Sparky’s 24 Days of Christmas – Day 2

Keep the Christmas Spirit

So remember while December
Brings the only Christmas Day
In the year let there be Christmas
In the things you do and say
Wouldn’t life be more worth living
Wouldn’t dreams be coming true
If we kept the Christmas spirit
All the whole year through

~Author Unknown

ASD_ChristmasMemoriesSample

As promised yesterday, you can now download the Christmas Memories Elements. I think that – out of all the things I created this Holiday Season – this is my favourite kit πŸ™‚ Happy Scrapping!

Download Christmas Memories Elements 4.6MB

Christmas Freebies!

Today the fourth annual Worldwide Christmas Scrapbooking Freebies Blogtrain starts again! Many designers submitted their previews and when you visit the WWCSF Blog, you’ll find a list and you can visit them all!

Here’s my contribution

ASD_ChristmasMemoriesSample

This is also the start of ‘Sparky’s 24 Days of Christmas’. Each day in December, until Christmas, you’ll find a freebie on my Blog, so bookmark the page and make sure to come back each day for a Christmas gift from me to you πŸ™‚ And please pass the message on to anyone who loves freebies!

Download Christmas Memories Papers 12.7 MB – Come back tomorrow for the elements!

(Huge file, I hope Box.com doesn’t shut me off after today. If you have any trouble downloading the zipfile, or find that the link is blocked for the rest of the month, please leave a comment and I’ll upload the freebie to another place!)

Of course you’re more than welcome to leave a comment if you did manage to download the graphics and like them. Comments are food for the soul πŸ™‚

Snowflake Alphabet Tutorial

One of the most fun things to do in PSP is colouring Alphabets and Dingbats. I already have a tutorial about that HERE, but when I found this cute snowflake font, I wanted to do something with it, so here it is πŸ™‚ It’s actually two fonts in one: lower case: snowflakes, upper case: snowmen

snowflake font

First: download the Snowflake font at fontspace

To see the details in this tutorial, click on the images, and use your back button to come back here πŸ™‚

Open a new file, go large, that’ll give you some space to work with.

Pick a background colour and make sure your foreground colour is turned off

Select the font in a large size – I think I used 300 points for this one

Type the letter a (lower case)

After I typed the letter, I noticed it needed a clean up. There were lines where I didn’t want them and the lines of the snowflake weren’t completely closed, so I couldn’t select the inside of the snowflake.

Look at this example

cleanedup

After the clean up: select the inside of the snowflake to check if there are any stray pixels left. In my case there were some, so I had to delete those first.

check

These are the settings I used for the eraser, but whatever works for you is fine!
(My PSP is in Dutch, but you’ll figure it out by looking at the image :D)

settingseraser

Now the image is ready to go.

Select the inside of the snowflake and don’t forget to select the inside of the letter as well (that goes for a, b, d etc. other letters obviously are fine)

selectall

With the marching ants selected: Add a new layer and move that to the bottom (I always put background colours on a new layer, it’s easier if you want to change things and it makes a difference when you use effects!)

Flood fill with colour of your choice, in this case I used white.

Now comes the fun part. I’ll show you 3 different versions of the same image by using a different inside bevel.

First, in your layer palette, select (activate) the layer with the snowflake/letter image

Go to: effect -> 3D effects -> inside bevel

These are the settings I used

settings

Here are the three snowflakes I made:

3snowflakes

For the first snowflake I added the inner bevel only to the snowflake/letter layer

For the second snowflake I added the inner bevel first to the snowflake layer, then I clicked on the layer of the background colour and added the inner bevel with the same settings

For the third snowflake I first used the ‘undo’ button a few times until I got to the original coloured image, merged all layers and added the inner bevel to the merged image, again with the same settings

Different outcomes with the same settings, the number of outcomes with different settings are numerous. Just play around with your settings and use merged Γ‘nd unmerged layers to see which results you like best.

I hope this tutorial was useful to you. If you would like to have a complete coloured Snowflake Alphabet, please let me know by leaving a comment. It’s a lot of work, especially since the letters need to be cleaned up and I hate doing work for nothing :p

Worldwide Christmas Scrapbooking Freebies

Mark your calendars: On December 1, the list of freebies will go online again.

Here’s a sneak peek

SNEAKPEEK2011

WWDSFreebiesLogo

Blue Christmas

Although I tend to use Christmas decorations in traditional Christmas colours, like red, green and gold, I’m always struck by blue Christmas decorations. Probably because blue is my favourite colour.

I do like all shades of blue, but there’s something special about the Baby/French/Pale blues (I’ve seen it being called many other names too). Thanks to Pinterest I found some gems and although I’m not sure my house – or even tree – will be decorated in blues only, I wanted to save them for future use. I could always throw in a few blue decorations and get a second (blue-coordinated) Christmas tree, can’t I? :p

Mosaic Blue Christmas

Linking to:

Celebrate the Season – Winter Frame

Christmas in the Limelight – Blue Ornament

All Things Heart and Home –Β Oh (Tiny) Christmas Tree

Ornament Party – Blue Peace Ornament

Card Γ  la Carte – Blue New Years Card

Paperfections – Whimsical Copic Faux Bleach Snowflakes

Kuidaore – Snowflake Cookies

Splitcoast Stampers – Dasher in a Blizzard

Crafts by Amanda – Christmas Tree Bulb Light Ornament

Thinking Inking – Peace, Love, Joy

Kiwi Cakes – Snowflake Cupcakes

Crafts by Amanda –Β Epsom Salt Luminaries

Heritage Frame Project – technically not Christmas, but could well be adjusted

So many gorgeous projects available, where do I find the time??? Me and glue usually don’t go together, but I have to admit that my fingers are itching to try some of the above crafts.

I hope you find something you just HAVE to try, and that the results will decorate your home in the happiest Season of all πŸ™‚

AntoinettePenguin