Organizing Supplies

Haven’t managed to post this week as I’ve been busy organizing my digital supplies. Last weekend as I said in my last post there was a big sale at www.designerdigitals.com and as a result my bank account is $50 lighter and my supply selection is boosted by some great additions. My problem has been that as I’ve added more supplies to my collections its been harder to remember what I did or didn’t have and where it was saved. Which meant when I was scrapbooking I was wasting time looking for supplies. This became really evident when I tried the 30 minute challenge last week and I realized I had to do something to help my process. My files on my external hard drive are sorted fairly well but I couldn’t search them. Yes I had copied the summary picture into one folder but what if I wanted to remember where I had a orange flower with a button. I couldn’t I had to look through them all. So I decided to tag my supplies and use Photoshop Elements Organizer to do this. I don’t use it for my pictures which I sort by event and date. So why not use it for my supplies. So I’ve spent most of my scrapbooking time this week going through my supplies and tagging each item. As some items have more one than one tag this is taking a while but even now I have found it beneficially and I haven’t even finished. It was great today when I decided I wanted to be creative rather than continue cataloging to be able to search for elements I needed or wanted without having to go through each folder looking for them! Certainly made the whole process much faster!
Photoshop Elements Organizer is really easy to use. I found it very simple to get things started and get multiple tags allocated to each item. I didn’t even read the instructions I just got started and it seemed to work. I even managed to work out how to rename a “folder” or “pile” I had created and then even to merge two. So if your using Photoshop Elements and your not using the organizer I can highly recommend the ease of using this program. Remember I’m using this for only my digital supplies and not my pictures. Anthony has warned me off using organizers for pictures and I haven’t really felt the need. But even 50% through the digital supplies I know this was the right decision to get it done. My word of warning is to make sure you backup your catalog so incase of disaster you can restore it. I haven’t yet done this but need to – as I don’t want to have to start again.

Enough words – here’s the layout I created this evening using one of the new templates I purchased last weekend.

Supplies -

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Photoshop Friday Series

At JessicaSprague.com there is a series of photoshop short tutorials called Photoshop Friday. So far I’ve bought two of these when they have been on special so they have cost me a $1 – yes that is not a typo. Now they are short and sweet but they come with a mini-kit and template to make the layout as part of the class so for a dollar they are a sweet deal. I’ve learned that like at Kohl's when shopping for digital supplies you only buy when things are on sale. Most of the digital websites have at least one day a week when things are on special and you just need to sign-up for their newsletter to know when.
Anyway yesterday I took Philip and his friend to the pool for some fun in the water at LMRA and when I opened the latest tutorial I had purchased to work through I realised the pictures were perfect for the layout. I was very proud of myself as I also actually did some photo editing before I made the layout to make the water bluer and put some ‘extra’ water behind philip. The highlights also needed some work!

Before

After
 

How cool is that! The reason I added the extra water behind him was so the picture would fit better in the template. In the end I didn’t need it that much as I realised I could just angle the picture – durrrr…….
Here’s the final layout. What I learned to do was using the text on curve tool – now in photoshop elements you have to use a text path purchased from someone else but I’m lucky if I want to do this Anthony has an earlier version of the full photoshop I can make the curves in. That will be for another day – for the moment I’m happy with what I did and what I’ve learned. Creating my own curves is for another day.


 

All supplies from JessicaSprague.com – Photoshop Friday Series No.10

Blending Layers in Photoshop Elements

So today I decided I wanted to learn something new about photoshop elements and create a new digital layout. I had purchased the “How’d they do that?” – course called the perfect blend from ww.designerdigitals.com it was well worth the money. It comes with a digital paper, a digital brush and all printable step-by-step instructions. The only negative is that I’m using elements 8.0 and I don’t think its been updated for the changes so something’s were in a slightly different place than the instructions but it was easy enough to find them and continue to work. Once I had worked through the instructions I decided the best way to make sure I understood what I had learned was to try on my own to create a layout. This is the result.



Supplies –
plus the Portauprince set I purchased for Haiti from Songbird Avenue.com

Technique rich layouts

Once in a while I feel like creating a page which is more in depth in terms of the techniques I use on it or the mediums I use. Last night I decided I wanted to play with my paints and glimmer mist. (One of the reasons I could never go totally digital is my love of getting messy sometimes when I’m scrapping – digital just isn’t so much fun!). So I decided I would make my own background paper. Originally I was doing it for a different set of pictures but I was moving things around on my desk and managed to knock a pile off and when I was sorting the stuff out I found an envelope of pictures from our trip in 2008 which I had never scrapped. I was flipping through them and this one spoke to me and I realized I wanted to do an ‘artzy’ page with it. Not really recording a memory which is 99% of my scrapbooking but using the image to remind me to dream about possibilities. Doing a layout like this also means I have more freedom to play with the messy stuff! Here’s what I created.

The background cardstock started life as a piece of CTMH textured white cardstock. I took two masks and using tattered angels glimmer mist in tattered leather color I sprayed the paper. Once it was dry I then took some new CTMH stamps called Live inspired and used the corner stamp in this set with Tim Holtz distress ink to stamp around the edge at all different angels. The picture is then matted in twilight paper by CTMH – the lighter color is the reverse side of the twilight textured cardstock. The “dream” was a piece of pre-cut chipboard i picked up at Michaels – I sprayed with a blue glimmer mist and a copper one. The saying “Live inspired, dream with possibility” was a saying on the stamp set and I stamped it first off but it was too small so I recreated it in word and printed on an overhead. The compass, arrow and other words are CTMH rub-ons.

When finally complete I’m really happy with the look I created. May even get a frame for this one and put it on the wall rather than hiding it away in a scrapbook album. For those interested this picture is of Ecole Beach in Oregon. It was a grey and dismal day but Anthony still managed to get this picture.

Today I also made a quick digital page using the challenge template on designerdigitals.com. I used digital brushes to create my own digital background paper in a similar way with the traditional layout. Fun to see how you can recreate techniques digitally. Other supplies are :-

Winged Words Brushes and Stamps - Katie Pertiet
LivEdesigns - Afternoon Stroll
SBA-portauprince