Quick Tip #4 - New Layer Below

How do you create a new layer below the active layer, instead of above, in Photoshop Elements?

National Scrapbooking Day Activities

I have some fun things planned for National Scrapbooking Day!

ACDSee will be with us at a chat on Friday night and will be giving away two copies to the Photo Manager. If you don't have this awesome software, now is your chance to ask questions about it.

Head on over right now to the forums to participate in the "How Did You Do that Challenge." Grab the freebie tag in the forum too!

Then join us in discussing how to engrave in Photoshop Elements.

Play with this technique and share how you would do it right here in this thread sometime before Friday night's chat. Then come to the chat to watch the video sharing how I did this technique. It is easier than you think!

The freebie tag and the alpabet freebie that will be given away during the chat are both engraved using my method.

I want to learn from you too! So share how you would do it, share any freebie you make with it, or just share a preview of your results. Tell us how you did it!



Visit my meager store now. Everything is 50% off. Shop now here because I know you won't have time to visit while all those great sales are going on at all the other shops! My shop is small because I spend so much time recording videos rather than designing, but any purchases are truly appreciated as they help support the cost of the site.


Yep, did you catch it! The chat is at 9 p.m. EST May 2nd in the chatroom! Only 50 people will be able to enter, so come early!


Oh, and Chris is ready to have some fun too! She will be at DST on Saturday RAKing people with a 2 week trial to the Subscriber area!
To see what is available at the subscriber area, visit the Tutorial Index pages. The icons with the arrow designate those videos available in the Subscriber area. In addition, I'm recording as fast as I can!

Daycaction

The boys were gone yesterday at a band function from 5 a.m. until 11 pm., so hubby and I thought we'd take a daycation together, just us two, and had a great time! I needed to do something fun as it's been so long.

We went to a winery and are already planning on going back! The friendly owner was a hoot telling his jokes. He really made the atomosphere welcoming and set the tone to begin a wonderful experience.


The weather was one of those perfect Spring days and the tables were all outside under this beautiful setting under the trees.


For our appetizers, I had these scrumptious mushrooms filled with sausage and topped with breadcrumbs and all their secret spices. Oh, I was in heaven already! Yep, those olives and sweet red peppers as garnishment were to die for too.


Hubby had the fried cheese as his appetizer. I snuck one of them and it was like eating a toasted cheese sandwhich with no bread!



Hubby orded this panini and had them replace the onions and peppers with bacon since he doesn't eat anything I would claim as yummy like vegitables and fruit. Yes, I at his grapes. How appropriate to have grapes as a side at a winery.


I ate the Onion Grill and was so happy to get away without eating any meat! I am not much of a meat eater. I eat it, but most times would care less if I did. The onions and sweet red peppers on this sandwich were a real treat as they savored in my mouth. The photo does not do them justice at all. The toothpick garnishments contained pickled garlic and olives. I thought they looked like some sort of nut at first until I ate one. I've never eaten garlic before. At first I thought it was spicy, but then I kept eating them as the wonderful waitress told me garlic was good for you, and they began to grow on me.


There were several cats that came by to visit us, but the cutest visit was from Lucky the Dog. He didn't like potato chips! We couldn't believe what a picky eater he was. Some foods we would stick before him and he would just sniff and not move. Some foods, like the bread on our sandwhiches, he would go right for. At one point he gently tucked his head under hubby's arm as an indication that he wanted more.


However, the fun part was that the wine we decided to purchase was named after Lucky! So it was fun to visit with Lucky while drinking the wine in his honor. Yep, that's a photo of him right there on the wine bottle.


Next week took a nice hike up to the vinyards. We went past a beautiful lake which we stopped at to enjoy. Yes, we had to purchase matching shirts and take our photo together in the vinyard. I propped the camera up between the vines and set the timer. It's at an angle, but it made for some fun.



What do you think we did here at this tree? I won't tell you, but it was fun. Goodness, we were just happy the walnuts didn't fall on us.



Have you ever heard of that scout saying "leaves of three, let it be?" Well,...........................




Stupid people like me only take head to that saying unless they are trying to get a photo of a blooming May Apple plant. I love these plants! We saw them along side the road everywhere as we were driving in the country to the winery. I immediately started feeling all itchy, though.




At one point on our travels to and from the winery we were really close to the flooding river. It was an awesome site to see.




We did take time to drive a very long distance all the way to another winery, but it paled in comparison to our earlier experience. The food was some cheese and sausage and the wine was served in little plastic cups. However, I must say that they had a better selection of sweet wines, more of something I would want to take home and enjoy than to sit down and enjoy at the winery. The first place had only two sweet wines that were considered desert wines.

The wind and sun really got my face during the day and after we arrived home at 7 p.m., I was just totally exhaused. I went to bed really early. Too much sun on a face does really make one tired.

Drop Shadows on Opaque Elements

I have had quite a few people in various places request more information from me regarding Jessica Sprague's tutorial for adding drop shadows to acrylic elements for digital scrapbooking. It seem to be a popular hit with everyone! Isn't Jessica awesome?

The tutorial looks more complicated than it is. I was asked regarding an old technique I shared several years ago and it does, and yet does not, work for the acrylic elements as it does for the vellum elements.

Watch the videos to learn more.








You can download the arrows by clicking here.

Dividing & Slicing Photos for Layouts

I recorded a new video last night for dividing and slicing photos in Photoshop Elements for digital scrapbooking layouts. You can view it temporarily in this thread, but then it will be moved to the Subscriber area.

An ineffective way to get a skin peel

This is what happens when you stick your hand in Quickrete mortor to scoop it out and smooth it in place. Don't do that. I wouldn't recommend it.

But hey, last night I made great strides in completing a project on the patio that I've put off since last summer!

Happy Earth Day! What did you do for this special day? I spent Saturday, as indicated in my previous post, cleaning a creek. Of course, spreading Quickrete between patio blocks prevents green from growing....the weedy kind of green. I'm not so sure that's in the spirit of Green Day.

It's a good feeling

GENEALOGY
Wow, I get so far behind on so many things it seems, especially since I started digiscrapping. I am subscribed to quite a few Rootsweb e-mail lists for my surnames to watch them for things to break down my brick walls or to meet distant relatives. I let them go so long. The other day, I went through messages in one of them that I realized were a year old. Goodness, it's been a year since I've read them? I need to get better!

This morning I realized that I have 2,431 messages in my "Wright" folder! Ugggg! To mass delete or to read? That is the question. The oldest message is from 7/22/06? Ugggg! But what if I mass delete and miss that all importang clue? What to do, what to do!

INTERNET PROTECTION
Ever since last Thursday my Kaspersky has been giving me big problems. I had graphic problems which have not seemed to be resolved by them. I am also having RAM issues being caused by them. I'm not so sure any more that I am as happy with this program as I previously was. In all the years I used Norton, I never had these types of problems caused by an update they put out.

IT'S A GOOD FEELING
Last night my son came to me to help him with his homework. He had a 27 page children's book written in spanish to complete and he was confident I could take the photos that he and his partner took and work magic with them for his project. Of course, he waited until the night before the due date to ask me to help. Sigh. When will these boys stop procrastinating!

It did feel good, though, to be needed and to know my boy had confidence in me.

Look, I can put a checker board game between two puppets! Hmm..is the perspective off? I think the board might be sliding off the table a bit, but oh, yeah, isn't the puppet too?
Look! I can make rain clouds over the monkey's head! Now, in the next photo, I can make the monkey hold the checkerboard over his head to protect himself from the rain!

As the story goes on, apparently the checkerboard develops a hole in it and the monkey gets wet anyway.

At some point in the story, the monkey hides in a cave and needs a flashlight. Can you tell I made the cave black? (on each and ever shot of the monkey in the cave--I won't show you them all).


So, I didn't get any scrapping done last night, but I did have quality time with my son until about 11:30 p.m. That's much better time spent I think.

The story ends well with a treasure chest being found as the monkey climbs out of water (yes, the blue bean bag has been the water in previous photos).



I am now down to 2,378 more "Wright" surname e-mails. Can you imagine that everyone wants to be related to the Wright Brothers? Hmm...am I?

Where did the weekend go?

The weekend went by so fast. Where did it go?

I did spend Saturday morning walking the creek and getting trash out of it with a program for the city to clean up our parks. It was a lot of work, but also fun in a way. Those banks sure were steep and although I attempted some of them, I let the young'ns go down the steeper ones and just gave them a hand to help them back up. I did slip and land on my bottom in the mud once, so I came home rather dirty. Many of the children got stuck in the mud knee deep. They were losing shoes and pulling out the shoes after they got their feet out.

Mason went in and rescued one young lady who was stuck and couldn't get out. I was afraid he would get stuck himself trying to help her, but with his long legs and the fact he went in with only socks on, he was able to come right out. What a sight to see him yanking and pulling on her leg one at a time to get them out.

We were amazed at the things we pulled out. We found 5 tires, but 4 were down in the bed and we left them for the park people to get, putting them in a pile for their convenience. The first one actually had the metal in the middle and felt as if it were about 60 lbs heavy, but I managed to pull it out as it was on the upper bank. It wasn't easy and I was risking injuring my wrist some more.

We found a really heavy tarp, tons of plastic shopping bags, a frying pan, glass, strange pieces of long metal, and more, but my memory is bad.

We were trying to carry it all out and it was getting really heavy when another group came along and said that if we just left it on the trail, they would come by with a four-wheeler to pick it up. I sure wish we were told that earlier. Oh well, it was good exercise for our arm muscles.

It was cold and I was wearing shorts and water shoes...probably not the best choice as we were going through high grass and thicket and weeds and whatever it all was. I'm just hopeful I didn't go through poison ivy. No signs yet.

The weather was perfect on Sunday. It was one of those days that is not too hot, not too cold, not too windy, and sunny.

My hubby really worked hard in the yard and got a lot done. I was amazed at all the weeds he pulled. He worked on the concrete wall fixing it on Saturday. He mowed the yard on Sunday, fixed the edging in the flower garden, planted the banana trees, and helped the boys put up the canopy. I cleaned the water fountain out and got it up and running. I started putting Quickrete in the blocks under the canopy when I ran out of supplies, so I may work on that more tonight.

I learned something new when I last got my hair cut weeks ago. I have such straight hair and so when the stylist used a hair straightener on my hair, I was surprised.

I was again surprised when I realized later what a difference it made! It turns out that all these grey hairs in my head like to curl up and make my hair look frizzy! The straightener actually makes my hair feel softer (it already feels soft) and shinier!

Who would have thought that a straightener would be handy on straight hair?

So, a week ago I bought one on my grocery shopping trip. Now I have another problem? I cannot seem to find the time in the mornings to use it.

I did get one that works on both wet and dry hair, but that doesn't seem to help me. Using it on wet hair doesn't really dry the hair, so you have to do it twice anyway unless you want to spend a long time drying your hair with it.

Some day I"ll get my act together.

I did get some videos done this weekend for my site, but I was really tired this past week and I think I was actually fighting a head cold. It seems my immunity is so good that I get tired while its fighting, but have no symptoms. I did get a small ear ache and a bit of stoppage on one side for a few hours this weekend, so that finally gave me a clue as to why I have been so tired. I began to feel better on Sunday, so I was happy.

Here's to the beautiful weather predicted for this week! I hope to get the blocks done under the canopy so I can go outside to eat and scrap soon! I'm anxious!

The Squirrel Went Bazirk

Oh my, isn't this a funny video to watch on a Sunday?
Enjoy!



And this one is not so appropriate for a Sunday, but isn't Ray Stevens a hoot!

Photoshop Elements Quick Tip - Alt Visible

See what happens when you use the alt key on the visibility eye!

Now how cool is this!

Freebie Template #40

Can you believe I have made 40 of these already?

The freebie can be found in the forums, but you must be registered and logged in (if you are new, you need to activate after registation through e-mail).

If you make a layout with this template, please share in the forums. There is a prize for one winner!

Earthquakes and PhotoWalking

I was awoken this morning at 4:39 and immediately recognized it as an earthquake. I felt my first earthquake in 1992 and am able to recogonize them immediately now. You can hear it before you can feel it. I heard it and then could feel it coming across the lawn when it hit the house and I heard my bedroom window make a cracking sound (it's not damaged). The bed shook beneath me for about 1 minute.

It appears that the epicenter was far away in Illinois near the Indiana border and was a 5.2 quake. I could not go back to sleep thinking about where the epicenter could have been and who may be hurt.

Yesterday was Abbie Rae's birthday. She's 11 now. It seems she was just a pup yesterday. I took her for a walk for her birthday, but I needed the exercise too.



My tulips started blooming this week. I do not have too many of them and forget to plant more each fall.


The Wild Sweet William started blooming this week too. They are right up there as one of my favorite flowers. When they really get to blooming, their purple catches the eye from far away.



Have I told you about Mr. Robin? Mr. Robin is my pet bird. He seems to to talk to me. I'm not sure if he is actually a Mrs. Robin or a Mr. Robin, but I call him Mr. Robin. Every year when the birds return, he seems to know my work schedule and greets me at my car door as I leave for work in the morning and as I leave for work after lunch.

He sits right by the car door. So I long ago began say, "Good morning, Mr. Robin." Do you know what he does when I say that? He talks a couple hops toward me! So, I talk to him some more--usually about the weather. Then if I take a step forward, he takes one hop back and waits for me to talk some more. Eventually I walk toward him and he flies away. It's become a regular habit between us.

I was worried last week when we had our trees cut down in the front yard that his nest was in one of those trees.







Then a day or so later, I spotted Mr. Robin (and/or his counterpart) in a nest in my neighbor's house near my carport. So, either they had to rebuild their nest or it was there all along and I never noticed it.

I wonder how mad at me Mr. Robin is for cutting down the trees.


The redbuds are also blooming so beautifully! I do so love the Spring trees that bloom. As I drive about town, I observe them everywhere! (and to think my husband only observes cars as he drives about--what do people miss!)




During our walk to the park, we saw a TON of these beautiful yellow flower weeds, also known as Dandalions.




This site and others like it always have me shaking my head. Our city picks up leaves if you rake them to the street before they come around. It appears these neighbors were too late and just left them in the ditch. Does it not bother them that the entire long ditch is filled and clogging up the flow of water, especially with all the recent flooding. Why don't people realize that they are effecting everyone else on the street when they don't allow water to flow freely. Really, Fall was SO long ago, you'd think people would have time to clean up their leaves before mowing in the Spring. It is always so frustrating for us to clean up all the leaves in our yard just to have the neighbor's leaves blow right back into our yard.

Make Him Smile!--a video tutorial

Chris (Chreamps) requested that I share with her how to put a smile from one photo onto another photo. Oh, our teens just think that not smiling is so cool! We can fix that!

You can find the video in the forums here.

The Church of Oprah --What's that got to do with Kool-aid

Someone shared this with me and I felt compelled to post it just so that others can become aware. I am going to refrain from saying anything about it myself in a public avenue. There are also plenty of "related" videos that can be found on the topic on YouTube.

And to think "The Big Give" is......yeah..I'm not saying what I think here.

Quick Tip #2 Finding the Perfect Background Color for your Photos

Here is quick tip #2!

This is covered under some of my other tutorials, but I think it is such a great tip that I wanted to highlight it on its own little video.

Utilizing your knowledge of of the color wheel and the complementary color scheme, you can find the perfect color background for your photos quickly. Watch the video to find out how.




Video made in Photoshop Elements.

Soggy Spring

I don't know where my weekend went? What did I do? I have to think?

Yesterday I guess I got some work done around the site and put up some new challenges. Oh, I did the clipping mask tutorial in video format for Photoshop Elements.

I spent time Saturday with my Little; we went out to eat and saw raptors at a presentation. The Eagle up close was awesome! I spent some time car hunting with hubby as he wants a more economical car than his old truck. Grocery shopping finished off my day and nearly wiped me out.

Today I just wanted to be home. I spent a little more time checking out chatroom software and finally took the plunge and spent a lot of money on one. I'm waiting for people in China to wake up and see the payment and send me the license so I can set it up. I thought I was going to be spending time today working on setup myself, but didn't realize I'd have to wait after making a purchase.

So, instead, I made some yummy white chili and worked on the designer color palette challenge in the forum.

I also worked a short while helping one son with FAFSA and a longer while helping the another son complete his first taxes. I almost forget he had to do his too. Did you know that here in Missouri we have been granted an extension to get our taxes done because we were declared a federal disaster area due to all the ice storms and/or flooding? It was quite a shock and seems like the news has been quiet about it.

By the way, we also had the other half of the tree that fell during the ice storm and another tree cut down last week. I'm behind on my blogging! We now have no more maple trees in the front yard and the view out the kitchen window is hard to get used to. The service cutting the trees down did a good job, but they frustrated us by not communicating well. It's hard to take off work when needed when they don't come with they say they will or leave in the middle of a project because they have forgetten a doctor's appointment. It was, needless to say, very stressful for me.

Can you believe that after we spent nearly $400 on just a new themostat (yeah, we were gipped), it wasn't working? We were getting cold once again and had to have a weekend call to the place (which costs more) to have yet once again another temporary themostat put in. Sigh. They had better not charge us for the service call for something they installed that didn't work right. So, we have to once again miss work on Monday to have another new one installed.

Last week the Bridal's Wreath was blooming. It looks so pretty.

I sure wish all this rain would stop. We've had a crazy amount of rain and storms in recent weeks--more than I ever remember before. First all the ice storms and now all the rain. What's up with our weather? It's a little scary to think about what the cause might be.






Have you found the Soggy Spring color palette challenge yet?

There are a whole bunch of freebies from all the ladies! Feel free to join us in making and sharing or just find some great things for your pages, but please do remember to thank the ladies for their hard work.

I know many of them put many hours into their creations.

You can find the thread here.

PSE Quick Tip - Invert Base Color of Masks

I have decided to start recording some quick tips for Photohop Elements to share with you. This tip is to use Control I to quickly flip the base color of a mask from black to white.

I can think of more possibilities for the use of this? Can you? If so, please share!

Empowered Graphics

I made these graphics some weeks ago and realized I have forgotten to share them on my blog. My son who is in college is on a committee helping to plan a convention for next October and asked me to make some "college cool" graphics for flyers. The theme is empowered and he gave me the Bible verse. These are what I came up with. What do you think?

Template Freebie 39

It has been a while since I've found the time to post a new template challenge. Are you ready?

This one is a little special to me. Do you want to know why? Read more and download in both SQUARE and RECTANGLE in the forums. You must be logged in.

Brushed Metal Video Tutorial in Photoshop Elements

I have a new video tutorial for making brushed metal papers, as well as text and a basic element in Photoshop Elements.

The video and freebies are available for a limited time in the main forum and thereafter will be available only in the Subscriber area. You must be logged in to see them.

I look forward to seeing what you can do with this and what you have to share. If you do not want to try your hand at designing, you may want to check back to the forum later to see if anyone else has shared freebies also.

KISMIF Motto

Some of my readers may not know that I've been an avid Boy Scouter for many years. I believe I started in 1993 and I am still a registered scouter. Many of my hours were spent in leading cub scouts and many more in camping with boy scouts.

The cub scouts have a motto which I realized is very applicable to digital scrapbookers and many other areas of our lives.

Keep it Simple, Make it Fun

The acronym for the motto is KISMIF --go ahead, say it out loud!

I am often commenting on layouts and referring to them as "simple, yet effective." Simple layouts speak volumes and they can be some of the easiest layouts to put together. Simple layouts can be SO artistic.

I said in the forums the other day and thought it made a great quote:

"I don't know if simple is always better, but simple is always right."

Many of us digiscrappers get caught up in making better layouts that will get ooo'd and ahhh'd over. We strive to be better than before or to find something new and unique better than our neighbors. The galleries are full of layouts just screaming for praise!

But sometimes it is important to take a step back and remember what we are really scrapping for. If we get too caught up in the whirlwind of the digi-community, we tend to loose site of the fact that we are really only creating treasures to preserve memories that will last a lifetime.

Yes, there is something that is too hard to put into words about how we feel after we have used digiscrapping as a creative outlet. It is almost like the natural high a runner feels. We sit back and look at our finished layouts with wonder. "Did I really create something so cool?"

It is this natural high we get with this creative outlet that makes us want to create something even better. We get caught up in an upward cyclic whorl of always being better which eventually leads to the stress of not meeting up with our own personal goals.

Step back a moment and reflect on what our first goals in scrapping are. Remember to KISMIF.

Are you having fun?

Installing Actions in Photoshop Elements 6

Apparently 283 people in the last five days have googled to learn how to install actions in Photoshop Elements 6 and arrived at my blog on old posts!

So, I wanted to make sure these searchers are finding the right page for the answers to their needs.

Under Course 2 you will find a written .pdf tutorial for installing plug-ins which covers every version of PSE. It not only covers actions which plug into PSE, but other plug-ins such as layer styles, patterns, brushes, gradients, swatches, shapes, and filters in both Windows XP and Vista.

However, I do not own a Mac, so the paths may be a bit different in Mac, but the concepts should be the same.

The instructions for actions are near the bottom of the tutorial.

Vintage Frames with Dingbats

I have a simple, yet fun technique challenge for you and Tina has offered up as a prize her brand new kit which is going in the stores later today!

The challenge is to make a vintage frame using a dingbat floral font as shown in my layout here. You can watch a video on how to make this frame, along with other tidbits of inspiration in this thread in the forums. You must be logged in.

I made this layout using two other Faith Based kits of Tina's. Aren't the elements awesome? I really had fun making this layout. Do you spy another fun technique on the layout? Hmmm...another challenge in the making!



Here is Tina's new kit which will be a prize for one winner by random drawing. It is part of her Faith Based series called Charity.

Freebie Arrow

I am trying to find time to work on my next kit with a driving theme. I thought I would share a piece of the upcoming kit with you.

Click to download.

Grab Bags

Grab bags seem to be really popular. I do not understand why myself. I have never purchased one. Maybe if I did I would see why they are liked so much. Maybe there are really really good deals in grab bags. It just seems like too much of a gamble for me. I like to know what I'm getting.

For me personally, I do not use many flowery girly pink stuff with ribbons and bows that are the focus of so many kits. I have four men as my subject matter in my layouts. The chances of me getting things I would never use are high. Maybe they should have grab bags divided into male and female themed bags? I might be more opt to take my chances.

I do watch several Yahoo advertising groups and do enjoy seeing new kit previews, but all these ads with just a photo of a bag to advertise grab bags is starting to get to me. I'm tired of deleting them. So, last night I set up a filter so that anything with the word "grab bag" would go straight to my trash can. Yep, look at that--first thing this morning I had 38 e-mails in my deleted items which I didn't need to go through and manually delete.

Ahhhh---I think I'm happier now.