Design House Digital International Scrapbooking Day Blog Hop!!!!

Hi!  Happy International Scrapbooking Day!  And thanks for stopping by my little corner of the World Wide Web.  I hope you are enjoying this really fun blog hop!  You should have come here by way of Mary Rogers’ Blog.  If you have gotten lost somewhere along the way, you can find the complete blog hop list from start to finish on the DHD Blog.

Now, for those of you that have come here looking for the super delicious FREE kit, Retrospect,

you are probably anxious to get the secret letter.  What will you do with this letter, you ask?  Well, first you need to add the kit to your cart, then, after you’ve collected all 26 letters, put them together, in order, all uppercase, in the coupon code box and it will discount the kit to $0.00.  How awesome is that?!

In addition, we are also giving away a FREE Digital Photo Frame to anyone who completes ONE layout that meets ALL of the challenges we set.  My challenge is an easy one:

Add text to your photo.

This can be done by way of text or wordart, I just want to see some letters on your photo.

In line with this challenge, I have prepared a quick tutorial on how to make stamps look more realistic on your digital pages when you are stamping over the edge of a photo or paper.

In paper scrapping, when you do this, it is usually NOT seamless.  There is usually an offset in the stamped image.  That is the look we are going to recreate.

Here’s my image with the stamped just placed on top of the photo.

It looks fine.  But it can look better.  Here’s how:

Step One:  In the Layers Palette, highlight your stamp layer by clicking on it.

Step Two:  Ctrl + Click (Mac:  Cmd + Click) on your photo/paper layer in the Layers Palette.  You should get marching ants around your photo/paper.

Step Three:  Select the inverse.  Ctrl + Shift + I (Mac:  Cmd + Shift + I).

Step Four:  Making sure your stamp layer is still highlighted in your layers palette, duplicate your stamp.  Ctrl + J (Mac:  Cmd +J) or Layer>Duplicate Layer.

Once you duplicate the layer, your marching ants will disappear and you will have a new layer which will be a copy of the portion of the stamp that was OFF of the photo/paper layer.

Step Five:  Repeat Steps Two and Three, selecting the photo/paper layer in the layers palette (Ctrl/Cmd + Click) and then selecting the inverse (Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + I).

Step Six:  Highlight the original stamp layer by clicking on it in the Layers Palette (NOT Ctrl + Click) and this time hit Delete.

Now your stamp will be in two parts:  one portion that is on the photo/paper and one portion that is off the photo/paper layer.

Step Seven:  Select the Move tool (V).  Click on the stamp layer that is off the paper and nudge it away from the photo/paper layer using the arrow keys on your keyboard.  In my case I nudged it slightly to the right and down.  You want to create a slight offset between the portion of the stamp that is on the photo/paper layer and the portion that is on the background layer.

Here’s my finished stamp:

And there you have it.  A more realistic stamp!

Now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for.  This tutorial was brought to you by the letter:

There you have it.  Now hop on over to Audrey Neal’s Blog for some more digi fun!

Oh, and before you go, leave me a comment and you’ll be entered into a random drawing for a $10 gift certificate to Design House Digital!  Woo Hoo!

Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend!