Hi there! Sorry this is a little later than usual, but I’ve had bit of a busy day. My car’s central locking system literally blew a fuse so I had to go get that fixed as there’s no way I could go anywhere and leave the car unlocked. Then of course this afternoon was me playing mom’s taxi (as usual).

Hope you’re all having a good week and keeping up with taking your photos. I’m very motivated this year and determined to keep up. What better way to keep up than with some photo inspiration?

This week we’re going to get QUIRKY! Let’s do something a bit different! Take a photo of someone but break some rules and add some fun! Try to make it more than just a photo – make it depict a memory, let the photo tell a story or simply use a different perspective.

• Challenge Rule 1 : Your photo must have a person (or persons) in it.
• Challenge Rule 2:  Make it Quirky and unusual.

Don’t you love photos that make you take another glance? Photos that just have something different in them that catches and holds your eye. Remember it’s still a photo for your 365 Project, so make it something that’s still personal to you and a photo that you like.

Here are a few ideas to spark your imagination:

• Take a photo from an unusual ANGLE. You can turn your camera;  take a shot while lying down on the ground or standing on a ladder; get down to your subjects’ level…
• Leave some BLANK SPACE on your photo. Place your subject to the side of your photo, leaving around 2/3rds of the photo “blank”. That is, with an uncomplicated background. This is an ideal spot for journaling or adding a quote.
• Take a photo of a PORTION of a person! You don’t have to have the whole face in the shot or even the whole body. Focus on the hands, or the feet or the eyes. This combined with an unusual angle could make for a fabulous photo.

One thing to keep in mind when taking unusual photos like this is – remember where you want the focus. For e.g. If you want to emphasize someone’s hands, for instance, then focus the camera on the hands so that they are crisp, while the rest of the image is slightly out of focus. Play with the depth of field.

Tip: To get a subject in focus, but to the side of our image (not right in the middle where your camera focuses) , first focus on the subject by pressing down on the camera’s shutter half way until it is in focus, then keeping your finger on the shutter, move the camera so your subject is where you want them in the image. Now press all the way down. Voilà!

A sharp busy background can also be distracting when photographing people, so concentrate on focusing on the subject. Make your subject stand out by either having very little in the background, or by making sure your background is blurred and your subject is clear and crisp.

Don’t just point and shoot, think about what you are photographing.

Although not a portrait, here’s an example showing Depth of Field, where I focused on a Bonsai in the foreground, with the hint of a blurred watering can in the background. This is also an example of chopping the subject off, only showing a portion of it.

Here’s another one I took of a giraffe drinking at a waterhole. Fortunately we were parked in just the right spot and the giraffe conveniently bent down and drank. I simply seized the opportunity! I love this angle- the giraffe looks so awkward!

I’ll post some quirky portrait photos of my own too once I have tied my little subjects down long enough to take a pic or two! I’m hoping to grab a chance tomorrow.

Hope you enjoy the challenge.

Take a peek HERE to see how the challenge works and how you can earn your petal points! Remember to post a link in the forum HERE to your photo in the Challenge Gallery.

Hi there!

Firstly, yes it is actually Wednesday today, not Tuesday as our banner says- so I do apologise if I’ve confused you LOL! (Just thought I’d check and see if you are awake! hee hee) This is my first Tutorial here at W&W and I hope it is going to be useful to you. I know that that’s how I learnt the basics of digital scrapbooking. When I first started with Photoshop Elements I had no clue whatsoever! My first layout was simply awful as I had no idea of where to start or how to add shadows etc. Purely from reading tutorials, I was able to improve and managed to find my way around PSE. I now have PS CS3 and though I also read tutorials , I ended up taking an online course to learn it properly as it has many more features than PSE.

When I scrapbook digitally, I like my layouts to look as though you could touch them and feel the different layers. I want them to be realistic looking. I want certain elements like staples to be the correct size for the page. Sometimes they are too big for a 12×12 page and when printed, they are simply too big to be real - I’ve never seen a giant staple before ;o) That’s just me. Perhaps you prefer a more graphic look to yours.

One thing though, we all want the photos and elements to be in proportion, not distorted. So I decided a quick and easy beginners tut on RESIZING would be good. I have also done another tutorial on adding a border (STROKE) to photos, elements and text to create a ’sticker’ look for wordart or a title, thus making your elements you buy a little more versatile and giving them a brand new look.

If anything is unclear, please just ask!

If you have any tutorial requests, please add them here in the comments - it really helps to know what you would like to learn.

DOWNLOAD TUTORIAL HERE

Have fun playing!

Veronica

Hi W&W fans!  I just posted a tutorial over in the forum describing a few techniques for giving your layouts a painted aesthetic.  Head over there to read about Photoshop filters, photo masks, and blending modes.  And, it also has some good ideas for re-using your digi elements to get MORE out of them.  It’s like two tutorials in one!  You don’t want to miss it, and you can find that tutorial HERE .

And here’s more great news:  Gina made a special photo mask set, and has released it early, just for this tutorial!  Here it is:

You can go straight to the Shoppe for that item here:  Wildflower Photo Masks

And even MORE good news:  Gina also gave me an “earlybird” coupon code to give you.  It’s good for 25% off today and tomorrow only (Dec. 2nd and 3rd 2009):   Coupon no longer valid

YEA!  Now, go have some fun shopping, learning and scrapping!

we had this request in the forum today:

Hi Tee!
I bought the new Birthday Party collection this past weekend and I am loving it!….I’ve been able to go in and add birthday filler pages for my 365 book and they match so well with the other pages that I have made.

I am working on my oldest son’s b-day pages and I would like to use the alpha that came with the kit, however I would like to be able to use the consonants in colour, not just the vowels. Can you please tell me how to recolour the alpha and still retain 3D look of it? Pretty please???

Here is the alpha she is using and wants to have options to color all the letters…

here you go…it is fun and not hard to do!

open up your alpha page…if you just want to do a letter at a time then marquee and highlight your letter and copy to a new layer…this is helpful if you want to make them each a different color…but to keep it super simple and let lots of you do this if it helps your pages I am showing you the super fast and easy way!

go to Layer then Layer Style and then Color Overlay…

it will automatically cover your letters in this red and you will see your blending option defaults to NORMAL…

you don’t want the solid cover…to keep the fab dimension Gina designed into this alpha, go to Blending Options and pick SCREEN…steps shown here and results in the next one…

now you want to pick your color to match your oh so fantastic layout!!! click on the red box next to blend mode and you will get a huge color picker!

to get that perfect matching color, open up a Photoshop file and roll your mouse over the color you want to match…you will have a dropper tool…click down and that color becomes your overlay color! AND YOU DID IT!!!!!

HAVE FUN!!!

(((hugs)))

So we just took a two week vacation flying to California and as hard as it was to NOT leave with my nice digital SLR, I DID NOT want the weight of it with me on the trip and having to take such care to keep it safe. I was determined to capture our memories and still be artsy but NOT have the weight and hassle of my big camera.

I had SO MUCH FUN learning little tricks on my new point and shoot to document our trip which include a stop at DisneyLand!

I used different settings like +/- exposure to get brigther or darker pictures where with my digital SLR I would have adjusted my shutter speed or aperature. I used the different auto settings to get the effects I wanted and it was so fun to see the differences.

One of my favorite pics was a nighttime shot of California Adventure waiting for the parade. I wanted to show all the people lining up and the beauty of street but with the auto setting it would flash and I could only see a few feet in front of me. With night setting well I could not hold steady UNTIL I put my camera on the ground! I set to the program setting of NIGHT and then put the camera on the street before pushing the shutter! This was the picture! Nothing going to a magazine but more than usual with a point and shoot.  Looking at this picture again I am not sure if the light above us lit up my sweetie that much or if I had it on NIGHT PORTRAIT which is really cool because you get the beautiful background and the flash fires at the end to light your subject!

If you have a point and shoot, be sure you are maximizing what that fun toy can do! If you are all SLR, it is FUN to have a small camera that stays with you always and you could catch some memories you might otherwise miss…may be fun to play!!!

Have fun and share some of your favorite photos and tricks with us in the forum here!

(((hugs)))

Hey ladies, it’s petra here with a Tuesday tutorial… All about eyes! The thing on a photo that always draws me right to it are the eyes.

Today I want to show you how you can make those eyes POP and give your photo just that little extra polish. I learned this thing from the sweet sarah (my3hens around digiland) and I use this a lot on my photos! This trick can be done in many different programs such as photoshop, paint shop, ACDSee’s photo editor & others…

I’m using my ACDSee’s photo editor 2008 for this:

1. First we need to open an image

2. Then we’re going to duplicate the photo3. Next we’re going to use the lasso tool or any tool to make a specific selection and select both eyes in entirety

4. Go to> adjustments> lights > brightness/contrast   (this can be in a different place with other programs then ACDSee’s PE 2008)

5. change settings till the eyes get the look you want and have a bit more POP to them…make sure it’s acceptable and don’t over-do it!

6. Erase back all of the bright spots on the face and make sure the white of the eyes don’t look off. In my case I deleted the bright spots in the eye white too.

And here’s the end result, can you see her pretty blue eyes have a bit more pop right now?!

This is a super easy trick and it really does make the eyes a bit more poppy! So hope this helps and have fun trying it out!

We had a request to teach you how to make your own brush! If you want to learn that fun and EASY trick….visit us HERE in the forum!
and on top of that! I get to announce the winner of last week’s Ad Challenge! Put your best digi clap together for melanie71 and her fantastic layout, FROSTING COOKIES!

the team fell in love with these fantastic pictures, the colors used popping off the kraft and black…it was just a stunner and we are happy to share this win with you!!! Thank you to all that played along…it is always tough narrowing down from your great and thoughtful layouts!

one more thing… the site team is taking a quick breather after the oh so funfilled party week! I am a goof though and already posted my tutorial and next week I am going to be celebrating my baby’s 5th birthday Monday and Tuesday so…. the rest of the team will be back with posting Friday and my day off will be next Tuesday so you have an extra week to catch up on past tutorials you have missed or think on some new ideas for things you want to learn!

(((hugs)))

Hey Weedsters…several who had gotten the free template to use as a cover for LIFE 365 have wanted to add their own real reflection and not just the black gradient.  It is easy and we are happy to be teaching you today how to do this fun quick trick! Even if you are not doing LIFE 365 you can learn this trick and use it many different ways on your regular layouts.  Come check it out HERE in the forum!

Here is a peak of the final result…

If you missed this template and want to grab it..it is still free in the store.
Thanks so much for stopping by!
(((hugs)))

join us in the forum HERE for this trick!

So we are always looking for fun and easy tricks to change up our layouts or add that extra something to fun layout we are creating! This week I did a quick tutorial on extracting me and my race friends from a photo and then adding a white stroke around it to give it a more cartoon comic effect.

Follow along with the image tutorial and see if you can find a picture or a layout that you can use this on!

If you have any questions on parts, please post them and I will answer them here or re-edit the first post to include the answers!

Have fun playing!

You can click on the images to be taken to a larger version if you want to see the details of where things are!

I first used the magic wand tool to take out the grass, sky, mountain background…I got it close to all selected but it also selected some of our faces…I went ahead and copied what I had magic wanded and then went to that layer and used the eraser to erase out our faces since we wanted to have those in the final image!

this shows the layer above the photo that I am left with…I want all this gone!

easy enough…now I can use my magic wand tool in that blank section ( I turned off my bottom layer so I could see what I had cut off ) now I use the wand and grab that blank space where we were. After I do that I can turn off that layer too and see just the running ants of the section I want to now cut out of the original image.

If you ever think you have the ants around what you want and it ends up being the opposite… go here to Select Inverse and that will give you the opposite and you are set!

once I had the right part selected I can do Command J or copy from the original first layer… that will give me just the blank portion I had been working on..now me and my friends are just standing in the middle of no where….I could add any background I want.

look at the image above to get the commands for adding a stroke ( I added the white stroke ) around us to give it a stand out different effect.

see if I turn back on the background layer we have the white tracing (stroke) around us!

from here you can drag that layer into a layout or cover your background layer with a solid color overlay (here I did black) and then do something fun and artsy! Just a random goofy digi trick but easy enough for all of us to do!

I hope you have fun playing! Ask any questions you have or give suggestions for future weeks…no idea is to basic…we really want to help any and all scrappers have fun and achieve the digi look they want! You can do it!!!

(((hugs)))