In The Meantime

I finally bit the bullet and actually spent some money on scrapbooking. Well, I've paid bought a magazine subscription and a couple of issues of a Photoshop magazine that includes a CD of brushes, gradients, textures, and fonts for Photoshop. But I actually have tried to download only free kits and elements from the different websites. There are really so many free things you can get. But the really good stuff, I think you have to pay for. So, I had some extra money (I get reimbursed for my mileage when I have to go to meetings and stuff, and that's mine to do what I want with), so I decided to buy some different digital kits. I just downloaded them all, so I haven't been able to play with them yet, but I plan to this week and next week when I'm off. So hopefully, I'll post some new layouts on here soon!

In the mean time, here are a couple of pictures that I played around with on Photoshop. I will probably use them in a layout one day, but I decided to go ahead and post them here. For this picture of me and  Jason, I applied a gradient, and I played around with the opacity until I liked it.

This other picture of me is one of those where only one element in the picture is colored. I've always liked those pictures. This won't be a technical how-to, but in Photoshop, you duplicate your layer, make the new layer black & white, then create a clipping mask. You then erase the part of the picture that you want colored. Again, I'll probably scrap this one day. I originally was going to use it in the template that I used for My Love (my first layout), but I didn't want the layout to focus only on me, so I chose a picture of me and Jason.

Just an extra tidbit...here are some of my favorite scrapbooking websites: scrapgirls.com, twopeasinabucket.com, and scrapbooksetc.com. I also go to peppermintcreative.com, but I sometimes forget about that one. The things I just bought were from scrapgirls.com. That site has a daily newsletter where they give a free download. They also have what they call a scrap club, with two options, paying either $7 or $10 each month, and getting a good amount of materials in return. I'm thinking about doing that, too. So, check it out if you haven't before. And stay tuned for a new layout soon.