hey there! just popping in today to ask for ideas for what you all would like to see and learn on Tuesdays! post in the comments here something you would like to learn or a tutorial you think would be helpful to scrappers (beginning-advanced) and we will pick some and get them going to share in the months ahead!

one person will be picked randomly from the comments of suggestions to get a treat to the Weeds & Wildflowers store!

share your ideas!!! have a great day!!! 

. . . Interruption for an Important Announcement. . . .

Making a quick interruption to the post to Announce the Winner of Last Weeks Scraplift Challege!

AND THE WINNER IS. . . . . . . .

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luvfromindia

CONGRATULATIONS! Look for a PM from our Site Ct with your Gift Certificate Code!

Ok, so I am late getting this posted. This day has gone by too fast.

Well It is Monday and I am here to bring you another template challenge and my very first at creating a template.  Create a layout using the template, you can flip it, rotate it, do what ever you want to it. Your layout could win a $10.00 Gift Certificate to the Weeds and Wildflowers Shoppe.

Here it is:

You can download it HERE.

The Weeds and Wildflowers Creative Team has been busy creating some inspiration for you with this template.

From Petra

From Miranda Buijs

From lillypug34

From jleigh76

From Jonee

And from me (sbaird)

In order to win the GC, all layouts must include the following:

• use at least 80% W&W-goodies
• post your layout in our gallery and leave a link here in this post.
• layouts must be posted by Saturday, November 22.

The winner of a $10 GC will be announced at our next weeks Monday challenge.  GOOD LUCK!

Hi girls, are you ready for the weekend? I sure am…I just did my shoppings so I hardly don’t have to go out tomorrow….Just only to welcome ‘Sinterklaas’ in our town. Sinterklaas is a sort of Santa Claus..it is a Dutch tradition…Sinterklaas comes from Spain and at night when the kids are asleep,  he and his little helpers put little gifts in kids shoes. They come over the roofs (Sinterklaas on his wonderful horse Americo) and climb through the chimney’s.  On his birthday, December 5th, all helpers bring lots of toys to all kids…and tomorrow in lot of Dutch cities…he arrives…such an exciting time for all little kids!

If you want to buy little shoe-gifts for yourself you should definively go to our Shoppe today as we have sooo much on sale today..I even saw 58% discount somewhere…isn’t that great!!!

For now..happy shopping and have a great weekend!

Miranda

Hi ladies!!  Gina here with a little sneak peak of what is to come!  We have a HUGE collab for our Holiday Collection this year, and we are planning on releasing most everything by next Friday the 21st, and positively everything by our Black Friday Sale Thanksgiving weekend!  So keep your eye out while the elves are busy!!  There are GREAT things to come!! xo

Happy Wednesday Weedsters!! wowZa, time sure does fly by doesn’t it? And I must confess, today I come completely unprepared but I have a very good excuse. *smile* I’m out of town celebrating my sister’s birthday!!! — woot woot —

So, rather than my shinning the spotlight on some rockin’ WW pages, how about I have you pick a favorite page from *your* WW Gallery and link me up here. Then, when I get home tomorrow, I’ll randomly pick a winner for a $5 GC to the WW Shoppe. Sound good? Okay … go!!!

Oh, hold up … before you skip on over to your WW Galleries, let me announce the Random Winner of our Gallery Inspiration from the last 4 weeks! (and yes, I am tardy on this as well!! ack, if I don’t start getting my *you know what* in gear, the FAB 3 are getting kick my *you know what* outta here!!) So ….

… R U ready freddy??

… our handy dandy Random Number Generator picked …

Beckie (lilypug34) !!!! yay !!! Your $5 gift certificate to the WW Shoppe will be sent in just a bit - Enjoy!!

Happy Scrappin’ Weedsters! And in my best Arnold Schwarzenegger voice “I’ll be back”.

Have you ever gotten a kit that had .abr files (brush files) and you didn’t know how to make those work? A weedster did and wanted to know the trick to putting that .abr file to work! Follow along and have fun using brushes in your layouts…there are many brushes loaded with Photoshop so even if you have not gotten extras that you need to add, you can play with what came loaded with the program. 

For this quick tutorial, I am using one of the leaf brushes that is included in Patricia Christensen’s, Harvest Festival Kit. So if you bought this kit you would look at the elements folder and see this…

Those three brush files can be so fun to use…we just need to get them in the right spot! To get to the right folder go to: Applications/ Photoshop/ Presets/ Brushes and you will see a folder full of these fun .abr files! Drag your new .abr files into this folder… see those Harvest Fest Brushes in there?

That is a big step but they still aren’t in a place you will see them when you click on your brushes in Photoshop. But let’s go there… there are two places to get to your brushes… OR you can just click on B and you will be there! But to make some changes and load the new ones, follow one of the red arrows below to get to your brushes!

You see in the upper left of your workspace, the brushes palette? 

Here is mine before I load the brushes that Patricia gave in her kit! To load her brushes, I just click on the little arrow in the circle, our red guide is pointing you there! Then you get all of these options…click on Load Brushes…

Now do you remember where we put them??? Applications/ Photoshop/ Presets/ Brushes … go now and find the three WW brush files and highlight them… you can do all three at once by holding the COMMAND key as you click on each of them you want to load and then LOAD…

now they are there for you to choose as an option in Photoshop!

Now it is time to play! Be sure to click on the brush you want to use and you can adjust the size (Photoshop calls this the Master Diameter), the Hardness, Blending Mode, and there are many more play with options but let’s just look at these for now! OH…and whatever color is your foreground color…the box on top of your two little color boxes in the lower left of your left side bar…that is the color that your brush is going to be when you touch down on your layout so pick your color there!

It is usually a FANTASTIC IDEA to make a new layer before you start playing with brushes on your layout, that way if you want to take it away later or move it you can…whatever you click that brush down on stays so layer as many times as you want with your brushes if you want flexibility to change later! I just did these on the main layer but I changed the foreground color each time before stamping again for the three across! Then the bottom stripe is a different trick that I will show you next.  One last thing too… to make your brush bigger or smaller once you have chosen it and see it floating over your layout just waiting to be clicked down… you can use the left bracket to make it smaller and the right bracket to make it bigger….these keys are just to the right of P and it makes it sooo much easier to play with brushes!!!

So doing the three brush stamps across the page we talked about… to make that stripe along the bottom… remember that second place to get to your brushes, on the right side, the brushes in the jar icon… well there are sooooo many options over there and I don’t even know how to technically use all those…I always just play! One trick I do know though that is fun!!!! Is if you want to drag your brush across your page and want it to go in a straight line….well good luck having that work for you without this tip!!! Hold your SHIFT key down and then drag your brush across your page and it will be perfectly straight!!! You will look like the steadiest hand around and have lots more fun with your brushes knowing that! All the other options in there… there is spacing, you can combine two brushes…. the sky is the limit!

IF you are a seasoned Photoshop user and are reading this and have extra brush tips…please share them with us here in the comments or in the forum! We would love, I would love to learn more fun brushes tricks!

Let us know what you want tips, tricks and tutorials for and we will see you again next week for more learning fun!

(((hugs)))

Hey ladies, it’s Monday and that means a new challenge. This time I’m here to host a fabulous new scraplift challenge, but before I go on I would like to announce the winner of our last weeks Quick-Page challenge…

First I would like to thank everyone for playing, we had such a hard time to pick just one winner. We hope you’re all playing again with us this next challenge… But now, the winner is…

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hofi8121 and her beautiful ‘Big bro, Lil’ sis’ Please help me with congratulating her for winning last weeks challenge…yoohoo! You won a 10$ GC to our shoppe!! Check out her page! 

Now on to this weeks scraplift challenge, I choose this beautiful page made by Tara Dunstan (Tarty00), isn’t it the custest and love her layering here…. I want to thank Tara for letting us use her beautiful page, if you would also like to thank her, you can leave her some love by clicking on the image here!

So ladies, about the challenge…

You can flip/rotate this image to suit your needs! Make sure your page includes at least 75% weeds & wildflowers goodies. Then when your done, leave me a link in the comment section here no later then Saturday 15th Midnight EST. Have fun and can’t wait to see all those pages!!!

Here’s some inspiration by our own talented ladies…

By Miranda Buijs  By Jenny By Suzanne By JanMary By JumlaiBy Joan  By Me, milo82 

So weedsters get those creative juices flowing and will see you here next time! Hugs, Petra

Happy Wednesday Weedsters!! Kenna here and it’s Gallery Spotlight time and boy, do I have some pages that’ll fire up that muse in you!! So, if I may, let me direct your attention to the WW Gallery and shine that spotlight on three gal’s pages that totally rock!

ScrapTigz (Christine) “Totally Special” uses Pat’s newest kit J’Aime Chocolat and I LUV Christine’s beautifully blended papers, her use of negative space and wonderful layering. This is simplicity at it’s best, and Christine is a true artist of minimalistic design. Her pages grab me every time!

“Earthy Love” by shien - I simply fell in love with Shein’s sweet photo and it works SO perfectly with Gina & Heidi’s “Just Earthy” collection. Her framing of both page and photo is wonderful and her use of simple elements and color draws you right in … gorgeous page!

“Kids” by Mel, in a word … wow! Mel’s page is absolutely FAB in every way! From her incredible blending and perfect arrangement to her awesome layering makes this one stand out!! And could her photographs be any more charming and totally endearing. Mel’s page just makes me feel good from the inside out! LUV love love this one girl!!

Well, that wraps up another Best of the Bunch!! And I’d like to say *thank you* to these gals for sharing their inspiring pages with us. (remember, you’ll be entered into a random drawing for a WW $5 GC - this is week 4 and I’ll be back later today to announce the winner! )

And if YOU would like to be spotlighted here on our little blog and have a chance to win some WW shopping $$, email me here with a link to your gallery!

Until next week, happy scrappin’ Weedsters!!

Hey Weedsters…happy to be coming to you with another tuesday tips, tricks & Tutorial! Hopefully this will make your scrapping easy and fun!!!

We had a request for how to mat letters for your layouts.

Here is a way…let’s get started! Remember before we get going… YOU CAN DO THIS! We can all do so much more than realize with our fun digi tools. Now for the fun…

So we have a great paper from the Just Earthy Kit… I used a wide thick font so we could really see our alpha change! This font is Poplar Std and I am pretty sure it came loaded on the computer. But pick a thick font you like and get that on your page…

Drag in a paper that you want to use to cover this font and turn it into a perfect match for your layout… Now to cut your paper to perfectly match the font on the layer just beneath it you… make sure the layer you want to cut is on the layer just above what you want to cut and paste it to (this is called clipping mask) when you have that and your paper layer is highlighted in your layers do… OPTION COMMAND G (hold all three at the same time)…

then your page should look like this… you will see a small arrow pointing down by your paper layer showing what it is clipped to…you can move around your paper however you would like at this point to have the look you want…if you move it past the bounds of what you clipped to you will see your original font gets uncovered so you can move it back or resize to make your paper bigger (COMMAND T will give you the sizing box if you need it)

Once I have my paper positioned how I want it… I stay clicked on the paper layer that is highlighted above, and then merge the paper layer down to my font layer (COMMAND E)

now you could do our new trick from this point BUT you lose a little artsy option and the sample that was shown for this request would need this step sooo keep coming with me! Now duplicate your alpha layer (Layer then Duplicate Layer)

so now you see I have two of the alpha layers in my layers palette but I have the top copy turned off (click on the eye to the side to hide layers that you aren’t wanting to work with yet or may or may not want on your project) NOW to give the look of matted letters, we are going to Stroke this layer… go to Layer then Layer Style then Stroke…

Lots of playing to be done in this box… you can pick the size- move that slider or type in values over the 3 and see how thick you want your mat to be… you can position the stroke inside, center or outside…I use different options each time depending on the look I want so play with that too (for this I used outside)… you can use blending modes and opacity as well- I did not use those on this sample… now I did change the color but then we cover it up later so it didn’t really matter but if you are only doing this step to put a trim around your alpha…pick the color trim you want here…

so here is my “thankful” with a stroke of black around it so you can see it on the page where you could not really see my blue against the beige before this…

Now I know that I am happy with the size of my mat and I want to take this an extra step and clip a different paper from this set to the stroke/ border so we have to take a little step to make PS let us flatten our effects to the layer (now someone may know a different trick for this and please share if you do- this was a work around I came up with-basically work arounds and figuring it out myself is how I have learned PS so I am all up for offifcial tips and tricks- but mine work and we are having fun right???) OK… I add a new blank layer (SHIFT COMMAND N)…

Now holding your command key you highlight our layer we added the stroke to and this new blank layer and do our COMMAND E to merge those two together…

So now we have three nice clean layers in our palette to work with down there… I went ahead and clicked the eyeball on the top alpha layer but my bottom alpha layer is still what is highlighted and what I am working on….I wanted to be able to see just the change to the stroke section though on this next step and if the top layer was eyeball off I would see all polka dots and not have that original alpha layer we were saving for just this time… (if this is confusing at all at this point…it is still easy PROMISE! work in your PS file along with this tut and if you miss a step you will see the difference and then it will click … if not, come visit the Weeds&Wildflowers forum or post in the comments here anytime for more help) …

So I pulled in that cute polka dot paper from the set and it is beneath our untouched alpha layer that we have had turned off but just turned back on for now and under it is our stroked layer which is a little wider because of the stroke border we put on it… (now is it clicking what is about to happen?)

With the polka paper layer highlighted in the layers palette, I do OPTION COMMAND G and that clips or cuts my paper to match the size of our stroked layer so you see our polka dot paper just trimming out our blue alpha…

We are getting there but with that dark stroke gone, our “thankful” is a little hard to read again… so why not perfect our new trick, stroke and use it a few more times!!! Now with your blue saved til now “thankful” layer clicked in the layers…

Go to Layer then Layer Style then Stroke… I left the thin 3 default size but changed the color to a brown to match the colors on my page…

See how just that thin stroke helps us to read our “thankful” word… but let’s stroke the polka dotted background mat layer too now… move your highlight in the layers to the mat layer where you have your polka dot paper…if you didn’t merge it down already, use COMMAND E and merge it permanently with the stroked border behind it so we can do this next fun step… use stroke again… instead of giving you the stroke steps again, you may remember or try to remember (you are making something pretty happen to the LAYER that is your tip to try to do this on your own) if you need to peek above do that…

with a thin stroke around both layers our “thankful” is looking better and better but there is still one thing more to really get it standing out a bit (and to match the original request we need this one last step that is coming)…

Add drop shadows… you have been passing this each time we did stroke so you may feel like you know where this is already! Go to Layer and then Layer Style and the Drop Shadow… I started with my top blue “thankful” layer first for the drop shadowing…

play with these settings to get a look you like… then go and do the same thing to the bottom “thankful” polka dotted trim layer…

and you are left with a matted alpha that stands up off of your digi page! We are thankful for you Weedsters and love your ideas for future tips and tricks! Have a great week!!! If you are in the USA, don’t forget to vote today!

See you next week with another tip, trick, or tutorial!

Are you ready for another fun Challenge?  This weeks challenge is a little different and a whole lot of easy fun!  Hope you picked up all those Free Quickpages this weekend here on our blog!

BUT before I bring you the challenge, I want to show you our winner of last weeks 3 Things Challenge!!!!

The Winner Is

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Joliv with her layout “Fabulous Fall“  CONGRATULATION!!!

Look for a PM from our Site CT with your Gift Certificate to the Weeds and Wilflowers Shoppe!

Ok now on to this weeks Random Challenge!  This week, create a layout using one of the quickpages we just gave out for free this weekend.  Be as creative as you want by flipping it, rotating it, adding to it or leave it as it is and slip in your photo/s.   That easy!

If your layout is picked you win a $10.00 GC to the Weeds and Wildflower Shoppe!

BUT there are a few rules:

1. use at least 80% Weeds and Wildflowers goodies!!
2. Please post your layout to the WW Challenge Gallery by November 16th and;
3. post a link to your page back here under comments in this blog post.

Winner will be announced in a blog post next week.

OH and most of all?  HAVE FUN!!!!

Here are the quickpages in action by our Creative Team!

Joy on Earth by evitangel

Cherish Every Moment by Jonee

Because of You by Kenna (ratherBscrappin)

Love You by JanMary

Memories by alansrock

Memories by sbaird (me)