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.This what Amanda says about her style: "I love templates and I love clean lines. I also feel that my pages are just not complete without a little paint or brush work. I love working with bulky items like fabric flowers and staples etc…. that I never could make work in my paper scrapping days." Take a closer look at some of her beautiful layouts: Be sure … [Read more...]
Hop To It
Hello! It's Polly Melissa here reminding you that TLP has a fantastic seasonal section in the store. And guess what's in season right now?Easter!You can find all the Easter scrappy goodness right here. There are cute bunnies and baskets, adorable eggs, journal cards, templates along with some more traditional He Is Risen elements as well. Don't forget you can find the spring scrappy fun in this section too!I did a quick search in the gallery and found good inspiration. Take a look!MarnelLynette BderbyChigirlKeela P.S. Yesterday's brand new goodies are amazing - find them here . . . on sale right now! … [Read more...]
Behind the Design: Gina Miller Designs
Hi all! Polly Jewelle here with another edition of Behind the Design. With a little bit of pleading and maybe a few bribes we got the designers here at the LilyPad to agree to show off their design spaces at home. They also agreed to answer a few questions about their design space that will allow us to get to know them better. This month we are going behind the designs ofGina MillerMac or PC? 27” fully loaded iMac! :)Coffee or tea (or both/neither)? BOTH! I start my day with coffee (mostly black, just a little milk), and eventually finish with green tea.Guilty pleasure snack while creating/scrapping? Almonds… chocolate… and I am oddly addicted to olive tapenade hummus with cucumbers.Favorite music to listen to? I have my Billy Joel playlist going right now. :) Or I just rotate through my playlists which include the widest … [Read more...]
What is the best type of camera for YOU?
Awhile back Julie (Javamonster) and I were talking about cameras and that conversation reminded me that not all scrapbookers are photographers. Most of my scrapping buddies are scrapers-turned photographers – returned scrapbookers, but there are tons of scrappers out there using all types of cameras, so I thought I would write a post about cameras. I’ll preface this with the fact that currently, I mostly use a DSLR. I don't have a P&S or mirroless camera, but I do use my cell phone for random snapshots that I use for my Project Life pages. Point and Shoot (P&S) vs Digital Single-Lens Reflex (DSLR) vs 3rd generation (mirrorless) camerasWhat is the difference and what are the pros and cons for each?A P&S is typically smaller and lighter, with limited features. These can be both pros and cons. A small, lightweight camera is great for carrying around with you to … [Read more...]
Trend Watch – Pastels
When you hear the word pastel, most people think pale in color. I think of Easter bonnets, and eggs of different hues! The Trend Watch this go round is Pastels and I think you will love all the goodies on sale with Pastels. There is a gambit of ways to scrap using the pastel, here is one by LilisMother that is beyond wow: Karen takes the excitement of Easter and takes the pastels to a deeper and vibrant hue: Look at the fun background pastels on Franni's page!! I love it, so soft, yet bold!I want to show one more because it is just full of color and still falls in the pastel range of sale items and fun!! It is one by christineirion and I always love her ability to tell a story on her page too: I hope these pages and the awesome sale of Pastels for this Trend Watch inspire you. Come and join more fun in the forums, for a Trend Watch challenge. There is a chance … [Read more...]
Gimmee Space
Greetings Happy Scrappers!Polly Liana here, with a quick word about cropping and space in photography. If you've read up at all on composition of an image, you've likely heard of the Rule of Thirds. It's the classic idea that, when composing an image, you should imagine the space cut horizontally and vertically into nine spaces. You should aim to place something interesting in the intersecting areas of the lines. This creates a nice visual balance in the image without placing the focal point right in the center. However, there is certainly more to composition and cropping than just the Rule of Thirds and in this post I'll name a few other things to consider. Here's an image I did of my daughter's cereal. The bowl was a perfect shape to be centered and filling up the entire image.While there are lots of lovely photos with centered images, there is also a lot to be said … [Read more...]
Easter Egg Hunt – 24 hours!
Last month, I had the priveledge of playing a HUNT for GOLD game with the folks at the Lily Pad! It was a huge success! The only thing that could make it better is to have more people play along! We had 22 last month! We all live in different countries and that means time zones. In order for everyone to play, The Easter Egg Hunt will go for 24 hours. The Easter Egg Hunt begins in the chat room April 15th at 9pm EDT/6pm PDT. It will also be semi-simulcasted (which means kind of at the same time) in the forums and on the Lily Pad facebook page. You will want to LIKE the Lily Pad Facebook page, and change notifications to follow! That way you won't miss a thing! I know you are probably going, wait, I will be sleeping, working, studying, cooking, driving, cutting my toenails at that time, I can't play. Wait...no worries...when you wake up or become available...go quickly to … [Read more...]
TLP Mobile Highlights
I'm back with another set of fabulous shares on social media. Let's get right to them shall we :)First up a wonderful winter themed project life spread from neeceebee:And to balance the winter, how about this stunning beachy project life layout from donnameuli:Next up a beautiful page from yzerbear19:Another great layout share from chiara_kyky:Some amazing shadow work from jacobm74:One more (or two!) from cdnmelanie:And lastly some hybrid inspiration! First from cwpicket:And an amazing hybrid layout from katechris05:Until next time, keep sharing and hashtagging! … [Read more...]
Down & Dirty Masks (drawn by hand)
Masks are cool. Once you figure out "Control-G" on PSE (and the clipping function on PS), it's The World is Your Oyster! Photos, papers, all kinds of digital stuff can be clipped to them. You can use them as an element unto themselves as backgrounds to images.In this case, I figured I'd draw and scribble a mask of my own on paper, and then digitize it.This is the shape I scribbled:A simple triangle shaded in with a pencil. It's not incredibly elegant, but it does have some terrific texture! You can go ahead and grab this if you want and do your own thing with it. :-)The trick is to increase the contrast between your scribble and the paper so that when you magic wand and delete the white paper background (with a transparent layer under it) the edges will come out pretty clean. Or as clean as you want it. And save as a .PNG file to keep that new transparency.Here's an … [Read more...]
Quick Tip: Sharpen for Web
So, I was digi scrapping for years before I found this little trick. And it seriously changed my life. OK, maybe that's a teeny exaggeration but it did make me happy. My pages were not the "blurry" ones in the forum or gallery any more. Yay, me. I know there are many ways to sharpen your images in preparation for web view, including some actions that can be used, but this is what I do. It adds 2 steps to my saving process and is well worth it to me. I've decided to show this little tip to you with video tutorials using both PSE11 and PS CC, so bear with me if I say "um" 100 times. For Photoshop Elements: [youtube=http://youtu.be/TznPA9iDzNg] For Photoshop Creative Cloud:[youtube=http://youtu.be/IKxJ8jRKfMY] Hope you learned a new trick and I'd love to hear how you are doing this as well. Leave me a comment! … [Read more...]