy techniques you can pair with this tutorial.

About the Author: Carrie is a mom to an ASD teenager and wife to a Chiarian living in coastal Delaware. Currently, the producer and host of The Digiscrap Geek Podcast, Creative Team Lead for Just Jaimee, creative team member at The Digital Press & Get It Scrapped. Carrie’s other passions include genealogy and family history, beating your husbands and sons at Call of Duty, binge watching TV shows on Netflix, visiting the beach, reading, doting on her cats, making cards with digital products and front porch chats with her neighbors.

July 14, 2015

Photoshop Tutorial: Head swapping made easy

My kids are complete goofballs, especially when it’s picture time. I’ve gotten in the habit of taking multiple shots of them instead of trying to make them cooperate. The result is that I’ve become a expert at swapping heads! Here are two shots- in one, my daughter looks great, but my son’s expression isn’t quite what I was hoping for. In the second shot, my son has a nice smile, but my daughter is looking away. The obvious solution is to combine the shots. Here are some easy tricks to making sure that everything lines up:

Using unedited photos, drag the 2^nd shot over onto the first shot. ***note: I usually do any head swapping first before editing the final image. ***

Change the layer style to DIFFERENCE. Line up the photos so that the head is mostly black. Black means that there’s no difference. Of course, the parts that you’re trying to change will not be black, but it’s important to make sure that as much as possible is lined up.

Change the layer style back to normal and add a layer mask. Use a white brush to mask the head that you’re swapping, paying close attention to the borders. Once you’re happy with the swap, flatten the image and edit as you would normally.

Voila. YES…it is that easy. Here is my final image.

About the Author: Farrah Jobling is a member of the Creative Team here at The Digital Press. She lives in Denver with her amazing family, Mike, Nicholas (8), Claire (5) and Hope (1 yr old puppy). She works from home as a photographer and enjoys scrapping her personal photos.

July 9, 2015

Working with shadow layers in Photoshop Elements

Working with shadow layers in PSE

Hey Everyone! Today I’m going to give all us Photoshop Elements Users a shout out! Whoot whoot! I know just how frustrating it is to watch or read a tutorial of some fun new trick and then learn that we can’t do it that way in PSE. Well, today I’m going to show you a quick way to ‘get around’ some of those PSE road blocks!

Don’t you just love those layouts where you can manipulate the shadows to make them look realistic!? As PSEr’s, we can’t do that. BUT WAIT! YES WE CAN! Say it with me… YES WE CAN!

So the problem with PSE is that you can’t make your shadow a separate layer with a quick click of the mouse like in the big daddy Photoshop. But, here’s a few screenshots showing you how I do it in PSE. –here’s my disclaimer saying that yes, there are many ways to do this, as anything in Photoshop or PSE, but this is MY way!—

Select the layer that you want to separate the shadow from
Open the style settings dialog box (double click on the fx symbol)

Drag the shadow onto an open space away from your object (you can also drag the ‘distance’ slider to accomplish the same thing)

Working with shadow layers in PSE

Click ‘OK’ then simplify layer by R clicking & selecting ‘SIMPLIFY’

Working with shadow layers in PSE

Using a selection tool- square marquee for me- Select the shadow making sure to not select any part of the element

Working with shadow layers in PSE

Cut then Paste (Ctrl X, Ctrl V for me) will give you the shadow on its own layer above the element.

Working with shadow layers in PSE

I always change the blend mode to linear burn or multiply, depending on what colors/patterns are on the layers below.

Working with shadow layers in PSE

Drag the shadow layer below the element in the layers panel then place about where you want it under the element.

Working with shadow layers in PSE

Here is where I ‘tweak’ my shadows- instead of ‘warping’ which can only be done in Photoshop. For this label, I didn’t have too much fiddling to do. I wanted the end to look like it was up slightly since the brad & bow were anchoring it on the other end. I just rotated the shadow slightly. For the purple bow, I wanted the tail to look like it was coming off the page further. With the shadow layer selected, R click on the corner box & select ‘skew’ (or sometimes distort, depending on the shape.) With this- the shadow will skew or distort in different directions. Sometimes it takes a little fiddling with it to get it just right, but practice & you’ll get fast! Sidenote- here is also where you can really use some other cool options in PSE- one that I use a lot on papers is under the Filters tab- then select ‘Wave’ or ‘Liquify’. Just keep playing around & you’ll find many ways to make your shadow more realistic!

Working with shadow layers in PSE

Playing with the Bow shadow:

Last but not least! Select the Element & the Shadow layers in the layers panel & group together (so they move together if you need to move them)

Working with shadow layers in PSE

VOILA! If you’re not a good reader/screenshot follower- Karla has made a little video tutorial very similar over in The Digital Press Summer School classroom ~ HERE ~. The forum is a great place to ask questions & I’ll be checking in there often if you have any for me!

My completed layout using Unicorns are My Favorite kit by our newest designer: Wildheart Designs

About the Author: Amie is a craft loving, dental hygienist in WA state who loves her husband, two kids (ages 7 & 4), English Bulldog, coffee, baking cupcakes, daffodils, glitter & sprinkles, reading a good book and lip gloss- not necessarily in that order.