Love Scrapbooking

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Challenge, Photography

Apr
28

Cool Winter – FREEBIE

Posted by DeAnna Allan

Well, I’ve finally done it. I’ve worked feverishly this past weekend and have created my first digital scrapbooking kit. It has 9 papers and 6 embellishments. I’ve been learning so much about Photoshop and I’ve had designs running through my head for months. I may work on a co-ordinating alphabet next. I’m so excited!! Please let me know how you like it. Be gentle, it is my first one!

For some inspiration, I took a picture of the tulips budding out front of my house to use with the kit. Here’s my layout:

Here’s the kit:

You can download it here.

Have fun! Happy scrapping.

DeAnna

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Digital Kit, General Scrapbooking, Layouts

Apr
23

That 70s Crop – April 12, 2008

Posted by DeAnna Allan

Photo Express in Maple Ridge holds an annual scrapbooking crop in the spring. This year’s theme was the 70s. People dress up, bring food bank donations, and snacks to share. This year they asked participants to bring new shoes to donate to kids in El Salvador. We raised 300 pairs of shoes! Check out the pic!

They extended the crop this year as well, to 14 hours. Two extra hours to scrapbook! I had a fantastic time. It’s always nice to get together to scrapbook, instead of hiding in my little room all by myself! I managed to get 3 layouts done, although I’m not sure how I only got 3 finished when last year I got 4 done AND considering we had two extra hours to work in. I guess the fact that I was still on mat leave last year had something to do with my preparedness. Here are the layouts I finished:

I’d been working on my Easter 2007 page since June last year, but silly me, I left it in Iowa when we went to visit my dad and family in July. Of course, my father and I are huge procrastinators, so I didn’t get it back until Christmas! J

The goodies they give in the complimentary tote are always pretty good. This year we got a Photo Express tote filled with a groovy paper pack, several kits, a stamp, rub ons, etc. They always have great deals in the store for crop participants as well. I scored a limited edition purple Crop-A-Dile with 400 eyelets for a great price. SWEET! I didn’t have one yet, and I had been EYEING it for a while (sorry, I have a corny sense of humour!), so it was perfect that it was on sale. The door prizes were pretty good too. I managed to win a set of stamps with a Christmas theme, and I wasn’t even there! Lynn and I were at the store so my friends claimed it for me. Lucky for me – they could have decided to keep it and I would never have known!

My friend Lynn and I dressed up in the 70’s theme. She was dressed in early 70’s flower power garb, and I dressed up a little later in the 70’s, doing the Charlie’s Angel’s thing in casual jeans and a t‑shirt with my purple roller-skates. Ohhh, yeah! Here’s a link to a picture of us on the Photo Express blog (we are at the top of the group of photos on the far left). They include a group photo (of all 99 women and 1 man who attended) and an individual photo to use in a layout they put together in the theme of the day. I have to pick up my photo of Lynn and I together so I can include it in my layout. I think I’ll do that layout next so you can all see it.

Lynn and I went with friends, Theresa, Gythe and Cindy. We got a table all together at the end of a row. Here are a few of my favourite pics:

[singlepic id="38" w="320" h="240" mode="watermark" float="center" ] [singlepic id="40" w="320" h="240" mode="watermark" float="center" ]

The food bank photo was late in the day, after they’d already taken a load of it away! It was a great haul for the Friends in Need Food Bank. Overall it was a great day. Can’t wait for next year!

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General Scrapbooking, Layouts

Apr
17

Camping on Whidbey Island

Posted by DeAnna Allan

So here is my final layout from our camping trip. I’m really happy with the way the map turned out – doesn’t it look great? I had a couple of Becky Higgins’ sketches in mind for this layout, but I couldn’t decide which would work best, so I kind of just went with it. I tried to group like photos together, so the intense blue of the sky around the Space Needle and the ferry were clustered together. The photos from our campground were all fairly dark, so I decided to use those along the bottom, and that way I could keep the main photo of us in Seattle on the left with my old treasure map that I created, and the photo of the Deception Pass plaque with the photo of the bridge over the Pass together. I used a creamy beige for my die cut tent using my Sizzix BigKick (man I love that machine!). This was the last layout I put together at the Crop on Saturday. It was about 11:15 pm when I finished it!

I`ll tell you all about the Crop in my next post, including some photos!

DeAnna

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Layouts, Uncategorized

1 comment

Apr
16

From Google map to aged treasure map

Posted by DeAnna Allan

For the Canada Day long weekend in July, 2007, my husband, 1 year old son, my mother and I went camping on Whidbey Island in Washington State. We weren’t there much so it didn’t really feel like camping. Of course, we were in Seattle, watching Seattle Mariners baseball games against the Toronto Blue Jays for the majority of the weekend! We basically slept at our campsite and that was about it.

I planned on doing this as a traditional 2-page layout. I really wanted to put a map on my layout, but the ones we got from the tourism booths didn’t appeal to me. I searched Google and found this map. The problem was it didn’t match my layout. The pale blue just didn’t work with my brown and green theme.

In the end, it looks like this:

Here’s how:

1. First I selected the entire image and copied it (ctrl+a, then ctrl+c), then I opened a new 4×6 canvas (file, new), and pasted the map image onto the new canvas (ctrl+v).

2. The image here is quite small, so used Free Transform (Edit, Free Transform) to make the image the size I needed it to be. When using Free Transform, to keep the image the same proportion as the original, you need to hold Shift then click and drag. Once I have the image centered and sized the way I want it, I accept the changes (you can either press enter or click on the x or check mark in the toolbar – see inset).

3. Next I wanted to change the colour. I decided to use a sepia tone, so I chose to do the following: Image, Adjustments, Photo filter. This brings up a pop up, and I clicked on the down arrow and selected Sepia. I then adjusted the density to 100, which I liked best with my theme.

4. Next I created a new layer (layer 3), and added a worn crumpled paper effect using a brush I downloaded from www.deviantart.com called Inobscuro_paper03. The brush I was using was in landscape, so in my brush palette I clicked on Brush Tip Shape, and then changed the angle. You can either click in the circle on the arrow and rotate it (see inset), or type in the box. I wanted my brush to be 90°, but you can do anything between 180° and ‑180°.

5. Create a new layer (layer 4). Next I used a few grunge brushes I purchased from Designer Digitals (by Dana Zarling, Grunged Up Brushes No. 1). I selected a couple of different styles of grunge brushes to get a well used stained map look.

6. My next step was to add torn/curled edges along the left and right sides of the map. I wanted it to look like many hands had held it and worn the paper in onto itself. I created a 5^th layer, and I dragged the curled edges onto my image, also purchased from Designer Digitals by Anna Aspnes. My image is a 4×6, and the curled paper is meant for 12×12, so again I used Free Transform to make it fit on the side of my image where I wanted it. I then duplicated the layer (layer 6), and rotated it (using Edit, Transform, Rotate 90° – you can use clockwise or counter-clockwise, it just depends on which side of the edge you want along the edge of your image). I then dragged the duplicate to the opposite side of my image. You need to make sure that the edges of the curled paper touch the top and bottom of the image (the curled edges are going on the sides of the image), but it doesn`t have to touch the sides.

7. I also wanted the top and bottom of my map to look frayed, so I chose to use chunky torn edges, also from Anna Aspnes at Designer Digitals. I repeated the above (creating layers 7 and 8), dragging to my image, Free Transforming it, then duplicating, rotating and moving to the opposite side of my image, as above.

8. Next, I wanted to delete the portion of the map past the edges of my curled and frayed edges. The trick is to make sure the top and bottom of your curled/frayed edges touch the outside edges of your canvas (either top and bottom or right and left, depending upon the layer you are working on. Here, I used my magic wand tool to select the space between the edge of my canvas and the torn edge. You may have to use Shift+click to highlight all of the areas at the edge of the canvas if the curled/frayed edge touches in more than one spot. Delete the highlighted sections from the map layer, wrinkled paper layer, grunge layer and curled/frayed edges (as appropriate).

9. At this point you should have 8 layers (see below).

10. The last thing I did was to use the eraser tool with low opacity (around 20%), and low flow (around 30%) to erase some of the grunge on the curled/frayed edges. I didn’t want to erase it completely, I just wanted to lighten it up a bit.

That’s it. Too easy!

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Tutorials

Apr
04

Me Layout

Posted by DeAnna Allan

Just thought I would send a follow up to my first post. Here’s a layout of me that I prepared using a kit from Jessica Sprague. I searched and searched for any decent photo of me from the past few months, and nada. I don’t have any decent pictures of myself. I guess my husband and I are too focused on taking pictures of our son!

If you haven’t checked out Computer Tricks for Scrapbooking 2, you should definitely check it out.

credits: All components from Jessica Sprague kit – Echoes of Asia

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About Me

1 comment

Apr
03

About Me:

Posted by DeAnna Allan

My name is DeAnna Allan. I’ve been married to my wonderful husband since December, 2003, and we have one son who is currently 20 ½ months old. By training I’m a paralegal at a law firm in downtown Vancouver, BC.

I’ve been doing traditional scrapbooking for a little over a year. I was introduced to it, just after my son was born, through some new friends and our local Photo Express store in Maple Ridge. I took a class and felt exhilarated once I finished my first two-page layout. Then, in March, 2007 I attended my first crop with some friends – all I can say is WOW. It was amazing. I prepared a ton in advance and managed to get 4 layouts done! Yikes!

My husband is a total computer geek. He is an IT Operations Administrator, and has done some web training. He’s set up a family website for us (www.allanfamily.ca), and his own umpiring website (www.umpire.ca). Umpiring is a huge passion of his, which in turn means I have a ton of baseball materials and a couple of layouts already.

In October 2007, my husband and I took our first digital scrapbooking class, and I am totally hooked. My husband took it so he could be more creative with his websites, and I took it so I could learn how to do more to my photos before printing them for my traditional scrapbooking. What a surprise it was to see a layout come together so quickly and easily. So far I’ve been doing some traditional scrapbooking still (I’m preparing for the next crop in – 9 DAYS!), and some digital scrapbooking as well.

There are so many websites out there where you can find kits, embellishments, templates, Photoshop brushes, etc. I’ll show you the websites I like the most, and how to use some of the products that you can download. So, my blog will focus on general scrapbooking musings, and some tutorials, etc.

I like to do a lot of prep work to my photos using Photoshop CS3, whether I’ll be printing them out for a traditional layout or if I’m simply using them for a digital one. My first tutorial will show you how I took a Google map image of Whidbey Island in Washington state, and made it into an old wrinkled map for my layout of Kyle’s first camping trip.

I hope you’ll enjoy!

DeAnna

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