Maisy's CK Blog

I created a new layout today, a hybrid one, something I don't do much, at least from this angle. I started with the computer to make something and found some things on my old desktop computer that I'd saved several years ago. One was a tutorial on Old Linen Tea Stained paper in PS from scrapartists.com.

I used the final paper from that tutorial as the background. I made the journaling lines using a brush to make a segment, then copied and spaced the new one differently, merged them, copy, spaced, merged, blah, blah, until it was how I liked it.

The image is a PSE brush I made in February after I had taken many pictures of the Robins and Cedar Waxwings feasting in our tree behind the house. I drew (in PSE 8) around a robin that was "looking at the camera" in the photo, using a 1px pencil (to give me the image to select easily since the background was so misty and difficult to discern from the robin for PSE.) I then selected the image and cut it from the photo and saved it as an image, I then, I think, used and FX effect on it, black glass probably (my memory is a bit murky about this one, I'll have to see if I have the .psd of it or not) then I used THAT to define my brush and define my pattern in PSE.

For this layout, using the brush I set the size of the brush to the highest I could and one touch (or click) in the middle of the paper on it's own layer with black 'overlay' as the settings.

The Title "In the Winter - American Robins" is Century Gothic (OT font).

The paragraph under the Robin image is Antique (TT font)

I printed this out using PSE 8 with my HP Web Premium All In One printer. I had some old (I think HP) matte photo paper that I used for this layout. I trimmed the sides off to make it 8.5x8.5.

This is what it looked like:

:

Once I had it like that, I looked at it, trying to decide what else it needed. Not coming up with anything I hand wrote my journaling about Robins on the printed lines. Then I decided to put two dark metal brads at the top. I liked that. Then I rummaged around for something else, eventually settling on the blue green paper flower and a greenish button for the middle. I put it on the left side above the journaling.

Then I thought I needed something at the top with the brads afterall. So I found a scrap of vellum and after considering what to do, used a stamp I'd used recently on something else, and stamped black dye ink, dried it (to make sure it was dry) with my heat gun, then flipped it over and punched holes in it to match where the brads were, took the brads out, put the vellum print side down and put the brads through to secure it all. I trimmed the top, which was sticking over some, to be even, then didn't like how obscured the title was, so folded part of it up, didn't like that, then just funky cut with my big scissors with little thought to what I was doing ... and ended up really liking it.

I scanned the finished product (which was nice since it fits on my scanner! My scanner is an all-in-one so it's not easy to scan 12x12, takes 4 passes just to get "everything".) Uploaded to My Gallery, all done. :)