Tut: Extracting Using the Magnetic Lasso Tool

Posted on | August 4, 2008 | 2 Comments

NOTE: This is a tutorial created in Photoshop Elements 6 but this function is also in Photoshop. Remember, if your background colors are just too close to whatever you’re extracting, try a different method (watch my other extraction videos).

Another digi page (but you can easily lift this using the traditional method). This picture is actually an interesting picture. She doesn’t sleep like this anymore but her daddy, when he was little, used to sleep like this too. It’s so weird! She’s never seen that picture and actually she was too little and as you can probably see was quite in the sleep zone and so this was all unconscious on her part. Aren’t our genes so interesting that way? Do your kids have habits that are similar or just like yours or your significant other?

I created this page a few weeks ago. I just haven’t had a chance to share it with you until now. I used Tara Sroka’s kit, just a variety of them, for this page. I extracted the hearts from a full page, from her valentine’s kit.

Speaking of Tara… due to personal reasons, she won’t be producing a lot the next few months. My CT business with her will be super casual which I think will be nice for me too. I’ll be with her until the end of the year and then who knows what I’ll do then. I think, unless something great comes a long, I want to focus on stamping, paper and hybrid with occasional digi just to keep up with what’s going on out there.

Hope you all had a great weekend. M and mine was great but hubby had to work. That’s also why M was with me all day Saturday at the crop… did I tell you this already? Ah… loosing my mind…

My Hero

Posted on | July 18, 2008 | 6 Comments

So, what are your weekend plans?

This weekend is quite busy for us. I have a farewell BBQ to go to (sad part of being a military family). She’s a good stamping friend of mine too so I’ll miss seeing her at stamp night and card swaps.

Then I need to go to the city for some errands and to also drop our friends’ car at the airport. Well, we’re going to the city for the last part, but since we’re already out there, might as well do errands. We’re out of detergent and soap anyhow. We use all (if possible… or if we can find them) organic products and there’s no health/nature store here.

Then there’s community supper again at the church where we help feed locals who are in need. This month we’re to bring corn bread and some sort of veggies. Hubby can do corn bread really well… maybe a Southern thing? Who knows but he makes them really good. He likes to eat it with that sour tasting milk stuff… oh what is it… I can’t remember…

Here’s a layout that I did using Tara Sroka’s 4th of July kit (it’s on sale for $2!). The red stars on the top right I extracted it out of a background paper. You all know how I LOVE to cut pieces out of paper… same idea, just digital. Don’t ask me what airplane that is. This was at an air show at hubby’s work. I wonder if they’ll have another one this year. That one two years ago was the last one. Too expensive I think to have it all the time. We love going because of the little kids’ activities and also the air shows. A couple of times I worked there… our university has a booth… but I quit doing that a while back… just too dang hot! So, I thought the red, white, and blue was appropriate for my very patriotic hubby and his airplanes (goodness he LOVES airplanes… between that and antique cards… he knows them by heart… seriously he can look at a tail light of a car and tell you the brand, model, and year of the car!) oh… and plus our M {::SMILES}.

Have a great weekend you all!

Some Hybrid Stuff

Posted on | June 30, 2008 | 1 Comment

I just want to share a few easy to do (even when you’re sick) items. Yes, I got bored and so I had to make something, ha!

The first is super simple as you can see. I used Tara Sroka’s tag that I printed out from her Queen of Green kit. The sentiment… handwritten by me. Now and then I enjoy doing this on my cards. For the card stock I used SU’s card stock. I also did some paper piercing, to give it a little more umpf. What do you think and oh… notice, no ribbon? {::SMILES}

The next one is a bookmark. It’s for M. She’s still napping and I made this while she was in the room with me. My girl can sleep!!! She’s so funny, every weekend nights, I’d tell her before bed time that she can sleep in tomorrow. I said the same thing last night too and she curled up and said, “ahhh…. thank you mommy.” It doesn’t matter what time she sleeps, she won’t wake up earlier than 7:30 a.m. Our weekend sleepy time is 10 p.m. and on average, she’ll wake up at 8:30 a.m. at the earliest. A few times I had to wake her up at

close to 10 a.m.! Can you imagine how my life will be when she’s a teenager? I can imagine Freaky Friday with Lindsay Lohan (when she was still cute and sweet it seemed) when what’s her name, her mom, was pulling her out of bed. That’d be me.

This bookmark I created using paper from TheDigiChick called Promise Paper Pack by Danielle Engebretson. Such a cute pack and I can’t wait to use it on some layouts.

I hope she likes it. I think she will. She usually LOVES it when I make her something. She loves to read and her school started a reading club. I think this will be perfect for those long nighty night time stories. We’ll know for sure where we stopped instead of just laying it down on the floor face down.

It is gorgeous outside. When M wakes up, we’re going to play outside a bit. I am sick of blowing my nose at this point and hacking. If I can get a good night sleep tomorrow then I’ll be just fine.

A Page and Delicious

Posted on | June 17, 2008 | 4 Comments

Ok, another digital page. I created this one using Tara Sroka’s new kit: Fun in the Sun.

This is a quick and quite easy layout. I just used a lot of the elements in her kit and here it is. M loves her bikini {::SMILES}.

What a week! It will be full of teaching, teaching, teaching. I did a half day session yesterday and I was pooped! Today I have a Flickr and del.icio.us session, quite fun for me but need to finish up a few handout items

Here’s a computer tip for you… If you work on multiple computers, check out delicious (or any social bookmarkers really). It’ll save you a lot of time when it comes to bookmarking your favorite sites. Just a brief explanation… when you save a website to your favorites in Internet Explorer or Firefox, you’re saving it on your computer. If you’re on your computer and you move to your laptop for example, you have to resave that page again onto that laptop’s favorites. Well, when you’re using delicious, since it is a web bookmarker, you can be on the laptop or desktop and you’ll have access to the same favorites. No need to email yourself the links from work or from your friend’s computer. Just login and save it to delicious.

I also like that I can see how many other people have saved that particular site and if I click on it I can see each username and see what else that person has saved. I’ve found many sites this way… many hobby related stores that I would not have easily found.

I don’t use my Firefox/Explorer bookmark tool anymore. Everything I have is saved on delicious and I can access it from any computer. I have also installed the delicious plugin for my Firefox and Flock web browser (same plug-in) and also Internet Explorer. It’s nice, it’s just like using the regular bookmark tool. Click and save.

Keep in mind that your bookmark is public until you click on the “do not share” when you save each item (for example my bank is not public since I don’t want people to know where I bank at). You can check out my scrapbook kit bookmark if you like (I can just share individual tags or the whole bookmark) and see what other bookmarks I have. I have two accounts. This is my personal one and I have a work one too that I share with my colleagues and students.

That’s your geek tip of he week {::SMILES}.

Tut: Digi, From Start to End

Posted on | May 23, 2008 | 1 Comment

Made a quick page using Tara Sroka’s elements, Day by Day and Weather Forecast, lines, some brushes and fonts. I love M’s picture too. I love her look and how she pops against the sephia-ish, almost b/w, background. It was really easy to do too. I’ll show you how later! This layout has no drop shadow effect. For graphic style pages, I don’t use drop shadows. I want it to look flat, magazine style flat.

I created this video based on this layout. I did however edit this layout more after I ended the video — this is the final result. I probably spent no more than 10 minutes adding the journaling and readjusting the different layers just a tad. The video was a 13 minute video but since it’s just a demo, I fast forwarded it and now it’s a six minute-ish video. I added music too, so watch out, turn your speakers down a bit. I found a podsafe site that I like with a great amount of options. I’m trying to be compliant here with the whole copyright thing. I’ve also figured out the best settings for my video output. This 6 min. video with audio is only a tad over 13 megs. Not bad {::SMILES}.

So enjoy. This video might not be considered a tutorial since it is quick but I hope it will give you a good idea on what digital scrapbooking is and a glimpse on how I work Photoshop. Oh, always remember to create a new layer each time you use a new brush style or new angle. It’s easier to delete this way. The guidelines going around the page, that’s to help me see the 1/4″ margin for printing purposes. I use WHCC and I need to give them 1/4″ for cutting. I still get a 12×12 page. If you don’t know them, try them. They are awesome. Super fast (it’s the quick UPS they use), the print quality is great and for less than $4 ($12 min.) you get a printed digi page shipped free. Oh, one of the guys who packs (Brad I think — I can’t find his card that he stuck in there, the packed by …. card), he always puts a sucker in the box for M, so sweet!

Shortcut keys used:

- Alt/Option with scroll button to magnify an area (same as the navigation function)
- Ctrl – T to transform
- Ctrl – C and V to copy and past
- Ctrl – (–) zoom out