Hello everyone!  Kim here and it feels like it’s been a long time since I was here with you on the blog.  The “vacation” was nice, but now there is a lot I’m enjoying on the blog… the birthday bash, a new template challenge, and lots of other fun inspiration coming up that the team has been working on.  And of course… it’s Monday, so it’s time for another Layout of the Week!

The gallery has been full of layouts using SP’s newest kit – Heartfelt.  And this week’s layout totally rocked that kit.  Congratulations to purplerara and the Pretty Ballerina layout!

I love so many of the little details in this layout – those paper strips in different angles, the layers of photos, the chipboard swirls that give the page some movement.  And, I like the use of a deeper shadow on the alphas.  It draws my eyes to this sweet girl’s name – Eva.  All together a beautiful little girl layout AND a beautiful little girl, don’t you think?

Congratualtions, purplerara, and thanks for sharing your layout with us!  You have been emailed a $10 gift card to the Shabby Shoppe (be sure and check your spam folder if you don’t see it).  Hope you have fun shoppe-ing!

That’s all for today, but stop by tomorrow as Casharina has a bright and cheerful product spotlight to share.  Bye bye!

KimLayout of the Week, Uncategorized 4 Comments

Hello everyone!  Kim here with a product spotlight that comes just in time for all those Spring and Easter photos that are all ready to be scrapped!  (And if you’re one of our friends that is in the middle of fall instead, I promise this kit is so versatile there are tons of possibilities!)  Let’s take a look at the Sprout kit and it’s Easter additions.

I remember the Sprout kit was one that I had to have as soon as I saw it.  It obviously is great for scrapping Spring and Easter (especially if you add in some of the great elements from the Easter additions).  Here is a layout I made to capture one of my kids’ favorite Easter traditions (I’m not sure if they like finding the eggs or eating the candy more!)

Beyond Spring and Easter, I come back to the Sprout kit again and again for other kinds of layouts.  And I have to say that one of my favorite elements from the kit is the stem of leaves.  For this layout, I mixed those leaves with the rub-on swirls from the Easter additions and love the effect!

I really could go on and on about all the papers and elements in this kit!  There is just no way to show them all in one or two layouts.  That’s why it is great to have the shabby team to give us all more inspiration.  Great job ladies!  These are all unique and lovely!

The team will be uploading these to the gallery, so look there to see all the details of these layouts.  And why not head over to the Shoppe to check out the SALE for both of these products?  Get the Sprout kit for only $5.96 and the Easter additions for only $2.96!  And don’t forget, as well as today’s spotlighted products, we have lots of other Spring and Easter shoppe favorites on SALE for a limited time!  (…and if you are on the look out for some beautiful Mother’s Day gift ideas…any of these would be perfect!)

Thanks for stopping by the blog!  Tomorrow Beckie will be sharing some photography tips, so don’t miss that!

KimProduct Spotlight, Uncategorized 3 Comments

Hello blog readers!  It’s Kim here today with a tips and tricks post inspired by a couple of questions from…YOU! I’ve noticed some comments left on the blog and in the gallery with questions about how a certain custom shape was made.  And that has led me to write this post today about a couple of the ways I use the magic wand and magic eraser.  I won’t cover even close to all that these tools can do, but I hope that these little tricks will help you as you work with shapes in your layouts.

First of all, let’s look at two of the questions that inspired this post.  The first was a question about this lovely beach layout by Jenelle:

I see banners being used a lot in layouts right now.  And here Jenelle has taken a banner from SP’s Goosebumps kit and modified it with papers from the Summer Cottage kit.  It looks great, right?  So… how could you do that?

The second layout that inspired this post is from Rosy.  She made this beautiful ad-inspired page:

One of things Rosy mentioned about her layout was that she got the inspiration for the notched corners from an ad.  I love those corners.  They turn an average square photo into something special.  So… how could you do that?

Let’s see if we can get answers to those questions now! Let’s start with the banner in Jenelle’s layout.  Here’s what I would do to recreate it:

• Open up the banner from Goosebumps and copy it into another file.  (I prefer not to alter elements in the original file.  If I were to accidentally save it, it would overwrite the original element.)
• Select the magic wand tool.

• Click on the grey portion of the banner that you would like to cover with a patterned paper.  The magic wand will select the area that is grey.  The portion that the magic wand has selected will have a blinking line around it now.  Holding the mouse over the selected area, right click and you will see the options of “Layer via Copy” and “Layer via Cut”.  Select the one you would like.  (I used “Layer via Copy” for mine, and I’ll explain it more below.)  You will now see a new layer that includes only the area that you selected with the magic wand.

• Open the patterned paper that you would like to insert into the banner, and clip it to the new layer you created (ctrl-alt-g in my version of Photoshop).
• You can add blending options to the original banner layer (Jenelle added a color overlay to make her outline blue and a drop shadow).
• Once you have the banner the way you would like, merge all the layers (you can find that option under the layers menu at the top). Now you are ready to copy your new banner into a layout!

:::there are a couple of other things you should know about the *magic wand*:::

• What’s the difference between “Layer via Copy” and “Layer via Cut”?  The first will copy the selected area as a new layer, but the original layer still keeps the selected area – you’re only making a “copy” of it.  Layer via Cut will make the selected area a new layer, and the original layer will not have the selected area any more – creating a “cut out” effect in the original layer.  For this banner, I chose Layer via Copy because I did not want the banner to have a cut out effect.  I wanted to be able to apply blending options to the original layer without worrying about the drop shadows looking funny.
• Another important thing to know about the magic wand is the option of selecting contiguous pixels or not.  When you have the magic wand selected, there is an option on the top bar for this.  In this case, if contiguous is selected, you will only be selecting one of the grey triangles (because you’re only selecting the grey area that is touching).  If you unclick the contiguous option, you will be selecting all of the grey triangles (because it selects all of the grey color in the layer).  In my example, I unclicked contiguous and have one layer with all the grey triangles to clip the patterned paper to.  If you wanted to do like Jenelle did and use different papers in the triangles, just make sure contiguous is selected.  You’ll repeat the steps for each triangle and have separate layers for each triangle that you can clip different papers to.

Now onto Rosy’s layout! When I look at the notched corners in this layout, I think of it as a square with the corners “cut out”.  So how can I make a square and then cut out the corners?  I’m sure there are other ways, but here’s what I did:

• Draw a square using the shapes tool.

• Draw a circle using the shapes tool that is the size you want to cut out of the corner of the square.  Make this circle a different color than the square.
• Duplicate this circle three times so you have four of them to cover each corner of the square you want to notch.
• Line up the circles and the square where they intersect in the places you want to cut out of the square.  This is hard to explain, so please see below in my example!

• Select all the layers and merge them (this option is found in the layers menu).
• Now it’s time to select the magic eraser.  Again, this tool has a lot of options I’m not discussing here, but for our example you don’t need to know those options.  The simple version of how the magic eraser works is that it will erase the color you select by clicking on it.  Like the magic wand, you can erase only the contiguous area of color, OR you can unclick the option to erase all of the selected color in the layer.

• Click in one of the circles, and the circles will disappear. (If you have contiguous selected, you will have to click in each circle)
• What you have left should be a square with notched corners!  You are ready to copy this layer into a layout and use it however you would like!

Although these are two very specific examples, you can use these tricks to create and modify many shapes.  Of course, there are a lot of custom shapes that you can find and purchase to use.  SP has a set of custom shapes that I use often in the Shoppe.  But using the magic wand and magic eraser gives you the ability to create some of your own!  I hope this has helped some of you and I would love to hear your comments and see your layouts using these tips and tricks.  And a big thanks to Jenelle and Rosy, who let me share their layouts again as examples!

That’s it for today, but be sure and stop by the blog tomorrow as Kylie announces the winner of the latest template challenge.  Another challenge is about to start…. number 22, can you believe it??  Have a great day!

KimTips and Tricks, Uncategorized 4 Comments

Happy Friday, everyone!  This is Kim, here to share a hybrid project I adapted from an idea I recently stumbled upon.  For a while now, I’ve wanted to make new name signs for my two kids who share a bedroom.  I even bought shelves I wanted to paint and chipboard letters I wanted somehow to sit on the shelves.  But as things often go, the shelves and letters sat in my closet for quite a while!  But when I saw the idea of using CDs as the backing to letters, I suddenly had an idea of how I was going to put it all together.  I’ll tell you more below, but first, here’s what my finished (YEAH!) project looks like.

It only took a few items to put together my letters.  Here are the supplies I used:

• CDs (What a great way to reuse old CDs with data you no longer need or music you long ago loaded onto your computer!)
• Chipboard letters that I painted with antique white craft paint (I already had these and wanted to use them, but there are lots of great alphas in the Shoppe that you could print and use instead.)
• Scrapbook paper printed out to layer behind the letters (For my patterned paper, I used the Summer Cottage and Gabby kits.)
• Embellishments printed out on cardstock to add to the letters (I kept mine fairly simple, but I love the way the Barefoot birdies added a little extra touch.)
• Glue (I used scrapbook glue for the papers and hot glue for the letters.)

How to put your letters together:

• Decide what papers and embellishments you are going to use and print them.  This was the hardest part for me – so many options!!  But once I had my plan in mind, the rest was easy.
• Cut the layers of paper into circles.  I was fortunate to have some circle cutters from my paper scrapping days, but you could also find round objects (jars perhaps) to help you trace a circle to use as a pattern.  When I cut my circles, I intentionally left a little edge of the CD showing (I used the side of the CD that the data is recorded on because I didn’t want to see any labels).  I thought having a little of the CD showing added a little “bling”!
• Cut out your embellishments
• Glue everything in place – papers, letters, and embellishments
• Decide how you want to display the letters.  I knew I wanted to set mine up on the shelves I had, but you could also attach them to ribbon to string them together for hanging.

That’s it!  It’s a fairly simple project, but one that I’m glad I finally put together.  And it’s an idea you could use for any kind of word you want to spell out and display.  How about a saying for a media room?  Or a happy birthday sign?  What would you want to create?  Hope this project inspires some of you out there!

Thanks for stopping by today and hope you all have a lovely weekend.  We’ll be back on Monday as Beckie announces our Layout of the Week!

KimHybrid Projects, Uncategorized 4 Comments

Hello everyone and happy Monday!  This is Kim here to start the week off in our usual way… with our next Layout of the Week!  I have to say that there are some amazing layouts in the gallery right now.  So it is with pleasure that I say congratulations to our pick for this week…

Daddy’s Home! by con01008

I love this layout for several reasons.  First, what a sweet moment to capture.  It’s one of those special things that this family will love remembering later on.  I completely get the feel of what it’s like at their house when Daddy’s home!  I also love that con01008 took some inspiration from the blog this week and used a cluster of stitched frames.  And there are just tons of other great design details here.  It’s a truly lovely layout.

Congratulations con01008!  You have been emailed a $10 gift card to the Shabby Shoppe (please check your spam folder if you don’t see it).  Hope you have fun shoppe-ing!

That’s it for today, but be sure and stop by tomorrow when Rosy will share a product spotlight with you.  Which kit is going on sale this week?  Find out tomorrow!

KimLayout of the Week, Uncategorized 4 Comments