Black and White and Color

I used this on a hybrid page about my daughter-in-law. I took three pictures and cropped out just her face, converted the new picture to black and white and then placed it beside the full color photograph. Make sure you duplicate and save the original photo!

The custom shape tool is highly under rated! In this layout I created the mat for the largest photo by choosing a crop shape, simplifying it, and then using "ctrl G" to group my photo with the shape. That beautiful brush was downloaded from Scrap Girls and is called Bordering on Elegant by Valerie Randall. I always try to give credit where credit is do.

Christmas Flowers

This is one of my favorite tricks. Just select a photo to use as a background, cover your 12 by 12 blank page with the picture then go to filters>blur>gaussian blur. Adjust and apply the blur to your page. Now add your photos,stroke outlines and title.
Have fun!

Starting 2011

I decided to start a blog with an idea a week for digital scrapbookers about 3 months ago and haven't done a thing about it. Well, that is about to change. Once a week, in 2011, I will post one of my layouts with a technique I used from Photoshop Elements. I teach classes at Scrapbooking Heaven in Westminster, California and enjoy working there as a part time sales clerk. Although I would love to do tutorials on this blog, I'm not crazy enough to believe I have time to develop a lesson a week, so if you have questions about something feel free to ask! I will post my first layout next year. Hey, that's tomorrow!!!