Saturday Tutorial and a Who Village Freebie

 

Petra here, aka Sugar& Spice, good evening and apologies for my late post. I’d like to share a couple of techniques with you, which are so quick and effective. I use mainly PSE 5, so the instructions may be different for your programme.  (I used Amy’s latest releases, Who Village Elements and Who Village Papers). First up, is a quick and easy out of bounds.

Place your photo above a square in the template. (I used Amy’s Say it a 100 Ways Template). Click on the small preview thumbnail of the square, in the layers palate. You should see the marching ants on your photo, as you can see in mine below.  Now select your photo, so that it is highlighted as the active layer. Go to your menu bar and click on Select and then Inverse on the drop down menu (Shift + CTRL + I).

Using your eraser brush, erase all the areas outside the square, except those you want to have as your out of bounds. A steady hand is useful here. Trim away until you get the required result.

Deselect your ‘marching ants’ when your finished (CTRL +D) and re-decorate your page, as you wish. I decided the green background was too dark and changed it to red and pink.

My page looks a bit bare and there isn’t really any room for journaling so I decided to make some quick and easy word art.  I used a CU font by That Girl & Darcy Baldwin to bring you a 2nd quick technique. 

Write out your word and create a new blank layer underneath. Once again click on the thumbnail of the text to get your marching ants. Now select your blank layer underneath and go to Edit in your menu bar, at the top. Click on Stroke, in the drop down menu. This should bring up a dialogue box, similar to the one below. You may want to change the settings but I used a stroke of 20 pixels, centred and chose the colour of my background paper as a contrast. click OK when you’re happy with it. Deselect your text (CTRL + D) and simplify it. Merge it with your new stroke layer below. And there you go, a quick and easy focal point for your page.

And after adding some more bits and pieces, here is my finished page.

And for being so patient, here is a page cluster taken from my page above. It is shadowed but I’ve included the shadow settings in the zip, should you wish to match them to your page.

Click HERE or the preview to download from Box.net.

Leave some comments/love if you would like some more similar handy hints or just like my freebie. Have a fun weekend!

New Product! And a Freebie!

Woo Hoo it is Friday!  Don't you just love Fridays?  I do!  Especially since I have a really cool new product to show you!

Introducing Engraved On My Heart Alpha

This is the coolest alpha!  It comes with upper and lower case alpha hearts with the look of real engraved letters on metal hearts.  It also comes with a complete metal alpha with upper case, lower case, numbers, and most symbols.  It also comes with three bonus hearts with words engraved on them, and one bonus blank heart that you can customize with any word in any font, or the blank heart can just be used as an element to complement the alpha.  This two in one alpha with bonus hearts is regularly priced at $3, but it is now on SALE for $1.75!  You can take a closer look at this alpha, and pick it up for sale in my shop HERE.


With so many cool options imagine the cool title work you can do with this alpha! 

Here are some example layouts

The above layout uses EasyGoing with the Engraved On My Heart Alpha

 The above page uses Baby Mine by Key Of D Designs and the Engraved On My Heart Alpha

I have a FREEBIE for you!!
I promised you a freebie so here you go.  Here are six more engraved hearts free for you. These cute little heart, word art elements will go perfectly on your digital scrapbooking layouts.  Use them as an element or use them as part of your title work.  They would go great with the Engraved On My Heart Alpha!  :) 

I hope you like them!  If you want these little hearts than you can download them from 4shared by clicking right HERE. Don't forget to leave me a comment here on my blog if you plan on clicking the download button.  Your comments are inspiring, and I appreciate hearing from you!

Also, there is a chance to WIN this alpha at DST HERE

Thanks so much for stopping by my blog today.  I hope you have a great Friday and an AWESOME weekend!!  And of course I hope you find some scrap-worthy moments and find some time to scrap!

Sister Sue is HERE! Check this out... (Freebies Too)

Sarah Bennett's new release is called Sister Sue. Cute name for a cute kit!


You'll definitely want to check this out because you can walk away with this kit for 20% off Monday only! It is available in Sarah's shop at Funky Playground Designs


I had so much fun with Sister Sue. I was feeling super lucky to get the kit early and free for being on Sarah's CT. Here is the page I made with Sister Sue. It is of my baby boy. He really is such a sweet baby!



I kind of like putting things together that are a little more on the feminine side since I only have boys to scrap. So here is a Sister Sue Word Art for you for free. It has some grunged up "sweet" words behind the word sweetness. There is a version with darker "sweet" background words and a white background words version so it will go with whatever background paper you use.

download from Media Fire: here
And of course if you upload a layout to a public gallery with this freebie on it don't forget to credit "word art using Sister Sue by Sarah Bennett" there is a TOU in the download if you have questions.


You won't want to miss out on the FREE Sister Sue mini add on that Sarah made. Think of it as the little sister, haha. She always has the cutest add on's and how COOL is it that she is giving it away FREE. Head over to Sarah's blog to snag it, and don't forget to tell her thank you for this cute little freebie!


Thanks for visiting my blog today. I hope you are enjoying your day and getting lots of scrapping done!

Crazy/Beautiful RELEASE, A layout, and... some FREEBIES

I hope you all had a great weekend. I had some fun times with my family this weekend and enjoyed every minute. I kind of had to blink a few times at the calendar to make sure it is really the middle of October already. Time sure does fly! Speaking of time, you still have time to go grab Sarah Bennett's newest release called Crazy/Beautiful over at FunkyPlaygroundDesigns while it is still on sale. It is on sale until the end of today.

You have got to see how cute this is...


Click the image to get a better look.


I feel that is such a blessing to be on Sarah's CT, and get free use her fabulous products! Here is the layout I made with Crazy/Beautiful. It is of our little neighbor girl holding my son a few months back.

It is a really fun kit to use.

It was so fun scrapping with Crazy/Beautiful I couldn't stop with just making a layout. I had to make a little word art also, and if you could use it you are welcome to download it!

[A little (obvious) reminder if you end up using the word art on a page you upload to a public gallery: the credit for the word art should read something like this- "word art using Crazy/Beautiful by Sarah Bennett." There is a TOU in the download if you have any questions.]

Download Crazy Beautiful freebie word art Here


Another freebie opportunity for you! Sarah Bennett made this Crazy/Beautiful add on and she is giving it away on her blog for FREE. I think it is SO cute!

Head on over to Sarah's blog to grab it. It is in today's post October 19th.

Thank you for your comments on my last post. When I read your comments it truly is inspirational, and gets me excited to post more freebies. And I did get some requests to make my last template freebie with png's, so I'll be (gladly) doing that as soon as I can. Ok that is it for me for today. I have to go grab some lunch and take my boys to the park before it rains.

Have a fun day because soon this day will be a memory, so you may as well make it a good one!