Digital Scrapbooking and Graphic Tutorial Links

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Just followed this neat tutorial on making a sketch, gee it was fun and Logan loved it, Caleb's here helping him colour in the family sketches.
This was a really quick page cos I just had to show you the tutorial link and how well it works. It really is 3 easy steps
http://fototiller.com/blog/2006/06/26/coloring-pages-from-your-photos-3-easy-photoshop-steps/

If your a PSP user I have done this in PSP before and heres a quick tutorial link for that.
Turning Photos into sketches in PSP
http://psp7tutorials.homestead.com/PencilSketch.html

A close up of my PSP sketch

I decided it was time to start and in time finish Rohan's book, I'm giving www.blurb.com a go for publishing the book as they are widely used by alot of proffessional photographers and smaller book publishers, very reasonably priced to. I hope you enjoy following along with the process of my making this .


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At first I thought I'm going to do all four of my boys at once but have since decided that it would be good for me to do one at a time and set myself smaller more achievable goals as that method helps me to overcome procrastination
This is a small preview of the dust jacket for my book of Rohan, yes blurb have dust jackets on the hardcover books- woohoo!
Well I better get back to filling up my pages and going through my large collection of photos to try and work out which ones I must have in his book, no easy task I must say.

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Rohan on an extracted swing hanging from pinned wool, back cover of book

I had a great deal of fun making this layout, I've been wanting to make a hanging swing using some kind of string for ages, so I thought it might be really nice on the back cover of Rohans book, that I'm making him.
Oh and of course I just had to try that photo extraction method I saw on a tutorial site, I might have to go and hunt down that link, it was a while ago now. Deb Mommens inspired the faded image in the background , because her pages always look wonderful using that technique

Photo popping out or photo frame tutorial links or out of bounds tutorials:

http://www.acherryontop.com/article?a=1178

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/digitalscrapbooking/ss/extractions.htm

All these next links are care of Kori Dorn and her research:

http://www.worth1000.com/tutorial.asp?sid=161043

For more on the shadows of OOB:
http://www.worth1000.com/tutorial.asp?sid=161135

Also highly recommended:

http://www.freakingnews.com/hosted/tutorials/OOB_Tutorial_Serrator.pdf and it's companion on frames:
http://www.freakingnews.com/hosted/tutorials/OOB_Tutorial_Frame_Warping_Serrator.pdf

A few more:

http://www.biorust.com/tutorials/detail/184/en/

http://www.scrapbookgraphics.com/wordpress/?p=975

http://www.empiredezign.com/version2/portfolio/pages/tutorials/3dphoto.htm
( I love this it has a whale jumping out of the photo frame! a must see!)

For ideas on your own (or just to oh and ah at what other's have come up with)
http://www.worth1000.com/galleries.asp?rel=Out+of+Bounds&display=photoshop&id=14161
http://www.freakingnews.com/Out-Of-Bounds-Pictures--1395-0.asp
thank-you Kori, all these techniques really helped me to do what i wanted to do with my book cover

I have been making some Folded card books out of my scrapbooking papers and having a really enjoyable time doing so. After I saw a complex tutorial on how to make folded books, I couldn't work it out so I went in search of help from my crafty friends(thank-you April xo My Hubby ended up helping me as well to finess the folding too. I hope this inspires you to give them a try, they are alot of fun to make! I used my blushbutter printed scrapbooking paper from the Fairy things and Butterfly Wings kit and the card from the Printable Fae's cut n prints.
I think my scrap paper is just a little too thick but gee it feels nice and it looks really pretty when you open up the folds. I recycled an old gift card and covered it with my faes so the cover would be thicker to hold the little book. I then punched holes in it and tied ribbons for it to close.

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thank-you for looking

Here is the muddy boy I promised. With this layout I like to use a technique I accidently discovered and thought you may want to do it also. I like for my digital scrapbooking albums to have matching 2 page spreads in the album I think it looks more balanced when looking through a printed digital album, it doesn't matter so much on the DVD slide shows but makes a real difference in the hard bound albums.
What I do to quickly come up with a corresponding page it to go into my photoshop program and choose : IMAGE (under the menu)> scroll down to ROTATE CANVAS > then select FLIP CANVAS HORIZONTAL and repeat this step but choose >FLIP CANVAS VERTICAL
then I swapped the background papers to be a little more different, you may have to drag another background paper into your project if you have cut and altered your origainal piecs like me. I use the piece from the original document and make it selected and then inverse that selection , make sure the background paper I want to cut from is selected in the layers palette and cut that way I get a perfect copy of the shape of the original. Then I just flip all the objects/elements that are up the wrong way with EDIT>TRANSFORM>FLIP HORIZONTAL etc...
add in more photos to follow the story of the previous layout and add some texting effects ,time stamps and titles.
I got this texting effect from the wonderful Linda Sattgast from www.scrappersguide.com she has some wonderful free video Adobe photoshop and elements tutorials weekly and if you miss one you can still purchase it in the store for a $1.00, they are really easy to follow for the beginner and not very overwhelming at all.
This title I got from the www.peppermintcreative.com phraze guide, a wonderful resource when you want a phraze in a hurry, I like how she has categorised the titles. I also like to ink the edges of my photos with a brown and use the atomic cupcake action tornink to do this.
The kit I used to make this layout is called the blushbutter ~ Boy! Oh Boy! kit LINK HERE

thank's for looking

This site has some really great screen captures and very well detailed instructions on painting hair in photoshop for anime, great for your anime loving teens!
Tutorial written by := Centi nolavon
Jacinta Raphael http://nolavon.deviantart.com/worth taking a look at her art for inspiration, oh and she has some neat colour pages to practise the hair shadowing on for your anime newly aquired skills.

This is a letter I received on a yahoo group listing with Layouts@yahoogroups.com I thought the letter should be shared as it has similarities to alot of emails I receive personally asking the same questions, so I hope this can also help alot of you who want to know these questions as well, as Sarah. Thank-you for asking Sarah, Great question by the way!

To all you digital scrappers....
How do you do this? Do you just print the layout and add the photos.
Or is the entire page digital, photos, embelishments, etc? Do you have
special software for this?
Thanks for all the info!!!
Sarah

(my response):
Hi Sarah, if you pop over to my site http://www.blushbutter.com/ I show how it's done, I have a service where the photos are inserted into easypages you pick out or you can buy an entire kit and scrap and arrange elements and papers on the page yourself. Yes you need a program, I recommend Adobe Elements 4 as the best to go for, alot of support for it and it's worth the money in the long run, Amazon are selling it for only $55.00 right now(bargain)! Google has Picassa for free right now which is also a graphic program but with certain limits. I like to print up the png.files(transparent layers)easy pages which print up with white photo places and cut the pockets out with a cutting utensil and then place my photos I've already got from years before into them, Well behind the layer and then stick it all together, maybe add a few extra traditional scrap elements like ribbons and fibres to jazz up the page just a little more. I like doing my paper scrapping this way as it's really quick and cut's out alot of frustration when you just can't get motivated to be super creative with papers, or in my caes babies trying to get into all my things to wreck them. There are so many ready made pages and I don't have to drag babies along to club's and to shops where they just don't keep their hands to themselves! lol the joys of mummydom! I like my printer and print up my own papers, and sometimes just the digital pages you see in my gallery and plop them into my album, all my family and friends love my layouts, being digital, they show up bright and beautiful on dvd's which I set to music and send out once a year as Christmas pressies. That's the best way I've found to showcase my year of hard creative work on layouts and to get a positive result. The first dvd I did , I thought didn't get much of a reaction, so the following year I missed it, oh you should have heard the complaints and phone calls asking if theres had been lost in the mail where was it, so by that I new they looked forward to watching and seeing my entertaining work
Oh I forgot to say that Elements has layers and a layers pallette, you open all the bits/files you want to use and drag them onto the page your working on, Adobe elements distributes the bit's onto seperate layers and when you select that layer in the palette you can move it around , resize it and add words and text journalling to it. I have a few kit's on my site for free(in gallery), so you can pick some of those up to experiment with and adobe elements is free for a trial period I think of 30days. I also have a free mini e-card sender on my site in flash and it does the same thing as the digi scrapbooking just on a smaller scale, it layers and builds up a page, but no drop shadows, you can add small photos to it and add ribbons over it as well. I'll include a page I made recently from all digitally made items. take care, Vanessa - blushbutter

I've been so busy designing I've forgotten all about updating my freebie site section hope this helps some of you trying to find your way around.
This site has a great deal of beautiful downloads all for free, from Paper flanelettes to embroidered badges, lot's of lovely decorated alphas to!