Photoshop Tips: Brightening Photos and outlining text

(Check out Part One: The Basics, Part Two: Creating a Design, and Part Three: Adding Text to a Photo)

Todays video is a short one. It also goes more into the photo editing aspect of Photoshop rather then the design part. I'm going to be teaching you how to brighten your photos with levels and how to outline your text.

 Today's photoshop post is also going to be one of the last. I might squeeze one in next week, but for the most part, I've taught everything you need to know to start photoshop (feel free to email/comment on there photoshop skills you want to learn). Today I just decided to share a fun mixture of different skills that are easy to do and add a fun look to your design. 

Sounds fun right?!

General Conference Notebooks

Hey everyone! So normally I would be posting another part of the photoshop series, but today I'm sharing a post for general conference, so my normal schedule will be back next week. So I know a lot of my viewers are LDS, but for those of you who aren't your probably don't know what I'm talking about. General conference is a time where twice a year we get to listen for the leaders of out church for 8 hours over two days. It's an awesome experience, but sometimes towards the end it gets tiring. I'm not that person who loves having 16 hour movie marathons, so by the end I'm ready to get outside and get away from the television.

Here's the design for this year.

And here's last years. 

Here's a picture of the tabs and the notes pages.

Last October, I decided to try making a general conference journal to help keep me motivated. However I never got to share the idea last year. I really loved using it and filling in all the sections, so much that I decided to make another one.


I made one design for last year, and one for this year. Since I didn't share these last year, I'm going to share both colors and you can just choose which one you like better.

Assembling them is really simple:

MATERIALS:

1. notebooks. I got mine at dollar tree, they looked similar to these but without the lines. 
2. washi tape.
3. these files
4. laminator (optional)
5. rubber cement and double sided tape

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Take off the cover of your notepad. Black binding tape and all, so you'll just have a bunch of white sheets stuck together
2. cut out your cover sheet and put tape on the back of it. Stick the sheet onto the first blank white page in the pad. 
3. On the top of the notepad, put two pieces of washi tape so that you cover up all the ugly ripped stuff on top. If your washi tape isn't very sticky, you may have to put a line of rubber cement to keep in place. 
4. flip your journal open to the next page. Tape one of the journal pages onto the page. do this to every other page. 
5. Now cut out all the tabs on the tabs page. Laminate them. Put a line of rubber cement on the picture part of the tab. Put it onto the page before the journal pages  so that the name  is sticking out. 
6. ENJOY and take notes!

Photoshop Tips: Adding text to a photo

(*** check out part one: the basics, part two: creating a design and
part four: brightening images and outlining text***)

It's that time again! Time for another part of the photoshop series. Can you believe I already been doing this for 3 weeks! I feel like I'm kind of getting the hang of this video thing (even though I'm STILL super great with the actual filming thing) considering that the first video took me hours to edit and these have taken me almost no time at all.

This week I was thinking of what to share. There's not to much to Photoshop. You just need the basics and then you can get creative and do most everything, so I was stumped. Then I thought about blogging and how great it is to know how to add text to your pictures. And even adding text to your photo is easy, but how do you know where to place it, how big to make it, how much to make it stand out. Part of this is just based on your style, but there are a few things that are nice to know to get the look you want.

So in the picture you can see the things you will learn. There are some basics, but also some other things.

Join me, will you!!

come back next thursday for another part!

Photoshop Tips: The Basics

**** Check out Part two: creating a design, part three: adding text to a photo and part four: brightening images and outlining text****

Yes It's Thursday and yes, I'm posting. Why? Read on to see :).

So I've been thinking, and I've decided I'm going to start posting on Thursdays again on addition to Mondays. There are a lot of reasons I'm doing this, I've just felt like there are so many ideas I want to try and posting once a week doesn't give me a huge amount of time and motivation  to make those things. Especially with holiday projects, I feel like I only do a few projects and the holidays over. Primarily on Thursdays I'm going to be posting printables and tips. basically just posts that don't take a huge amount of effort. I've decided to start of my Thursday posts with a new series that teaches you how to use photoshop.

 (yah, just ignore the fact that "own and "digital" are the same word :)

The main reason I'm doing this series is because Photoshop is such a nice thing to know how to do these days. Most people have switched to digital scrapbooking, and most christmas cards are digital now too. 

I've also decided to do this teach this series through videos because I feel like it is easier to grasp and understand that way.   

The Basics:

This first post is going to be the basics, since it makes sense to start there. You will learn how to:

• Use layers 
• Use the color tool 
• Use fonts and create text 
• Use brushes 
• Use the zoom tool 
• Use the eraser 
• use the fill bucket 
• create a document

** This is my first tutorial video.** I wouldn't call myself gifted at making these either, so don't laugh :).

Part one:

Part two:

check back next Thursday to learn more tips and tricks

"I'm Glad We Swim in the Same School" Valentines

Here's some more fun valentines.

Here's the story:

I made these for my little sister. I had a WHOLE board on Pinterest of super cute things I could make for her, but when she saw the swedish fish Valentines it was love at first sight. 

I wasn't super excited to make these for her, but I actually really like how they turned out.

I even made tags you can download.

I wanted to dress the bags up a little, so I added a twisted pipe cleaner, twine,  and some ribbon.

Materials:

• clear cellophane bag
• pipe cleaner
• gift ribbon
• bakers twine
• stapler
• swedish fish
• stapler
• glue dots
• these tags

Steps:

1. Place around ten swedish fish in the bottom of your bag
2. fold the top of the bag over and staple it closed with the tag on top 
3. wrap your pipe cleaner around a pencil and staple it onto the bag along with a piece of curled ribbon 
4. tie a bow out of bakers twine and put it on the ribbon with a glue dot. 

***Check back everyday this week for more Valentine ideas***

We've Been Booed Signs (2 ways)

Happy October everyone! I absolutely LOVE fall!! The weather, the smells, the spices, the colors, the holidays. It's so fun!

I especially love all the traditions me and my family have this time of year. One of the traditions I have the most memories of is when we go booing. We always go all out. Like everyone (my siblings) where's ninja suits and black kind of out. We also like to be the people to start the booing. I feel like it is my "mission" to make a cute booing printable every year. 

I decided to make two different versions of this. One has a polka dot background and the other has a striped background.

They both come with matching instruction sheets too!

Here are the download links:

Polka Dot Booed Sign

Polka Dot Booed Instructions

Striped Booed Sign

Striped Booed Instructions

__________________________

  Linking up:

/>

Blog Planner {Part 3}

Join me every monday the next few weeks for tips on growing your blog and a free printable blog planner.

.     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

Hello Friends!! Happy back to school day.... yay (ish).

It's time for the 3rd part of the "Free Blog Planner" series. Today I'm going share with you a free blog to do list to add to your planner. It's pretty handy to have around, so you don't forget to do the things around your blog that AREN'T posts.  

Book of Mormon Reading Chart Bookmark

Hello again....

As most of you know, I'm a 13 year old Mormon girl and my religion is a HUGE part of my life. (read more about me here) Once we turn twelve we enter the Young Women's and are challenged to complete personal progress. We have to complete eight values by doing 6 experiences and one ten hour project of our choice that applies to that value. The virtue project however is already chosen for us and it is to read the whole book of mormon! I've been working on reading it, but I'm 2nd Nephi, And as you probably know, it is really hard to get through. I need a little extra encouragement  so I made this reading chart bookmark. I really like using this because you can see how you have progressed and you can actually notice how close you are to finishing. So anyways, now that I'm done talking, here it is:

Blog Planner (Part 2)

Join me every monday the next few weeks for tips on growing your blog and a free printable blog planner.

.     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

Welcome to part two of the "Blog Planner" series. In case you weren't here last week you can find the first part here. This week I'm going to share with you another free page for you're blog planner. It is a handy blog post planner. It has places for you to right in the post date, post topic, post title, notes, and the whether the post is a draft, completed, scheduled, or published. PLUS there's two post planners on a page. 

UN bored summer (free printable)

School is coming to a close and you can feel the summer magic in the air. In order to make this summer one to remember I'm going to be sharing projects related to summer. SUMMER HERE WE COME!!!!

.    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .   .    .    .    .

i LOVE summer. 

One thing I don't love about summer though, is when you can't find anything to do and waste your time complaining.  

I created this printable (it's free :) of different things to do for summer fun. 

It would be fun to put in a frame and then you could cross out the ones that you've already done. 

Get the printable here.

I will be sharing a craft for this later in the week. (and also, if you are wondering, I have a big sewing tutorial almost ready to post)

__________________________

If you do use this, I would love to see what you create!

Bunny Bait

Easter is approaching quickly. I actually just realized that :(. But not to fear, I made a cute easter tag for you (and me) to tie onto a cute easter treat.

 They're Super cute, aren't they. If you want to download them click
here
here
or here
*I will be featuring these on a treat later in the week*

_____________________________

-Emma

Love Day

v-day Idea

Valentines day is getting closer. I made this little card for my family members and friends to tell them what I love about them.

 I used Papers from here

also I made this one last year. If you would like to print them out send them to your downloads and print them.

________________________

Enjoy

-Emma

valentines pic

I found a pic of my v-day cards, so here they are:

love em'  !!!!!! - Emma.