See that frosted snowflake up there? Well today I will walk you through the steps that I took in Photoshop CS4 to create it. I have learned the fine art of screen shots so I will be included a couple for your reference later on. I am having problems with the image sizes here so click on the picture for a larger view of it.

You want to create a new 3 by 3 inch document set at 300 dpi’s with a transparent background. Next you will select your Custom Shape Tool which is located on your left Tool bar and looks like a puffy star. Once you have that tool selected you want to change your shape to one of the preset snowflakes for this tutorial, it does not matter which one but I used the first one here.

Pick a color to use, I picked a light blue (it gives the snowflake a bit of reality in my opinion), and create a snowflake in your workspace. You will want to give your layer the Bevel Drop Shadow Style to give it dimension and then Rasterize the Layer. Do this by double right- clicking the layer, which will bring up the menu where you can find this command. You now want to create a duplicate layer by clicking Layer>Duplicate Layer. This button is located on your top Tool Bar.

Now making sure the original layer is selected give it the overspray Text style. Now choose the duplicate layer and change the master opacity to somewhere around 50%, you will find this just above the layers on the lower right corner. Now Merge the layers together, DO NOT MERGE DOWN it will give the top layer the exact same style as the one below. What you want to do is click on one layer and hold down the Shift key while clicking the second. Now double right-click for the menu where you will find the option to Merge the layers.

Now that you have one layer you will want to add the outer glow effect to give the image a little dramatic flair and sparkle. See the Screen Shot below for reference when changing the settings I explain next.

When you double click the space next to your layers name a new command box will pop-up, it should look like the one above. Choose the Outer Glow and then click the acual words Outer Glow to be taken to the screen below.

Once you see the screen above make the adjustments shown (I have circled the areas of interest in red so you will know what needs changed). Now I will not tell you levels or numbers here because I believe that each person has a different idea for their creations. So go ahead and play with the levels and have some fun creating your snowflake. Just remember to change the glow color to something much lighter than your original chosen color to give the snowflake more dimension and realistic feels.

goodnight all, kiss your Babies!

 I bet you thought I was going to forget my promise of a tutorial, nope I have it all ready for you now. Today’s Photoshop CS4 tutorial covers how to create a custom Entrecard background. If you know anything about Entrecard you know that there generic backgrounds are not all that appealing to look at.

For Entrecard you want to open your Photoshop CS4 and create a new document that is 125X125 pixels in size at 72 dpi;that translates to 1.736X1.736 inches at 72 dpi. If you have a custom template from another site then open that and then choose Select>All; go to the Edit menu and choose Copy. Choose your blank document by clicking on the tab at the top of your workspace, go to Edit>Paste and you will have a new Layer that is a copy of that template.

Now you want to add the name of your Blog and whatever type of description you may choose; do this by selecting the text tool, this is the button that is a capital T on the far left tool bar that runs from top to bottom along your workspace. Choose your choice of Font from the Drop-down menu of the horizontal tool bar located just under the Image and layer buttons. You will need to test your choice of font, some are not legible on documents this small and the results are very blurry.

Select your workspace by left-clicking with your mouse and begin typing. If you do not see your words then your font size is too large or it is not compatible with a small document, try changing the size and if you need to chose another font. If it is not centered properly you do not need to erase it, move your mouse away from the text until it goes from the capital I to the small arrow and you will be able to left-click and move your text to a better location. Once you are satisfied with the text placement we will now add Layer Styles to create a look of depth that will make the text stand out from the background.

On the lower left-hand side of your screen there is a box that contains your Layer, Channel and Path selections; choose the Layer tab and double left-click the second text layer, do not click the T icon itself choose the area of blank space just to the right of that icon. This will pop-up the Layer Styles box where we will add a Bevel and embossing as well as a Drop Shadow.

The left side of this box contains a list of blending options, choose Drop Shadow and then double-click the word Drop Shadow, this will pull up the customization screen off to the right. When this screen appears under the Structure section change the Angel to 131, the Blend Mode to Difference, Opacity to 100%, Distance to 5 px, Spread to o% and Size to 5 px. I did not change anything listed under the Quality section but this is your design so I encourage you to play around with the settings just to see if you like like effects. Remember you can change the color of the Shadow as well as add a texture or Gradient. Now choose the Bevel and Emboss as well as Contour and Texture, each of these can be double clicked and customized as we did in the Drop Shadow section. The last thing in the list to the left is Stroke and this was where I made it appear as if my text were outlined in heavy black ink. Hit OK and this will apply your Styles to the text. Make sure to save it as a .png file otherwise you will not be able to use it.

Now go to your Entrecard dashboard and scroll down to the section that is labeled Your Entrecard and click Edit. Select Entrecard Style: Uploaded Image and then click the Browse button to upload your image. Voila, you have a custom background instead of the generic ones that everyone else may be using.

Well, kiss your babies!

Here I am again today with more links to some of my favorite digital scrapbook tutorial sites like Digital Scrapbook Place. This site has a large selection of graphics program tutorials as well as general digi-scrap tutorials.

Do you use the free graphics program Gimp? Well then, Scrapbook’s Gone Digital is a great resource for you. They have video and text tutorials from the basics up. Of course I can not forget Digitals, she has Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro tutorials for a wide variety of topics.

Well on a personal note, my daughter is doing really well, you would never guess she spent the better part of a month so ill. No real new info on why she is getting sick so often but we hope to learn more once she has her second round of tests done next month, here’s me keeping my fingers crossed. Kiss those babies.

I know a few of you follow me looking for Photoshop Tutorials and I have been lacking of late, so I thought I would take this time to post a few links to tutorials that I found helpful. I am in no way affiliated with any of these sites but I would say I recommend them and found them very informative while learning to use Photoshop for digital scrapbooking. I sniffed around and asked questions anywhere I could, and the sites I list here were some of the first and most popular that was thrown out. Although they only have a few tutorials, they are great quality and very easy to follow(especially for those, like me, who just can not seem to graso the software quickly

 Laurie Garza has a nice colection of easy to follow video tutorials. If your looking for curled ribbon or how to make a digi-kit then look no further than Sonja’s Studio.

Well I hope these tutorials help you as much as they helped me, and as soon as my Photoshop problems work out I will begin posting my tutorials once again. Kiss those babies.

Open your Photoshop program and create a new document that is four by four inches and has a transparent background. Choose the rectangular marquee tool and selfect an area about one quarter of an inch wide that covers from the top of the document to the bottom. Select a gray color from the color pallette and fill the selection by holding down the alt key and pressing the backspace key. Keep making more stripes along the width of the document in the same manner but vary the width and shades of grey. Keep some transparent background visible among the stripes to create a staggered look.

Once you have all of your stripes created and filled with color change the mode that your using for the marquee tool to fixed aspect ratio. This dropdown menu is located on your top toolbar next to the width and height dropdown menus. Select an area of your document that is about two and a half inches wide by two and half inches tall. Try to keep the edges of your selection within the color of your stripes so that the pattern remains continuos once it is repeated.

With your desired area selected go to edit and choose Define Pattern From Selection. This will bring up a pop up screen that asks you to name your pattern, I named mine Stripes 1. Now hit okay and you should now be ready to use this new pattern next time you do a page fill.

This method is best if your subject is surrounded by contrasting colors and objects. If everything is similar in color or shadowed heavily your selection tool will probably select the whole page. Open your picture and go to View>Fit on Screen. Once your document is easier to see and work with choose your selection tool and click at the edges of your subject. If the tool selects small portions of the background that is okay, you can clean up stray pixels later.

Now that your subject is selected (if you have marching ants surrounding the entire subject) you want to go to Select> Select Inverse, this will select all of the background as your work area. Choose your eraser from the tool pallette and change its size to cover the space of your picture. Now glide it over your workspace by holding down your right click of your mouse. This will eliminate everything but what your subject. Go back to Select and choose Deselect to get rid of the marching ants.

Choose the magnifying glass and zoom in on your picture until you can clearly see any stray pixels that were left behind. Choose your eraser once again nad change the size so that you can easily and cleanly erase these pixels. If your subject has a white background, choose the Magic Eraser and click anywhere on that background and it will leave your subject on a transparent background. You are now ready to place your subject on other backgroundswithout the pesky noise that surrounded it before. If you are going to close this picture before you use it make sure to save as a .png file.

Goodnight and remember to kiss your babies.

I thought I would do something a little different tonight, take a look at the digital scrapbook page I created for my father as a gift. I will be walking you through the steps to create a page just like this one.

I begin by opening the photo that I want to use and making a duplicate layer.  Select the original layer and right click your photo effects icon which is located on the right hand side of your workspace; it is a small blue rectangle right next to the double retangle immediately under the word Effects. Go to the drop down menu and select Old Photo>Old Photo and click apply. You will not see a change because this layer is under the duplicate layer.

Next , click the small square next to the close button for the document to expand the workspace. Go to select and choose Select All from the drop down menu. This will outline the photo in marching ants and small boxes at each corner. Choose a corner and hover your pointer over it, once you see a double end arrow right click and drag your edge toward the opposite corner. This will resize your photo without distorting the proportions. Make it as small as you would like and then make to dupicate layers.

Arrange the photos by twisting them and layering them as I did in the picture above. It does not have to look exactly like mine play until you get the look you want. Now you can go a step further than I did and give each picture layer a different style effect to give a unique look.

Next came the paper clip, you want to drag it onto the page and make sure you have the top photo selected so it ends up as the uppermost layer. Arrange the paper clip over the picture so that the center part is slightly hanging off the corners of the photos. Now to make it appear as if it is trully clipped to the photos you will need to erase parts of it. Select your magnifying glass and click your page a few times unitl you can see the paper clip and the edges of the photos clearly. Choose your eraser and change its size and slowly erase the parts of the clip as below.

We will be using the Extract filter to extract a subject from the background so you can rid distracting backgrounds from an otherwise perfect photo. Open the photo you will be editing and make a copy of the image by going to your layer pallette and right click and drag it onto your new layer icon. Click Filters on your tool bar and slide down to Extract and select it. This will pull your image up on a new screen the tool pallete is located on the left hand side of this screen. Choose the highlighter tool and draw a small line around your subject that slightly overlaps the background.

Once you have completely outlined the portion you wish to keep select the Fill tool and click inside your selection.This will cover the area that Photoshop will keep with a translucent color, once you fill click on Preview and you will be taken to a new screen that will allow you to clean up the edges of the extraction.

On the left hand side you will find the clean-up and touch-up tools. The clean-up works alot like the eraser tool by getting rid of the stray particles left behind while the touch-up tool will smooth the edges and replace particles that were removed that were part of the subject. Once the extraction is to your satisfaction click Okay and you will be taken back to the editing area of Photoshop were you can place it on another background or apply stlyes anf filters to it.

If you wish to work with it later just save as a .png file and it will remain its transparency for future editing. Hope that may help someone, kiss you babies!

I told you when I posted the tutorial on how to create a blinkie in Photoshop Elements 6 that I would walk you through how to post them online. Well it took me some time to work all the bugs out of it and trully get a grasp of what i had done(how quickly one forgets the steps when you are just amazed you accidently got it right).

First of all you need to upload your saved blinkie to a site like Photobucket to get its unique html code. You will be using the html code only for this so just ignore the other links listed. I suggest opening wordpad or notepad document so that you can copy and paste all th info your going to need in one place.

 You will need the part of the code that starts with http: and ends with .gif from the html code that you copied from Photobucket. Now you will also need the url for the site you are wanting the blinkie to link to(I link mine directly to my main page of my Blog).

Now once you have both of those copied onto your wordpad document copy and paste this html code:

<center><a href=”YOUR URL“><img alt=”" width=”150” src=”YOUR BLINKIE HTML CODE” height=”50“/></a><center></center></center>

Today we will make a textured tag in Photoshop Elements 6 using the custom shape tool.

First open a new 4 by 4. Choose your desired color from the color pallette and click the custom shape tool, it is a blue heart toward the bottom of your tool pallette. From the selection area click on the small double arrow off to the right of the thumbnail pictures of the shapes. Go to “ALL Elements Shapes” and click. This will bring the thumbnails of all the custom shapes you have available to you. Scroll down the list until you find the rounded square tool and select it.

Go to your workspace and create a tall rectangle, this will be the bottom of your tag. Go back to the shape’s list and select the hexagon(stopsign) shape. Go back to your workspace and create a hexagon aproxamately the same width as your rectangle. Do not worry about it being perfect because you can always resize it to match. You want to line up the two shapes so that it appears to be a seamless tag. Once it is lined up go over to your layer workspace and right click each layer and simplify them. Once they are simplified right click and merge the layers.

Now go to your tool pallette and select the eliptical marque tool, select-left click on your workspace to create the hole for the tag. If it is not even just hover the mouse over the selected area until you see a pointer and drag the circle to your desired position. Once you are satisfied with its placement go to Edit and select Cut to remove the color from the selected area.

Next we add the texture to the tag by going to Filters>Render>Fiber, when the screen pops up you want the variance level to be 37 and the strength level to be 4. Once this has applied duplicate your layer; making sure your duplicate layer is selected go to your styles menu. Choose Wow-Neon from the dropdown menu, choose one that matches the color you used for the tag. Experiment with them until you find one that you like. After the style has been applied go to your layer pallette change the opacity level of the duplicate later to 59% and merge both layers.

Create a duplicate layer once again and go to the Wow-Chrome in your styles dropdown menu and select the Wow-Chrome Textured thumbnail and click apply. Now change the opacity of this layer until you are satisfied with the way the tag looks. Merge the layers and save as a .png file to maintain transparency. Remember you are in control of the final results, play around with the opacity layers or levels of filters and styles until you find the perfect result for you.

Congratulations on making a textured tag, goodnight and kiss your babies.