ViVa Artistry 'Princess Frog'!

ViVa Artistry's new kit 'Princess Frog' is just gorgeous! Check it out here!

Raindrops by Janice's Scraps

This is the gorgeous new kit by May from Janice's Scrap!

I was lucky enough to play with it before release and here are my pages!

Lucky me!!

I have been so lucky over the last few months!! And I can't believe I haven't posted any of it here!
So rather than separate threads as these kits deserve, I am going to have to bunch them all together or I will never get it done!

So firstly I will mention my favourite win...I entered a comp on Doodelle's blog to make up a rhyme starting with "I want to buy" ...and I won!! Here is my rhyme!

I want to buy PS CS3,
it really is a dream for me.
But DH's wallet is far too tight,
and it does not budge despite my might.

Of course I'd rather PS CS4,
but his jaw would plummet through the floor,
for DH just can't understand,
the thrill I get in digi-land.

So I pray and dream throughout the night,
that Adobe hears of my sad plight,
And offers me a dream come true...
A RAK of (at least) CS2.

and I won this gorgeous new kit from Doodelle and a pack of CU houses!!



Now for all the kits ...

Thank you to Scrapidea Timkova for 'Feelingful' which i received for entering a blog challenge!

thank you to Joyce Paul for her beautiful kit 'Paint a Dream' which I won at DST!


Thank you to Christine Borgfield for RAKing me her beautiful brushes set for no reaon at all!! Here are 2 of the 8 I received!

And then thank you to Thaliris for her beautiful kit 'Life in Blue' which I won at DST!



And there was also this fantastic 3D Alpha by Kerstin Chen...again at DST!

And then I also won 'Bella's Dream' by Digi Overdose ...at DST again!


Now after this I felt really bad that I had won so much stuff so I stopped posting in the Happy Place at DST. I figured I had won enough for a while! But after about a month there were some gorgeous kits being offered so I tried again!

And I won Mystique Designs'1001 Nights'! Thank you Brydka!


And then to my surprise I won Paula Kesselring's new kit 'Let's Make Up'!! Thank you Paula!


Wow! I promise I will not post in the Happy Place for a little while!! Need to give everybody else a chance! lol And yet I don't even enter many...only the ones I really, really love!

Thank you to all of the designers that RAKed me...I haven't had a chance to use all of the kits yet, but I am getting there! Love them all...thank you!

Happy Birthday Mum!

Happy Birthday to my Mummy...for the 18th!!

I'm a little slow sometimes, but I was making a LO and didn't finish it till today so thought I would wait!
I know you are in China and feeling rather sick and lonely Mum, but we are all thinking of you and hoping you have a fantastic time over there!
Anyway, the kids made a video...and as YouTube is blocked over there I guess it probably won't help to put it here, but just in case Blogger makes is all okay, I will anyway! And of course the LO...based on a card Mum gave me as a teenager! Journalling reads:

I don’t know if you remember, but you gave me this card when I was 16 I think.. I loved it and kept it for many, many years. I think I may still have it, though I’m not sure where. Anyway I re-created this card for you, because it meant a lot to me...and so do you. It just seemed right.

Tutorial: Drop Shadows Tips

Another SA tutorial...

Here are a few tips to help improve your drop shadows:

- Try your opacity at 50% to start with. This is a good figure for many LOs/papers/elements etc....but feel free to change it to fit your LO.
-You may want a higher percentage for dark papers so it is more noticeable.
-You may want a lower percentage for light papers
- If you're element is 'high' off the page...increase the size (fuzziness) and lighten it (lower opacity) to make it more real. In real life shadows at a distance are not as sharp or dark.
-You can have coloured drop shadows if you like (if you're program allows) or you can use the standard black drop shadow with lowered opacity. This will allow the colour of the underlying paper to show through anyway.
-Sharp shadows are only for the midday sun...not your LO.
-Decide where you want the 'light' to come from for your LO, and make all the shadows head away from the light. Ie. don't change the angles of your drop shadows...keep them all the same within a LO or it won't look right.

- Your shadows SHOULD NOT be the focus of your page. In fact, they should barely be noticeable. People don't want to look at your page and say "ooohh..nice shadows!". The shadows should just be there to make the rest of the page look better..and hopefully one day, somebody will have to ask you if it is real or digi!

-look at real shadows and try to imitate them. I use this technique a lot lately. DH will be watching golf or some other crap and so i stare around the room looking at how the light affects everything! How it changes colours, how it creates shadows etc!

Here are some examples from the Scrap Addicts gallery. I'm going to use Melissa's LO's as I've already been through these tips with her using her own work as examples. Hopefully she won't mind!

Firstly here is a paper LO. You can see the shadows on the chipboard letters are quite dark and big but they are quite fuzzy. The shadows on the papers are barely noticeable, but they are there and they tell your brain that this Lo is paper.


This digi LO is when Melissa was playing around with her shadows trying to perfect them. It is good, but when you look at it, the shadows really pop out at you. We want the papers to pop off the page not the shadows and it is because they are too dark and too big.

And this is a new one of Melissa's. You really have to look to even see the drop shadows and that is great! They make the papers and elements pop, yet in themselves they are not a feature of the LO. Beautiful!

And in case she doesn't hate me enough already...here is a LO with a common drop shadow mistake - making the drop shadow go all the way around. You show me anything in real life where the shadow shows from all around the object. This is because the 'size' was too high.

ViVa FREEBIE and SALE!! + QP FREEBIE!!

It's Vanessa's birthday and so ViVa is giving you a fantastic 31% of their entire Pixel Canvas store!!


And they have made a gorgeous little freebie to celebrate! Check out the ViVa Artistry blog to grab it!


Plus...I made this gorgeous page with the freebie (paper and frame from Cirque Nouveau) and you can grab it as a quick page HERE! Enjoy!

Stroking Tutorial

Stroking is using a brush to go around an element in digital scrapbooking such as in my Mischka LO below. It can be done with a plain round brush to get a perfect line, or you can experiment with different brushes and spacing to achieve some fancy effects!


PS Instructions

To make a basic stroke is very easy. Choose the layer for the element you want to stroke and go to Layer>Style (or the little 'f' button at the bottom of the layers palette) and choose stroke. A menu will pop up and a red stroke will appear around your element.

Now you can change the colour by clicking the red box, and change the width of it by moving the size slider. The size is in pixels so a small element will want a small size and a large element will need a larger size for it to be seen. (Sorry for the bad example in the pic - the snowflake has sparkles which is why the storke has funny shapes to it!! What was I thinking?!)

Then click okay and you're done!

PSE Instructions - (thank you Melissa)

"I selected my layer.. Went under edit, choose Stroke (outline) Selection.. then a box pops up and I can change the size, colour, location, the blending mode and the opacity."

Extracting Hair Tutorial

Okay I have been really slack with my tutorials...and I still have some at SA that I haven't shared here. So my plan is to copy them all over soon.

First off though is this tutorial for extracting hair/fur. And unfortunately it isn't mine! I wish I was clever enough to think of this, but I found it a few weeks ago and think it is so clever that I have to share. I still haven't tried it myself as I haven't done an extraction in a while, but I really can't wait to use it. So head on over to the ScrapbookGraphics blog and a huge thank you to Miss Behaving for this fantastic tut!

New From ViVa Artsitry!

WANYAMA

Alysha's First Muster!

Last week Alysha's class put on their first muster...which is our schools term for an assembly. Basically every second week the whole school gets together to hear important news, hand out awards, sing the school song and national anthem etc. And a different class hosts the muster each week. So Alysha's class did the chicken dance for their muster!! It was so cute and so funny! And she also had to stand up by herself in front of the whole school and recite one of the school rules. She did so well and I was so proud! And I have it all on video!! And here is the LO I made... yay Alysha!

dst gso!

Thank you so much to Billa for shoosing my LO 'Love' for GSO!! It's so exciting to see your pages highlighted there!!