Tutorial Thursday – use the Grid!

Tonight’s crop was small but fun!  I’ve had a really crazy couple of weeks, and ran out of time to do a post BEFORE the crop, so I’m posting now!

This week we have a brand new tutorial on how to use the GRID function in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements to create a color-blocked layout quickly and easily. Don’t forget to click on the link in the forum post to get your freebie color-block templates!!

Freebie Picks of the Week by Digital Daisy

Hi Everyone! Here are some of the great things I found for you around the digi community this week:

Please visit these great designers’ blogs and leave some kind words if you enjoy the goodies!

Find great freebies all week long at Hand Picked Freebies by Digital Daisy!

I’m Christie, AKA Digital Daisy, and I LOVE freebies! Great finds always inspire me to get scrapping, and I love to share my finds with the digi community for just that reason. I’m married and live in Colorado with my hubby and our 3 cats. In my spare time I enjoy photography, blogging, outdoorsy activities, and of course digiscrapping! Hope you enjoy my freebie picks.

Quick Tip Tuesday – Let’s go Dragging!

(yes, I know it’s Wednesday. Life happens.)

The topic of alphas came up in one of my Photoshop yahoo groups yesterday, and I thought I’d share with you a solution I’ve come up with for managing them.

Now let me say this: I don’t use alphas much in my scrapping, possibly partly because they’re so cumbersome.  You have to figure out which letters you need, open each file, drag the letters onto the page and close all the files.  Almost easier to just type some text and run an action or apply a layer style to them!  But I have a few that just work well for a lot of different things, and I wanted to make them easier to use.

Here’s my solution… the dragsheet!  (That’s what I call it, at least).

What I do is open all the .png files, and drag the letters onto a 12×12 page.  (Sometimes 12×18 if the letters are large).  Then I save the .psd file, and delete the .png files.

Now all I have to do to use the alpha is open the .psd file then click and drag the letter I want onto my layout!  I have all the characters right in front of me, there’s no opening and closing files.

You can use this technique for all kinds of things – if you have a kit that has a lot of small pieces, why not drag them all into one file?  You can name it with the name of the kit and designer for reference, too.

Use it to gather your favorites!  We all have our favorite basics – staples, bit of stitching, brads, etc. that we go to over and over again.  Rather than remembering which kit had the good staples, why not make yourself a favorites dragsheet?  You can rename the layers with the kit/designer name or the original filename, so you know where it came from, but now you’ll just have a single file to open for all your favorite things!

To get you started, I made you the alpha dragsheet you see above!  Click here to download. It’s notebook paper letters without shadows, so you can add your own shadows.  If you need help with shadows (especially those of you with PSE, download our Shadow Styles here!

Leave me a comment and let me know if you like this method of working with Alphas – would it entice you to use them more?  Do you use them at all in your scrapbooking?

Happy Scrapping!
Jenn

Free Layered Templates – a digital scrapbooker’s dream!

Our friends over at Simple Scrapper have put together a wonderful collection of free layered templates that you simply must visit!

If you know of a free template, you can post a preview and link to the page where you can download the template, too.  It’s a great way to discover fun new sites and designers you may enjoy, as well as browse for templates you can use!

I’ve added my recipe card templates (see them at the top left) and will go through my files and add more as I find them.

If you like the idea of ‘one-stop-shopping’ for template freebies like this, be sure to leave a comment for Jennifer letting her know!

Happy scrapping!

Freebie Finding – bits and pieces

This week I went looking for some bits and pieces to fill out some layouts.  After a while we all have enough kits, but a great alpha or some bling can bring a new kit to life!  Here’s what I found for you!

This alpha would be useful just about everywhere!  It’s by designer Kristin Aagard.  When you click on the image, you’ll go to her blog.  Check out her Little Forest Winter kit, it’s just beautiful!  Scroll past a ton of close-up previews and some beautiful CT layouts and be inspired!  At the bottom of the post you’ll find the alpha freebie.  Be sure to leave Kristin thanks and a kind comment on her great work!  And poke around and look at her other kits – they’re really adorable!

I’m a sucker for good word art, and it doesn’t get any better than Bethany’s!  If you aren’t familiar with her work, visit her blog and see what she’s got going on!   I thought this one was funny, might use it on some little goodie bags this year.  If you click on the header of the blog, you will see today’s post which is nice too!  And in the sidebar she’s got category links for easy finding!  If you like her word art, consider buying a set, they’re great value and good quality!  If you need ideas for what to do with word art, we covered that in one of our tutorial crops, there are tuts in the crop forum here!

Studio Flergs has a great new kit out, and she’s offering this frame freebie!  I think I have a lot of background papers this would work with, and it’s perfect for my teenager.  It’s not even tooo too girly for my son!  The kit is awfully pretty too, might have to add that to my wish list.

Click on the freebie category in the sidebar for some other great goodies.  There’s some clustered stitching that is absolutely brilliant, and the link is still active.

I’m seeing a lot of these ‘photo masks’ lately, and honestly don’t always know what to do with them.  This blog post by Dido Designs has some great CT layouts with great ideas!  The set looks really neat, and I think I can find something to do with this freebie.  I did a tutorial on one way you can use these masks here, and I’m thinking of working with some watercolor brushes on this one.  I’ll bring the tut to a crop soon!

OK folks, that’s all I’ve got this week, if you know of some great goodies, leave us a link in the comments!  DH is dragging me off to a movie, dinner and drinks with friends!!

Happy Scrapping!

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