Why It Works | Warping Shadows

Welcome to another edition of Why it Works, where we share and highlight a page from an awesome scrapper in our gallery that utilizes a really cool technique, a design trick, a photography tip, journaling ideas or any number of other things to get you scrapping outside your comfort zone. We hope to share and inspire you to try something new, revisit an old technique you may have forgotten about, or maybe just approach that blank canvas in a new way. So, here are some of the things you can do to be involved in this thread:

1. Ohhh and Ahhh over the awesome layout or project that has been highlighted and head over to the gallery and show the scrapper some love.
2. Learn something new from the tip or tutorial. It's all about becoming better at our craft!
3. Try the technique yourself and post it in this thread for us to see.
4. Show off other pages from the gallery that use the technique as well. Be sure to link them so we can give them the love they deserve!
5. Ask questions about the technique that you may have or tell us how you may do it differently.
There are many ways to do these things and this thread is all about the learning!

*note: this is not to be a critique of the page/project in any way, it's all about learning to emulate the awesome technique highlighted. Any negative comments about the highlighted page will be deleted.*
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Happy Easter and welcome to a new edition of Why It Works!!

One thing that really catches my eye in the gallery is a layout with great shadow work. This layout by @carrie1977 is one I keep going back to over and over. I love the way the papers in the corner look like they are popping off the page and how the journaling piece is just perfectly lifting in the corner. The added dimension the shadows give the clouds is just fantastic.



When I'm working on a layout, I spend more time on shadows than anything else. There are so many tutorials out there on how to achieve the perfect shadows and I tend to use different methods at different times. Most often, I use the warp tool or the smudge tool. There's so much good information here at The Pad, I thought I would just share a few links that are really useful for practicing shadows (and big thanks to Anne for the great total list of tutorials HERE):

Tutorial - Shadowing Wave
How to get curled photo shadows in PSE!
How to Rock Your Shadows!
Curling shadow - Translation into GIMP
Realistic Shadow Warp tool
I also found great tutorials on One Little Bird's Blog - Shadow Files - The Basics, and on Sahlin Studio's Blog - Tutorial | How-To Create Realistic Shadows.

One of our members @cfile had a really great post on this few months ago with some wonderful information for PSE users and you can find it HERE.

I would love to know if you have any other tips or tricks for achieving amazing shadows or if you've seen any rockin' shadows in the gallery and want to know how they're done. Also, please feel free to share any of your layouts trying out this technique!

 

Those are fantastic!! Absolutely gorgeous examples!!

 

Oh, Cheryl @gonewiththewind, you rock!! I knew I remembered you having something but I couldn't put my finger on it!!