One big new trend in scrapbooking are the use of chevrons. Have you seen them on layouts? Are you using them in your layouts? I love the mix of elements and paper that are out there right now.

Here is a layout I did with Live Life by wm [squared]

Here are few more that I found in the gallery-

(by Fonnetta- using Take Note)

(by melanie3boys- using Summer Breeze)

Share your layouts with us using any chevrons on your layouts.

Aloha y’all. Carrie (wxgirl) here to reminisce about childhood on this fine Saturday morning. As a kid I loved to color, and thus I have very fond and vivid childhood memories of fresh boxes of crayons and hours spent coloring in pages of my favorite cartoon characters. I even once used a brand new orange crayon to add some fish to the painting of a babbling brook my parents had hanging on the wall over the living room sofa (needless to say they were not pleased with that particular artistic endeavor). And now my daughter has been bitten by the coloring bug, and she spends time each day coloring in pictures of her favorite characters, or drawing rainbows. I wanted to make a digital layout to capture the artwork that’s hanging off my refrigerator before something catastrophic happens to it (or she gets bored and decides to practice her scissor skills). Since this layout is about crayons and coloring, crayon-drawn elements are a perfect fit. After some searching, I discovered through a tutorial by Jen White at Scrapper’s Guide that Photoshop has a waxy crayon brush. The tutorial below explains how you can access this brush to draw on your page or create your own custom elements.

1. Open a new layout (300 dpi) or one that’s ready for an awesome crayon embellishment.

2. Open the Horizontal Type tool (the T or text button), and change the font to something with clean lines like Century Schoolbook (I picked this one because I really like the bracket), and increase the font size to 350.  Type the bracket onto your layout.

3. Select the bracket shape by pushing control and then clicking on the icon of your text layer in the layers panel.  This will pop open a small menu, scroll down and select “Select Pixels”.  Alternatively, you can push Control and click on the gray part of the text layer in the Layers palette, and then select Rasterize Layer, then choose the Magic Wand tool to highlight the shape.  Whichever method you choose, you should get the marching ants around the bracket shape.  You can also hide the text layer at this point (click on the eyeball next to that layer in the Layers palette).

4. Make a new layer (shift + command + N on a Mac), and give it a name (I called mine crayon bracket).  Then zoom in to between 50 and 100%, and center the marching ants in your screen.

5. Time to get the crayon started.  Select the Brush tool (the icon has a little paintbrush), and if the Brushes tool doesn’t open, click on the drop down menu next to the brush to get the tool to open (it’s the screen in the image below).

Click on the little arrow in the upper right corner of the Brushes menu, then scroll down until you find Dry Media Brushes.  Select this option, then click Append when prompted.  This will add the dry media brushes to whatever you currently have in your Brushes menu.

Scroll down to almost the bottom and select the Heavy Wax Smear Crayon brush (bottom arrow in the image), then change the master diameter to 10 pixels (top arrow).  A 6-pixel crayon looks like really sharp eyeliner, while a 15-pixel crayon looks like it was drawn with a flattened crayon stub.  After some experimentation, I decided I prefer an 8-pixel crayon for making the brackets, and a 12-pixel crayon for making straighter lines (more on this later).

6. Your crayon will appear the same color as your foreground (the front of those two little squares in your Color palette), but it’s easily changed.  Click on the front square and either select a color from the color picker or use the eyedropper to select a color from within your layout.  Because it’s easier to see here, I picked black (#000000), but you can easily change the color later on using Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation.

7. Next, make sure that the active layer is that new one you created in Step 4.  Trace the outline of the bracket by clicking and dragging your mouse.  The marching ants will keep you from coloring outside the lines, but if you want to achieve a natural look, trace just inside the marching ants without actually touching them, like in the image below.  Unless your have a really steady mouse-hand, your lines will likely not be perfectly straight.

8. Once you’ve traced the outline of your entire bracket, it’s time to fill it in.  Resist the urge to scribble, and instead make short strokes that don’t overlap, as in the image below.

And there you have it, a bracket crayon.  You can move it wherever you want on your layout, and since it’s crayon and theoretically drawn straight on the paper, no drop shadow is necessary.

As mentioned previously, I was making this bracket to use on a layout about my daughter’s crayon drawings, so I’ve posted it below.  Since the black bracket didn’t quite fit with the colors in the layout (I used WM[squared] Designs’ Rainy Days – the Mega Mini kit, and the background paper is from Just the Basics – Neutral Paper Pack), I changed the crayon color to white (#fdfdfd) by adjusting the saturation.  I also made a chipboard bracket (select the original text bracket, then Select > Modify > Expand > Expand by 25 pixels, then making a layer mask on a colored paper), and the “family” title (the font is called Georgia).  I was having so much fun with these digital crayons that I also “traced” the line around the edge of the paper, on the frame, and on the banner using a wider (12 pixel) crayon.  I also traced a handwriting font (Wendy’s got so many awesome ones!) for the date.

I had such a blast using digital crayons on this layout, and I hope that you do too!  I’d love to see what you create!  Link us up here or post your layouts into this thread at Scrap Orchard.

Hi everyone! Emilee here with a quick tip to make your scrapping smoother. We are going to find out a little bit more about the Hand Tool–that little white hand in PSE. The little hand icon has been around in many computer programs for as long as I can remember, but I don’t ever remember it being too helpful. But in PSE that little hand can be quite useful.

You can access the Hand Tool by clicking “H” or by holding down the space bar. You then use the little hand to move around your project. When you are using another tool you can always temporarily switch to the Hand Tool–which is why I want to make sure everyone knows this secret–by simply holding down the space bar on your keyboard. When you are zoomed in extracting an image, altering a shadow or whatever the case may be; you can switch to the Hand Tool by holding down the space bar, then use the little hand to move around to your next desired location, release the space bar and you are back to the previous tool. Brilliant! And so easy. Try it out and let me know if you have any q’s.

Picture this scenario. You have your camera in one hand, a purse on your shoulder, you’re pushing a stroller, watching one rowdy 3 year old say, “look at me, look at me,” while trying to capture a cute photo op of your almost 1 year old and talking to a digi-friend that you’re meeting for the first time.

Needless to say, when I “point-and-shot” the camera wasn’t completely level.

Enter my pal the Straighten Tool! The following tutorial is based on Photoshop Elements; however, your program might have a similar tool. The straighten tool is the blue rectangle with a slanted blue rectangle behind it – Keyboard Shortcut (P).

You can find a few options for this tool by using the dropdown menu at the top of the screen. You can grow or shrink the canvas to fit, crop to remove background or crop to original photo size. I like the Crop to Remove Background option, but play around and see what works for you!

Pick a point on your photo that is supposed to be horizontally straight. If you choose a vertical line, you’ll just have to rotate your image afterwards. Now click on one side of your object and drag your cursor over to the other side.

Tada!

Now my little Kent doesn’t seem like he’s falling out of the picture anymore! Here’s a side by side comparison.

I am always so impressed at how a little straightening can go such a long way. Here’s a layout that I created using some of Wendy’s goodies…mainly Great Escape and the Chicago add on.

Go forth and straighten!

Hi y’all! This is Laura, with a few tips on working with low quality/resolution photos.  I’m not always the most conscientious photographer, so sometimes I’m left with either low quality phone photos or, on the occasions when I neglect to bring out my camera, Facebook photos from friends and family.  Rather than skip scrapping these memories, I get creative to make the pictures I do have work.

The first thing I do is put the photo on my 12×12 canvas to see what I have to work with. On that big canvas, the low resolution usually just translates to a tiny, but decent looking picture; the flaws are more noticable in the photo preview that takes up the monitor. When this is the case, I go back to my original and clean it up as best as I can. In this photo, I used “sport continuous” mode to try to capture action in poor lighting and avoid blurry photos; one out of the set is usually decent. However, this results in a fuzzy, low resolution photo:

On its own, it’s not a great shot.  Some color and lighting adjustment is necessary, and it’s pixelated.  Rather than try to enlarge the photo and risk pixilation, I actually shrunk the photo to fit into small photo slots in a template designed for smaller photos.

Although the pictures stay the same tiny size, their size comes across as a deliberate choice rather than a workaround.

Here’s another page I made using photos from a friend’s Facebook page. I had no pictures of my own from this night, but another friend had brought her camera for a few group shots. The original photo had a yellow tint from bad indoor lighting, and the Facebook version was too small for any significant color correction without severe pixelation.  To improve the photo, I used “Unsharp Mask” for some quick sharpening.  In Photoshop Elements, it can be found under the enhance menu (I’m reasonably certain it’s in the same place in the full version of Photoshop).  My normal settings use an Amount of 10% and a Radius of 50 pixels, but the variables can be adjusted.  I turned my photo black and white, which covered up the discoloration of the original. If the kit I was using had more warm tones that cool tones, I likely would have used a sepia tint to hide the discoloration.

When it comes to actually putting together the page, I’ve found a few other tricks to make dealing with low res photos easier. I normally print my pages as 8×8, either in photobooks or individual layouts.  When starting with a template, I put my background papers in at the full 12×12 size of the template, as they do not typically require resizing. Once they’re in, I resize the whole canvas to the size I intend to print at, 8×8 or 10×10. This allows me to play around with templates that have photo spots larger than the photos I’m working with, rather than enlarge a photo that will be shrunk again in printing.

Another reason to embrace low res photos in scrapping – they allow more space to journal!  Four tiny photos leave a lot more space to write in than four larger photos, so you may as well take advantage of more space to fill in the story.  Knowing that I can work with phone/Facebook photos reduces the pressure to snap the perfect shot while in the moment.  I hope these suggestions help and happy scrapping!