Whew! We had a busy day!  We started our morning with a trip to Costco and a quick lunch (Nadya and I both love their pizza) and then we met Carmen – a fellow crafter who found me through my blog.  We had a nice visit with her before heading over to say Hi to the folks at Creative Stamp Impressions.  They weren’t there, but I found some yummy black and orange glitter glue that will be fabulous on my remaining Halloween projects and a few Fall/Autumn features too.  Then we stopped at The Stamp Act as Polly was holding some Flower Soft colors for me.  Once we were home, it was time unload the car, start laundry, and put Nadya’s carseat back together – it had a little Dr. Pepper situation last night that required the entire liner to be stripped off and washed and the base to be hosed off!  Tomorrow we’re going to the Raptor Air show at the AFB.

Speaking of busy, Kristine has a fabulous WordArt freebie on her blog – it coordinates with her Nightfall kit (also a past freebie). Then, the girls over at Digiscrap Vault are having a Saturday Sale – and as you know ALL of the products at the Vault are CU friendly and Quality Checked!

Ok – have a fabulous day – I’m off to spend time with my family.

In case you didn’t know – today is Thursday – which means it’s time for a new project featuring some of the fun stamps from Lindsay’s Stamp Stuff. Lindsay has been really busy this week – she’s released 2 new stamp sets and another Halloween freebie for you!  For those of you getting a jump start on your Holiday party planning, Lindsay has a new set of Christmas Cupcake Wrappers (with included Toppers) – and they are so cute!

As if this fabulous set wasn’t enough, she surprised us with her new All Around Phrases stamp set (I used a couple of the stamps in this set for the Photoshop Elements tutorial yesterday).  So, what did I do this week? Well, started out warping a couple of the Cupcake Wrappers into card fronts, but just wasn’t feeling quite Christmas-y yet, so I opted to create a couple of Halloween themed cards using Lindsay’s Creepy Crow set.  For my projects, I had planned on doing a card set and matching box, but time and my toddler had other plans for me.  The two cards I have for you today double as challenge entries for the Papertake Weekly and Inspirational Card Sketches challenges.

For my Papertake Weekly Challenge card, I printed the Crow Graveyard Scene on Multipurpose photo paper, sprinkled it with Desert Night Embossing Powder by Stamp A Mania (which is produced locally – I LOVE IT) and heat embossed (you have to be really careful when embossing photo paper or vellums as it is very easy to melt the coating or burn the paper – I typically apply the heat to the back of my paper when using these media types – it takes forever, but I don’t usually catch things on fire!).  Then I trimmed the image with my scissors and craft knife.  The card base is textured black CS from Bazzill.  The primary mat is also from Bazzill – a deep purple that seemed to fit so well with the Halloween theme.  The moon is die cut from glitter CS (DCWV glitter  mat stack).  I cut the circle (4.25”) with one of my old wooden Accucut Slimline dies (I’m so bummed they don’t sell them any more) and then cut it in half to create the moon.  The “hillside” is cut from dark grey mulberry paper that I had hiding in my stash.  I printed the sentiment on HP 4×6 photopaper thinking I would emboss it too – NOPE – that stuff came out of the printer dry! Fabulous for printing photos, not so much if you want to emboss! Since I couldn’t emboss easily, I opted for a bit of clear glue and Black Hole ultra fine glitter from The Art Institute around the edges.  The “ribbon” is scrap from cutting out the moon. 

My 2nd card is for this week’s Inspirational Card Sketches challenge.  I used the Crow ATC from Lindsay’s set printed on Multipurpose photopaper and embossed with my fabulous Desert Night powder.  I colored the moon and sky with my Copics – aiming for a stained glass type effect.  I matted the ATC on a scrap of purple textured Bazzill CS and then colored the edges with a Gelly Roll glitter pen.  The card base is the other half of my 12×12 Bazzill black CS.  I had some of the spider web DP leftover from one of my other cards, so I used it as my primary card mat.  I cut the curve from a piece of Black Mulberry paper and then edged the paper with clear glue and this fabulous Orange Twinkle embossing powder (Judikins) that I picked up at Creative Stamp Impressions (my local stamp store). I cut the flowers from black and grey mulberry papers using my Sizzix Daisies #2die. I added the orange button as the center and  covered it with the same embossing powder for added sparkle.

Now that you’re in the Halloween “spirit” – make sure to check Lindsay’s blog – you never know when she’ll have a surprise for you and I know she posted this awesome Halloween freebie during the week!

Stop by the other DT blogs and see what sort of inspiration they have for you!  And, while we’re talking about DT members, Lindsay’s DT call is open until November 7 – don’t miss your chance to apply!

Have a fabulous Thursday! 

You all know Lindsay did a fabulous tutorial on recoloring digital stamps using Paintshop Pro – so she asked her DT to come up with something similar using Photoshop Elements.  In this case, I’m using PSE 6.0 and working with Adjustment Layers.  I’ll do Gradients and Fills in another tut.

To get started I’ve opened a PNG file in PSE 6.0 – this is the Double Dot Border from Lindsay’s new All Around Phrases Digital Stamp Set.

We’re going to add an adjustment layer to change the color of the dots:

  On your layers palette, select the two-tone circle to Create Adjustment Layer. The select Hue/Saturation from the Drop Down Menu. A new screen will pop-up that looks like this – check the box next to Colorize: I played with the sliders until I found a color I liked – my numbers look like this (yours will vary depending on the color you want.):

This is what my colorized frame looks like now:

I wanted to include a sentiment inside the frame, so I opened the It’s Your Day png file, also from Lindsay’s new All Around Phrases Digital Stamp Set, and drug it onto my existing frame.  I resized it using the the little boxes in the corners (by dragging on the corners, I was able to scale the image and keep the proportions the same). I wanted to color the sentiment too, so I linked the existing Hue/Saturation layer to the Double Dot border by selecting the Hue/Saturation Layer. positioning my cursor on the little line between the Hue/Saturation Layer and the Frame, and ALT+Clicking on it.  This creates a link/mask so that this Hue/Saturation is only applied to the layer below it (in this case, the Double Dot border). You can tell the layer is linked by the little curved arrow that appears on the Layers Palette.

I created a new Hue/Saturation Layer above the Sentiment, using the same method as above – playing with the sliders until I found a color I liked.  Note, pay attention to the Sentiment color only as we’ll link the layers again so that the Double Dot border color isn’t changed.  This is what my stamps look like before I link the layers.

Following the same process (Alt+Click), I linked the 2nd Hue/Saturation layer to my Sentiment layer and viola – a two-color stamp.

Now that I’m done “coloring”, I want to merge my layers.  To do this, right click on one of your layers and select Merge Visible – this will combine all of the visible layers while leaving your background transparent. Then, because I want to use one of my circle punches to cut out my sentiment, I am going to resize the entire image.  To do this, go the top of your screen to the Image tab – select Resize then Image Size.

A new pop-up menu will appear.  Since I know my punch is 1.75 inches, I adjusted my sizes accordingly. By checking the Resample Image box, I am able to adjust the the Height and Width without increasing or decreasing the Resolution. I didn’t check the Scale Styles box because I didn’t use any layer styles.

Here’s my final product – ready to print, cut and add to a card!

I hope this little tutorial was helpful for you – if you have any questions, leave me a comment and I’ll try to answer them for you.

A little birdie also told me that Lindsay is having a DT call – so if you LOVE her stamps and want to be part of a fun and supportive creative team – check out this post for all of the details! Hurry though – the deadline is November 7th!

Have a great day!