Happy Friday, ya’ll! It’s Lu & I’m here to do my first food post! I’ve been really excited about this, because I wanted to share both a recipe & a hybrid-of-sorts gift idea.

With the seasons starting to change (not for me, but for others), my “tastes” start to change as well. I start craving comfort foods, steaming cups or bowls and yummy spices! One thing I discovered awhile back was Chai tea. I know this is nothing “new”, but it was new to me. And one thing I particularly love about it is, the recipe combinations are endless… it’s all about customizing (one of my favorite words). I have read recipe after recipe, experimented & tweaked,  and tweaked some more. Finally, I’ve come up with a recipe that suits my palette, to a tea (lol). This is what you’ll need for (2) mugs of tea:

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups of water
• 2-3 black tea bags
• 2 tsps ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
• 1/4  tsp allspice
• 1/4  ground nutmeg
• 1 tbsp of vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups of evaporated milk, half-n-half or whole milk (equal qty to water)
• honey to taste
• optional whipped topping
• a small whisk or milk frother

Directions:

• Pour water into 2 quart heavy saucepan.
• Add tea bags (with spices) & bring to just a boil. Add milk & heat thoroughly, do not allow to boil.
• Turn off heat, discard tea bags & add vanilla extract. Stir to combine. Now, my favorite part… the froth! Roll your whisk briskly between your hands to create the froth in the saucepan. It’s so much fun! Personally, I’ve found that evaporated milk “froths” better than just whole milk, lol.
• Add honey to bottom of mugs, pour hot tea milk over to dissolve and stir.  You can also top it off with some whipping cream. That’s it… enjoy!

I have to tell you though, as much as I enjoy my Chai tea, it’s a bit of a time consuming process. Don’t misunderstand me – I’m all about the experience of a thing, but I’ve got laundry to do, you know? I decided that I needed to streamline my procedure a bit, so I decided I’d make my own tea bags. This way, I can create my own little concoction without having to measure spices every time! I ordered these press ‘n brew tea bags, they come in different sizes and quantities. I also ordered some Darjeeling loose tea leaves & filled the bags with the tea leaves and the spices. You don’t have to that, you can throw in tea bags & the spices separately, but I prefer not to swirl spice “sediment”. It’s a texture thing. I can’t eat mushrooms, either. But back to the spices…as for the ratios, I do not care for too much spice (I can’t take the heat, lol) so you may find my recipe a bit subtle.  By all means, add to or take away to suit! 

You could just stop here & really enjoy your day. Or you could share the love! I found this mixture on ALLRECIPES.COM  & thought it was a wonderful gift idea. I made some up and used the cute little tags from the Fall Festival Confection Collection.  Aren’t they just the perfect touch? Puts me right in the mood for fall (and officially, too, as the first day of autumn was yesterday)! On one side, I have my greeting and on the other side I put the ingredients & directions.

These would make a wonderful hostess gift for any holiday parties in the not-too-distant future. Or hey, you could just mix it up & keep it on hand for yourself, lol!

I also created these recipe cards for both my “traditional” chai tea & for the gift tea mixture, hope you like them! Just click the image to download, or click HERE.

Just a note:   the allrecipes.com logo is being used with permission…actually – it is a requirment in their licensing that we include it on the recipe cards as well as here on the post.  Just wanted to let you know in the event you were wondering why there is a logo on one of the cards :o)

Give these little recipes a try, it’ll start your weekend off right!  And don’t forget to check back here for our first Monday LOTW (moving from Saturday)!  Have a wonderful & relaxing weekend!

LuFood Stuff, Hybrid Projects, Uncategorized 10 Comments

Hi everyone! Denise here with my first Thursday Thievery post. I wanted to try something a little different and was drawn to this darling layout by Shabby Artist Lu. I chose her layout You Are… because of the framing of her cute photo and I loved how she used the word strips within her text. The swirls of flowers and multi-colored bling from the Shabby Princess kit Modish Girl add to the delightfully upbeat feel of her layout with the black adding a nice contrast to the colors.

The Shabby Artists created their own versions of Lu’s layout using a variety of different kits. Here’s Kylie’s gorgeous layout using the Carousel Collection.

Anna created a super cute layout  using the Barefoot Collection.

Karen created this sweet layout using the Hopscotch kit.

And here’s my version of Lu’s layout using the Boo Collection.

I hope you’ve been inspired by our variations of Lu’s layout and we’d love to see your layouts with word strips in the gallery.

Happy Scrapping everyone! :)

DeniseInspiration, Uncategorized 6 Comments

Hi everyone!  Beckie here to bring you more Focus on Photos!  This time we’re going to look at sharpening!!

I’ll admit that I’m pretty new to using sharpening.  I’ve been doing lots of research on-line to learn the various methods and intensity of sharpening, and one thing that I immediately realized is that everyone seems to have a personal preference.  That is, everyone seems to adopt their own method and way of fiddling with the settings to achieve something they are pleased with.  I know I say this a lot – but really – I highly recommend that you search on-line to read about sharpening in more detail to learn how to develop a method that is perfect for you!

What I do want to share with you is the basics of how to sharpen, as well as how to incorporate sharpening into your workflow for both photo editing and scrapbooking!  Ready?  Let’s get started!!

Photo Editing

In past posts we’ve looked at the basics of how to use ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) to make basic exposure and white balance adjustments to your photos.  Today we’re going to follow that workflow into Photoshop (Elements or CS) and apply sharpening!

First of all, understand that its usually good to sharpen photos any time you intend to share them on the web.  So much detail is lost in the process of reducing files down to be shared on-line that a quick sharpen can make a really dramatic improvement to what others see on-line.  However, it is equally important to understand that what looks good on-line is NOT necessarily what will look good printed out!  Luckily you’ll be creating separate web and print versions, so you can optimize each file separately.

Let’s get started!…Here’s an example of a photo I took earlier with my new macro lens (new to me, I bought it used, LOL!).  I’ve had sooooo much fun playing with it! Of course, my husband keeps asking me what I plan to do with all these pictures of leaves and bugs – I tell him to leave me alone because I’m an artiste!! :)

This is what the photo looks like after getting a slight bump in exposure in ACR:

Shot with my 60mm f2.8 macro lens at ISO200,1/250, f4

Here’s the same photo, but shown at a 100% close-up of a portion of the photo:

Looks pretty good, right?  My traditional workflow would have ended here :)  But now let’s look at what a little bit of sharpening can do to this image!

• Open your image in photoshop
• re-size your image for the desired purpose.  This is very important, as re-sizing after you sharpen will reduce the effectiveness of the sharpening.  To re-size:
  • Image–>Image Size and then specify the pixel size or inches you desire.
  • For photos, you may prefer to use the Crop tool to crop and re-size at the same time.
  • With both methods, be sure to keep resolution at 300 pixels/inch if you intend to print.  For web, set it to 72 pixels/inch.
• Ok, now that you’ve re-sized, right-click on the image in your layers palette to create a duplicate layer {you should now have two identical layers of your original photo).
• Be sure you’re viewing the image at 100% (go to View –> Actual Pixel Size).
• With the new layer selected, go to Filter –> Sharpen –> Unsharp Mask.  You’ll see this dialog box:

You’ll need to learn to play with the Amount and Radius values.  Here are two examples to illustrate the different results.  The first example is set to 150%, 2.0, 0.  You’ll just have to trust me – but this is too sharpened to print.  When I view this image on my system, I can see pixelation and “graininess” (is that even a word??) that have actually degraded the quality of my image.  Ironically, this is also a great way to illustrate my point that things look different optimized for web and print, because you might in your mind be thinking “what does she mean?? this looks great!!”  :)   Viewed on my system directly, the second image is actually just right to print.

Too sharp!  150%, 2.0, 0

Just Right! 100%, 1, 0

Scrapbooking

So how can you use sharpening with scrapbooking?  well, the same way!  You can try to sharpen the files you save for print and web, too! Let’s look at an example:

The image on the left is what the layout looks like after it has been reduced to web size, but no sharpening applied.  The image on the right was sharpened after it was re-sized for web.   (I used 80%, 1.0, 0).  You can see a significant difference on the title and the button!  In the past I haven’t actually sharpened my layouts for web, but seeing the difference makes me wish I had  :)

I just wanted to throw in one more photo, it might just be my most favorite photo ever of my sweet boy :)  I was taking pics of him in his cowboy hat and he was SUPER cute, smiling and sitting still for me.  Then he says “wait, mommy! one more!” and he ran back in the house, grabbed his blankie, and came back out and posed just like this:

Shot with 85mm 1.8 lens at ISO125, 1/160, f4.5

*sigh*….he’s just so darn cute.  You’ll see this photo on a scrapbook page eventually, but I just had to share.  And I did sharpen this, too!  110%, 1.0, 0.

ok, that wraps it up for today!!  hope you all give sharpening a try on your next project!  :)

BeckiePhotography, Uncategorized 16 Comments

Hi – It’s Anna here. I have the honor of doing the product spotlight this Tuesday and I have chosen the fantabulous

Modish Boy

(on sale for $5.21 this week only)

One of the first things that attracted me to this kit were the cool stars – I LOVE THEM!

They have the perfect shadowing -they look like they jump off the page.

Of course they come without shadows, too (if you prefer to do your own shadowing) – you get both.  Aren’t they great?

Look at some of the wonderful layouts from our team

Guess What? You don’t have to use Modish Boy just for boys as demonstrated by

AND Last but not least – one from me…

I would love to see what you do with Modish Boy

Link me up in the comments!

AnnaProduct Spotlight, Uncategorized 3 Comments

Hi everyone, it’s Beckie! Today I’m bringing you some more Ad Inspiration!  I really enjoyed looking on-line for examples of print advertising that would translate well to a scrapbook page and I was soooo inspired by what I found! You can do a search for yourself – just search for “print advertising” in your favorite search engine and you’ll be rewarded with page after page of results!

This one caught my eye immediately!  Initially it may have been the three-eyed duck, but as I took a closer look I realized that this ad had so much to offer as a scrapbook page.  Let’s look at three ways to be inspired by this ad!

1. Design

The main photo is big and bold, perfect for a favorite picture! There’s an obvious title (“protect your wetlands”), room for journaling, and even a place at the bottom to provide a date!  My daughter recently lost her first tooth, and using this ad as inspiration for my design, I created this layout with those photos in less than an hour!

It was actually a challenge for me to “leave it alone” and keep this layout simple, as I usually put more STUFF on my pages, LOL! But by keeping it simple and sticking to the design of the original ad, I have one more page ready for our family album :)

I added a few extra paper layers to help make this design work for my 12×12 page – which helps you see how this could work for virtually any page size!

2. Technique

Take a look at our inspiration ad one more time…see the little green things along the center line between the photo and the green block?  take a closer look!  The green block is actually covered in tiny little stamps in the shape of the spray bottle!  This is a great technique for us to use in scrapbooking!  All those cool stamps and rub-ons in the collections in the Shoppe would work so well for this.  Or, you could use your Photoshop brushes to create your own!

A few tips about how to use brushes to customize your own papers:

• In the brush settings box, adjust the spacing to get the dot and stars as above.  In these examples, the spacing was set to around 150%.  If you leave the spacing at 0, the result will be a solid line.
• Use the color picker tool to extract colors from your photos or your papers to use for your custom designs.
• Play with the opacity of your brushes, and you can also adjust opacity later in the levels panel as well (to reduce opacity later if you wish!)
• To get a straight line with your brush:  press down to start the brush, but before releasing the brush or moving it, press and hold the SHIFT key.  Then drag your mouse in the direction you want to draw the line.  Even if you are crooked, it will draw out the line perfectly straight!  When you’re done, un-click to end the brush and then release the SHIFT key.

3. Color

Once you look past the bright yellow duck, you notice that this ad really has an earthy, neutral color palette that would be great for all kinds of layouts!  Some of the collections from the Shoppe that feature colors from this palette are:

I hope you found something that inspires you in today’s post!  And be on the lookout for ads that can inspire you to try out new techniques and layout designs.

BeckieInspiration, Uncategorized 6 Comments