Happy Tuesday everyone!  It’s Jenelle here with our latest Product Spotlight.  A favourite kit of mine, I have to say and one that is so versatile – I just love it!  It’s the divine Gabby Collection and it is ON SALE now in the Shoppe for a limited time only, at just $5.15.  If you don’t already have this kit in your stash, I’m pretty sure you’ll be feeling inspired to add it to your wishlist by the end of this post!  LOL!!!  It really is gorgeous and I’m pretty sure you’re going to love the new layouts the team have come up with using Gabby.  So let’s take a look at this beautiful collection shall we?

I’m certainly going to re-iterate SP’s words when I say that this kit is super fun, quirky and a little whimsical.  Perfect for all types of layouts and themes ~ baby, family, indoor, outdoor, boy, girl – you name it!  It works for everything.  Such rich, vibrant colourings and those chic little birdies are definitely my favourite element from the collection.  Have you seen them popping up on pages in the gallery – they are just too cute aren’t they?

I often reach for this kit (well, click for it really!) as I find I am really drawn to the colours.  I am also a big fan of those leaves and branches.  They come in very handy when decorating a page and I love the effects they give when you add some shadow work to them.  From the folded and creased papers to the gorgeous ‘fairy wing stamps’, there really is so much in this collection to keep you scrapping year after year (I know I have!)

Here’s a baby layout I created using the Gabby collection – my little Nick when he was a wee 6 months old – where have those 7 years gone?

And here are two masterpieces from Kylie (well, would you expect anything less?!?!?) using this wonderful kit.  I am in LOVE with the word art on Kylie’s ‘Together’ page…it is one of the pre-made clustered titles from the FAMILY word whimsy collection.

Rosy has created two beautiful layouts with a real tropical theme (Gabby is perfect for this as well!)…  It’s funny – I always think of Rosy when I use this kit.  Those little birds always look so gorgeous on her pages and she always uses them to perfection in my opinion!

Kim and Casharina have also showcased the collection beautifully with their latest layouts.  I adore the pink grid paper Kim has used as her backing paper – it looks so effective!  Casharina’s title work is amazing using the brilliant alpha from Gabby.  Stunning work ladies!

You can have a closer look at these layouts in the gallery as we upload them throughout the day/night.

Want more Gabby?  Then check out these gorgeous coordinating products when you stop by the Shoppe.  First up, we have the Gabby 12 x 12 Album – a stunning piece-a-cake album complete with ten 12 x 12 pages, a cover and a bonus printable card and envelope.  Perfect and EVER so easy!  In addition, we also have the Gabby Badge Album and the Gabby Blogwear.

Here is a layout I created in a flash using one of the pages from the Gabby 12×12 Album.  It was as simple as adding a photo and some text.  Imagine how quickly you could put a book together using this piece-a-cake album?  Perfect for Mother’s Day photos over the years, as I discovered…

Well I think that wraps up the spotlight for you today – I do hope you are feeling inspired by all this Gabby-goodness!!

Please join us again tomorrow when Rosy has a little inspiration for you all – a post not to be missed!  Until then, happy scrapping everyone!

JenelleProduct Spotlight, Uncategorized 5 Comments

Hello everyone.  Jenelle here with some quick tips for using the Text Tool in Photoshop (and Photoshop Elements, as I believe it is quite a similar process).  I love playing around with type and fonts ~ I probably spend the most amount of time on my layouts choosing the right font!  What about you?  Are you a font junkie like me?!?!  LOL!

I do have a lot of fonts installed on my computer, so it is hard for me to remember them all.  However, I recently discovered a neat little trick to make the sample size larger in my preview screen.  Now,  I can get a good look at all the font styles I have available.  It is as simple as tweaking a few settings in your Photoshop program.

• From the Menu Bar, choose Edit>Preferences>Type
• Check the ‘Font Preview Size’
• Choose ‘Large’ or ‘Extra Large’ from the drop-down menu (options will depend on your version)
• Click OK

Now you can really see all those font styles you have on your hard drive!!  I find it much easier to browse through them when they’re set at the largest size.

Also, have you noticed that some fonts come ‘packaged’ in sets with further options to make them bold and italicized, while others don’t offer you these options?  Never fear!  Your Photoshop and Photoshop Elements programs give you these options –  even when the font package doesn’t.

In Photoshop, all you have to do is :-

• Click on the Text Tool
• Highlight the text you’d like to alter
• Click on the Toggle the Character and Paragraph palette icon in the options bar
• Choose from Faux Bold, Faux Italics, Underline, Strikethrough, All Capitals (+ more) options.  They are each represented by the row of ‘T’ icons
• Then tick the check mark in the options bar to confirm your alterations

To undo the effect, simply highlight the text and click on the corresponding icon again.

Thanks for stopping by today ~  I hope this post has given you a few more tricks to add to your digi-scrapping repertoire!

Please join us again tomorrow, when Kylie will be sharing our newest Template Challenge.  We’re up to number 24 already!  Until then, happy scrapping everyone!

JenelleTips and Tricks, Uncategorized 12 Comments

Happy Thursday everyone!  It’s Jenelle here and I have been really looking forward to hosting a Thursday Thievery post here on the Shabby Shoppe Blog and now is my big chance!!  Yipee!!

Today, the team and I are going to lift a stunning layout from the gallery of our very talented Shabby Artist, Rosy.  A gorgeous page, titled ‘This Memory’.  Here it is.

I have had this layout of Rosy’s in my favourites folder for a while now – there is so much to admire, but I especially love the way Rosy has framed this precious photo of her gorgeous children reading books together.  Placing the frame off-centre and weaving her photo though it really adds interest to the page and drew my eye right in.  Then there is the inked edge around the photo, the brushwork around the frame and the placement of the filmstrip diagonally across the page.  A visual masterpiece that we all had so much fun studying and then lifting!

I enjoyed experimenting with different frames, brushwork and layering behind my photo and came up with this lift of Rosy’s design – I pretty much kept to the same formula, I loved her page so much!!

Just look at the gorgeous colours in Casharina’s lift – so vibrant and I just LOVE that this layout combines dirt bikes and mud with flowers, hearts and glitter!!!

Kim has created fabulous depth here with the framing of her photo and layering of 12×12 papers.  What a sweet, sweet memory to scrap too – love this pic!

And Kylie’s lift is genius with all that beautiful brushwork and clustering flowing across the page.  I am in love with those little curls and cheeks!!!

So, as you can see, we have all drawn inspiration from Rosy’s wonderful layout and then tweaked it a little with our own style and memory keeping.  Scraplifting someone’s work is a great way to learn some new techniques and really gets you studying what makes their page visually appealing and trying to incorporate that into your own scrapping style.  I have learned so much from lifting other scrappers’ pages and I’d like to thank Rosy again for allowing us to lift her page today.

We’d love to see your take on Rosy’s design too – just upload it to our inspiration gallery so we can all see how you drew inspiration from Rosy’s layout.

Thanks for checking in today ~ be sure to visit tomorrow when Kylie announces the winners from Game One of our Blog Birthday Bash.  Yay!  I love competitions!!  Until then, happy scrapping everyone.

JenelleInspiration, Uncategorized 3 Comments

Hello everyone.  Jenelle here with a super quick and simple shortcut that I have only recently discovered and can’t believe I ever scrapped not knowing this!!!

A little birdie recently told me, that when scrapping using PSE, you can click anywhere on your layout with your move tool and it will automatically highlight that layer in your layers palette.  Oh, not fair for me who uses Photoshop – this would save me so much time!!  I am forever getting lost in my layouts, scrolling up and down trying to find the right layer for an element I want to move/edit etc.  I am so bad at naming all my layers (I usually do the first few and then forget!!!) so this can be really frustrating.  I end up ticking/checking the auto-select box to find  the layer I want but then I forget to go back and uncheck it and I end up moving things I didn’t want moved!!!

But alas, this happens to me no longer.  I have discovered a neat little trick for all the Photoshop users out there, like myself.  All we have to do is select the move tool and then right click directly on the element in our layout we are trying to locate (command-click on a Mac I believe also works).  A little dialog box then comes up with the names of all the layers involved in the specific area we’ve clicked on.   From there, we can then left click on the name of the layer we want and it will highlight that layer in our palette.  Oh the time I have saved using this trick!!

Here is a screenshot to illustrate.

I hope this little trick has helped some of you Photoshop scrappers out there and saved you some time when creating your layouts.  I use it all the time now and, if anything,  it encourages me to name layers, even if it is just with abbreviations.

Thanks for stopping by.  Please check back tomorrow when the wonderful SP brings you the next instalment of our Project Scrap Check-In.  Until then, happy scrapping everyone!

JenelleTips and Tricks, Uncategorized 15 Comments

Hello everyone.  It’s Jenelle here today with an inspiration post that is sure to get you reminiscing!!  I was recently browsing through some of my layouts on my computer’s hard drive and came across some of the very first digital layouts I had created. “Whoah” was my immediate response on opening them up to view full size…  Not a ‘whoah’ in a good sense either, it was actually more of an embarrassed ‘whoah’!!  I guess I had never realised how much I had grown as a digi-scrapper until I saw some of my very first creations.  Then I fully embraced my ‘whoah’ (LOL!) and thought to myself, isn’t it great that I can literally see how my skills, techniques and scrapping style have grown over these past few years.  And what a great journey it has been!  Have you ever looked back at some of your first attempts at digi-scrapping?  How has your style evolved?  What new techniques have you learned along the way?

I asked myself these very questions (and also our gorgeous team here at the Shabby Shoppe) and we then set about re-creating some of our very first digital layouts, just to prove how much we’d all grown as a digi-scrappers.  You’ll love seeing our ‘before’ and ‘after’ pages.  I guess you could call it a digi-makeover!!!

Ok, so here’s one of my first attempts back in 2008, using a freebie kit from Shabby Princess and Carrie Stephens called Spontaneous Delight.  I really liked the idea of blending photos on a layout, but I think I may have taken it a bit too far in one of my first attempts!!!

So after looking at this in more detail (basically I critiqued my whole layout) I’ve realised that I have now learned the following things:-

• That I’m not afraid to leave a bit of white space on a layout these days!!  Creating a border around a page also makes it more visually appealing (plus I don’t lose part of my design when it is cropped at the print shop!)
• To use drop shadows accordingly.  I think I just added the default drop shadow settings for every element (and font) on my page back then (that was if I actually remembered to use a drop shadow).
• To make sure the text/font is clear and readable.  Now I make my titles/headings bigger and try to make them stand out more on my pages.  Mixing up fonts adds more interest to a layout too.
• That a simple edit on my photos can make a big improvement (lighten images, get rid of shadows on faces, crop them, play around with levels/colour balance etc).  Running a photo treatment over my images can also make a big difference and produces a really pleasing effect.
• To not stick with the one bold colour on a layout.  I think I’ve used WAY too much green on this one and it is also probably the wrong shade of green for my photos.  In re-doing this layout, I’ve focused more on the browns and tried to make my colours a little softer.
• That mixing photographs up a little creates an interesting layout.  Instead of a whole page of blended photos, I’ve gone with a mix of  one blended image and a series of framed images on my digi-makeover below.  Having a mixture of colour and black and white photographs is another good effect I’ve learned.

So here is my new version of this layout.  And I have to say that I am much happier with this one!

JenelleInspiration, Uncategorized 13 Comments