Saturday 31 October 2009

Thank you soooo much! I love my CT!

My CT prepared a nice surprise for me! They made brag book pages with my new kit "A Tale Of Magic and Monsters"! The kit is currently on sale with all the other halloween kits at SAS, so don't forget to pick it up!

heck out these fantastic pages my CT made!

You can get the pages here:

http://ayu-dark-dream.net/AyusScrapping/2009/10/a-tales-of-magic-and-monsters-brag-book-train/ AyuRavenwing

http://networkedblogs.com/p16296713 Kimberkatt Scraps

http://www.violethare.blogspot.com/ Violet hare

Thank you so much! MWAH!




Tuesday 27 October 2009

New kit in store, tutorial for virtual pumpkin carving, a freebie... grab a snack, it's a long post!

Hello there,

I got tons of news for you! My new kit has hit the store - its my Halloween kit and it's called "A tale of Magic and Monsters" Its has been quality checked at Stone Accent Studios and you can get it there for 25% off at the moment. It is at scrapbird already - THAT was quick! Thank you, Marzena!

You can get it here --> "A Tale of Magic and monsters" hurry! it goes back to regular price after halloween!
Its a fun kit, full of not-so-scary doodlemonsters, in classical halloween colors.

The SAS Halloween Bash is ON! You can still take part in almost everything - pumpkin decorating, progressive scrap and an avatar dress up contest! I can't believe that I've never done a progressive scrap before! This is soooo much fun - You get a few pieces to scrap with every day and you can't go back to change anything!

You get a cool pumpkin template from Kimberkatt that you can dress up. I had so much fun with the virtual pumpkin carving that I decided to share the fun and provide you with a tutorial. If you want to carve a pumpkin, feel free to download this one. Just click the picture to be taken to the full size version, right click and choose "save picture as..."

I also use some of bsilva's fantastic brushes - you can use anything you want, though :-) you can always click on the pictures to view the full size picture if you need it.

So, here it is:

Virtual Pumpkin Carving 101 in photoshop

Step one: Preparing the pumpkin

Open your pumpkin in photoshop - I'm sure it will work VERY similar if you use a different program :-)




On your "Layers" tab, choose "duplicate Layer". Name it anything you want to, it doesn't matter at all :-)





Make the lower of the layers invisible by clicking the little eye and make a new layer on top of the two lpumpkin layers.







Step two: the pattern

Draw the pattern you want to cut out of your pumpkin on the new layer. anything you color in now will be "cut" from your pumpkin later. Go wild! But try to stay away from designs that are too fiddly, they are going to give you a hard time later :-)

Here are some examples:

<-- Bats, fairly easy, I'm going to stick with this design for the tutorial.






Step three: Carving the Pumpkin

ctrl + Click the layer you just drew on in your layers palette. You should see "marching ants" around your design to show that it has been selected.




select the VISIBLE pumpkin layer and press delete on your keyboard. This will delete the selcted part from your pumpkin. Make the "drawing"- layer invisible (click the little eye) to view your pumpkin.




If you are happy with your result, copy the layer again







Step four: Putting things into perspective

Click the "image... " tab, go to "Adjustments" and select "Hue/Saturation"




use the "saturation" and "Lightness" sliders to chnge the pumpkins color until it looks like a pumpkin in the dark,




Move the lower Pumpkin a little bit up and to one side to give the whole thing the feel of a little bit of perspective. Use the polygonal lasso tool to get rid of the parts that are peeking out uinder the top pumpkin.




Use "Hue/Saturation" to lighten the lower pumpkin a bit.





Now you have a couple of places where you get "holes" like this. Use a brush to make it look like this. If your drawing is frilly, thats a lot of work...






Step five: Illuminating the pumpkin

turn on the lowest pumpkin level again. double clck its thumbnail in the layers palette and select "color overlay" Turn the color to a bright yellow








turn your drawing layer back on and double click it.







Reduce the "fill opacity" to zero




And add an "outer glow". Play around until you like the effect, this are the settings that worked for me :-)




You're done! congrats! My finished pumpkin looks like this - I would love to see the pumpkins you come up with!

So, you have been really patient if you made it to this point! I am new on facebook, but I will have a "fan" page soon - meanwhile, if I could know you from any forum or anywhere else, feel free to add me as a friend or join the SAS group there to get the newest news about my designs - and maybe a freebie once in a while :-)

My to-do list is getting shorter at the moment, not longer - a very good thing! I might actually find time to promote my new kit! Don't foregt to pick it up!

And I promised a freebie, right?

Here are the pumpkins I made for this tutorial:

You can pick them up here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?i0w4uzkmhze





Sunday 25 October 2009

Some LO and an awesome hybrid project!

Oh wow! My creative team has been working with my new kit "Finally Fall" and turned out some absolutely stunning stuff!

You can buy this kit at Scrapbird and Stone Accent Studios! Its full of warm colors for all kinds of fall Layouts!

Nani scrapped her Thanksgiving Pictures with my kit - Yumm! I want some of that cheese now! I'm hungry!

This one is by Ayu Ravenwing. Its such a beautiful LO and I absolutely adore that picture! She gets to use a friends photos who is a photographer - isn't she LUCKY!?


Ayu made a sweet little keychain bragbook for you.

Here are the instructions (they are in german, I'll translate them soo, promise)
http://ayu-dark-dream.net/AyusScrapping/2009/10/keyring-pocket-album-information-anleitung/

The cover:
http://ayu-dark-dream.net/AyusScrapping/2009/10/keyring-pocket-album-cover-1/

and here are the first two pages:
http://ayu-dark-dream.net/AyusScrapping/2009/10/keyring-pocket-album-seite-1/
http://ayu-dark-dream.net/AyusScrapping/2009/10/keyring-pocket-album-seite-2/

I'm so lucky with this amazing teamPlease go and leave them some love!

Friday 23 October 2009

I have a creative team! WOOOOOHOOOOO!


Hey everyone,
I have a fantastic Creative team! These girls have agreed to create for me, and you can find some LOs with my kits on teir blogs already. I'll post more as soon as I have news - my new kit is going to hit the stores soon...

http://chroniclesofnani.blogspot.com/ <-- Nani
http://www.violethare.blogspot.com/ <-- Violethare
http://kimberkattscraps.wordpress.com/ <-- Kimberkatt
http://ayu-dark-dream.net/AyusScrapping/ <--Ayu_Ravenwing




Thursday 15 October 2009

Free Rice!

Hey there,

if you know me, you know that I'm a total sucker for free browser games, dress up dolls and avatar dress up communities like gaiaonline - anything that might be considered a total waste of time, you will probably find me doing it...

But this one is different! Free Rice gives rice to the hungry - 10 grains per click on their website. paod for by advertisement.

So, why should you go there and click? Not only do you get to donate rice, you will also learn something! You can pick what you want to do. Here is the full list:

ART
Famous Paintings

CHEMISTRY
Chemical Symbols (Basic)
Chemical Symbols (Full List)

ENGLISH
English Grammar
English Vocabulary

GEOGRAPHY
Identify Countries on the Map
World Capitals

LANGUAGE LEARNING
French
German

Italian

Spanish

MATH
Basic Math (Pre-Algebra)
Multiplication Table

You will get a multiple choice quiz, and every right answer gets some rice donated. I love playing english vocabulary and chemical symbols, I make myself take a break every 1,000 grains of rice :-D And btw - this is NOT a sponsored post! I'm just really excited about this site!


Friday 9 October 2009

First Kit in my new store and a Freebie for you!

Hello there,

my new kit has finally hit the stores! Its my first kit in my new store and I'm very happy with the way it looks! It took some time - but now it's done, uploaded and even quality checked! Take a look - it's a very warm kit with felt elements and doodles. And here are the elements:

...and the paper.

And it is currently on SALE! Normal Price is $4.50, but at Stone Accent Studios you can get it for 3.38, at minus 25%! Check it out HERE!

And some more good news! I have a CT now (or rather, one creative Teammate :-D)! Nani has joined me! And she already has a LO with this Kit - and those pictures work so well with it!

And here is one I did with the kit - We very recently spent a weekend at a farm with some friends and their kids and I have a ton of pictures to scrap...
Really, spending time on a farm was so good for all of us! The kids played with and fed the animals, they where running wild! We grown-ups had a chance to just relax on the grass and play with the babies...

I had a qouple of questions/requests concerning "A Tale of kmights and Princesses". I have taken the freebie down, it will come to the stores in a little while. I know that there are some people who started downloading the kit and didn't get to finish or had trouble with one of the downloads...
I'm very sorry if that happened to you! Please leave me a comment here on my blog (or send me a PM at SAS) and provide me with your e-mail adress and the downloads you didn't get. This is NOT a way to get the complete kit, simply a way to get the parts you didn't get to dl for some reason. I'd love to see some LOs with any of my kits, send me some, please? Just leave me a comment with a link to your LO in a gallery, OK?

Anyway, after reading that much you deserve a little something! Here is your freebie for today!

It's a set of four Quickpages, I hope you'll enjoy them! They will be up for ONE WEEK ONLY! After that, I will remove the DL link, sorry.

get it here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?jeizqzzzwzb

I will be looking for a Creative team - if you are interested, PM me on SAS, please!


Saturday 3 October 2009

Thank you!

I know I could never have made it to the final of the SASy contest without all of you who read my blog and voted for me. So we decided to give you all a little "Thank you" Freebie - Maurine and Brenda's Kits are on their blogs already (I'm late, I'm sorry!)

You can pick up my part of the collab here: http://www.mediafire.com/?zmmoxmik1n2

Maurine Stettler's Blog: http://letmescrapbook.blogspot.com/

CuddleBeez Scraps: http://cuddlebeezscraps.blogspot.com/

There is no kit in the store yet, but that will change soon, I'm almost done with my first full kit, called "Finally Fall"


Thursday 1 October 2009

I won, I won, I won!!!!

Thank you so much for your votes, I won the SASy Lady contest! I am one of three girls that get to be on the fantastic SAS designer team! Congratulations to Maurine and CuddleBeez who are up there with me, please go visit their blogs and leave them some comments, too!