Happy Spring, Lilypad Peeps!  I sure do hope it’s getting warm in your neck of the woods these days.  The sun is shinin’ and the birds are chirpin’ around here.  It is lovely!  There were a couple of questions posted in the forums for me this month, so I asked for a little help (again) and my Pollys came through (again).

1.  I tend to forget to use filters in PS. What is your favorite filter and how do you use it? (sandy)

This answer from the lovely Polly Farrah tickled me.  She says “I use the liquify tool a lot to take a few pounds off my fat *ss….does that count?”  My, oh my, dearest Farrah… I’m blushing.  (But totally gonna try that trick, hehe)

Peppermint uses this trick as well… “I use the liquify tool to make my arms look thinner. I’ve also been known to give myself a breast reduction with it depending on what I’m wearing. I love the liquify tool.”  Again… I’m TOTALLY trying this :).

“The puppet warp works well too, especially for the upper body.”

There are a couple of tutorials in the Learning Pad that use filters… that section of the forum is new and growing!

Also, there are a TON of super fun filters you can use just to spice up photos.  I love Radlab but it is an extra PS/PS/LR plug-in that is a bit pricey.  There are, of course, others out there as well and your program has more included in it than you could ever use.

Here are a couple of filter tutorials and suggestions from around the web that may help.

Tutorial9 | Echo Enduring | My Janee | Photo for Beginners

And for PSE:

Digital Photography School | Adobe

Hope that helps to get you started learning a bit more about these fabulous tools.

2. What are some tips you can share for shadowing stitches and nearly-flat items? (Danielle) and along these same lines… And washi tape? It always looks like it’s floating when I try to shadow it. But it looks too flat without anything. (bestcee)

Anne says “I use Gaussian blur for shadows, and the distort> polar coordinates to take a line of clusters or ivy or ribbon and make into a circle…”

Rachel says “For shadowing washi tape and stitches – i start with Peppermints styles. Make sure the angle of the shadow is ~90 degrees and play with the opacity. I also adjust the distance if it looks like they are floating.”

Sahlin Studios has some shadows as well…

And so does Karah…

Dalis adds “Keep the shadow small and tight and not too dark.  Change your shadow color to be close to the color of your stitches but darker.”

And for washi tape in particular, many Pollys and Designers alike suggested these two awesome tutorials.

Peppermint | Lynne-Marie

So, lovelies, I hope these little tips help a bit.  Until next time, keep on scrappin’

Polly

Our Polly Picks this week come from the talented scrapper, Amanda, better known as Gracielou. She has a very distictive style that maintains clean lines but also has loads of wonderfully detailed embellishments. She definitely has a knack for making a template her own. If you’re interested in learning more about how to take a template and better adapt it to your style, spend some time in Gracielou’s gallery. Her use of brushes, labels and paint elevate the templates she utilizes to make the pages undeniably hers.