Tip: Removing Color Cast on Project Photos

It’s been very difficult to photograph white layouts during the winter.  I have to do it in the morning before I go to work, or wait until the weekend.  White cardstock backgrounds is especially hard to photograph, regardless of the season and lighting.  However, it is my most FAVORITE background color for a scrapbook page, so I figured out how to make it look much better.  Today I thought I would show you how I remove the color cast and adjust the white balance of the photo of my layout using Photoshop.

Here’s the before photo. It just looked dark and has a color cast on it. 

Here’s the after.  Much better, right?

In Photoshop, go to the “Image” menu on top and you click on “Adjustments”. Then click “Curves”. When the Curves box pops up, click on the white eyedropper, which is the eyedropper furthest to the right in the group of three of them.

Then click on the white cardstock background of your layout (somewhere where it should be white). Watch the magic!

You can use the PC keyboard shortcut CTRL + M to bring up the Curves box.  Now it takes me literally 5 seconds to make my layout much whiter and brighter!  :)

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One Little Bird | Books & Coffee

I can’t remember the last time I did a hybrid page that wasn’t a pocket page.  When Peppermint told me that she was designing a digital kit about books & coffee, I was all in!  I felt like I could scrap many pages with this kit and topic!

I do hybrid pages most of the time in 8.5x11, so that I could print on the background cardstock with my printer at home.  In this case, I used Bazzill orange peel cardstock in white.

Digital supplies:  High Street Stories digital scrapbook kit & journal cards by One Little Bird.  Make sure you pick it up on sale this weekend!

I printed my journaling and some of the digital stamps I used onto my cardstock before putting the layout together.

I used the font Lobster 1.3 and cut out the title with my Silhouette Cameo using EK Success wood sheets.  These wood sheets are stickers with adhesive backing, so once you’ve cut them, you just peel them up and stick them. Very cool!

I wanted to show you my hybrid process so that the word “hybrid” isn’t so mysterious.  I basically did my layout digitally in Photoshop first.

Once I had my digital layout done and I have my size and placement of the papers and elements, I create a few other Photoshop canvases and start dragging each piece of digital item onto each separate canvas.  Each canvas has a purpose.  I had one document for printing just the photo onto photo paper.

I had one document for printing onto vellum.

I had one document for printing out the elements onto matte photo paper.  If I had a lot to print & cut, I would use a 8.5x11 sheet and use my Silhouette for the print & cut.  But I didn’t have a lot to print, so I used a 4x6 sheet and just cut it out by hand.

After hiding all the elements that I’m printing separately, I am left with the background that I want to print onto my Bazzill cardstock.

I printed everything and here they were!

Then I assembled my hybrid page together. 

Here’s a comparison of my digital versus hybrid layout. The left is digital and the right is hybrid.

It’s awesome what you can do with some cardstock, digital kit, a printer, scissors, and adhesive! 

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Anatomy of a Blog Banner

As you know, I recently totally revamped my blog.  As part of the revamp I created a new blog banner for the top of my blog.  I knew which photos I wanted to include, but making them have the look and feel that I was looking for was pretty trial and error.

First I used the photos as is.  This was too bright and jarring.

Then I lowered the opacity of the photos to make them less jarring.  It still didn’t look right.

Then I made the photos black & white.  But I didn’t like how some of the photos looked a little dingy and not bright.

So I tried brightening up the photo on the left a bit.  I thought this banner looked pretty good, but I was not wow’ed.

Then I opened up Rad Lab and used the Pool Party filter layered with the Flirt filter.  This was the exact feel & look that I was looking for!

So that’s the story of the different iterations of the new blog banner.  :)

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2014 Project Life | July Collage Inserts

I’m sharing a couple of Project Life inserts from July today.  Even though they are not pocket pages, they are in my Project Life album and part of my documentation for July.  In July we drove up to Sonoma County so that Todd could participate in the Ironman 70.3 Vineman race. 

I wanted to include a lot of photos and journaling, but not have to trim them and put them into pockets.  Photo collages to the rescue!  I love making photo collages so that I could include lots of photos in my album.  I created a 8.5x11 photo collage template in Photoshop and got to work.  The first collage was about our adventures in Sonoma County and it looked like this digitally before I printed it out.

I left some blank spaces so that I could add some little embellishments. 

The other collage about the actual Ironman event itself looked like this before printing it out.  I left even more spaces to add embellishments.

I was just going to print them out, add embellishments, and slip them into an 8.5x11 page protector back-to-back.  But I decided to back them up with 12x12 cardstock and add a title to each of them instead.

The Sonoma County layout ended up looking like this.  I added some glitter foam star stickers, sequins, wood veneer, camera, and enamel dots for embellishments.  I added the title on the left side with some Thickers alphas. 

I used a T-square to make sure my title lined up perfectly straight and perpendicular to the page.

Here you can see the embellishments more closely.  I simply adhered little dimensional embellishments such as wood veneers, sequins, and enamel dots to the page.

For the Ironman page, I adhered my printed collage onto white 12x12 cardstock and added the title perpendicularly again, this time on the right side. 

I added some wood veneers for the swim, bike, and run.  I didn’t have a swimming man, so I just adhered the man sideways, lol!

On the bottom I added some more star wood veneers.  The yellow enamel dot fit perfectly inside that camera!

I added a couple of gold star sequins next to the title on the collage.

The pages go into my Project Life album alongside with all the memorabilia from the event!

I love creating collages for both layouts and pocket pages!  I hope you are inspired to make some of your own.  It’s an easy way to fit lots of photos into your story. 

I’m sharing my layered Photoshop template with you so you could create something similar if you wish!  You will need Photoshop or Photoshop Elements to use this template for your photo collage. 

Download:  Listgirl’s Tilted 8.5x11 Photo Collage .PSD Template

If you need a tutorial on how to used layered templates in Photoshop or PSE, Ali Edwards has a wonderful video here.  If you download my template and use it, I would love to see it!  You can link to it in the comments in this post so I can admire your page!  :-)

I have more Project Life pages to share in the next few days.

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Soak Up The Sun

Last Sunday 8/17 we went down to Sleep Train Amphitheater to see Sheryl Crow and Rascal Flatts in concert.  We arrived just as Sheryl Crow was starting.

It was a big crowd there!  There were lots of cowboy hats & boots.  Since I was just cleaning out my closet a couple of weeks ago, I told Todd I wished that I had worn my cowboy hat & boots too!  Oh well.

Sheryl looked and sounded as good as ever.  This is probably the third time we’ve seen her.

The crowd went wild and sang along to “Soak Up The Sun”.  This IS San Diego, after all!

A very nice lady took our photo for us.

Sheryl Crow Set List:

• All I Wanna Do
• Real Gone
• Can’t Cry Anymore
• Give It To Me
• Best of Times
• Strong Enough
• Redemption Day
• If It Makes You Happy
• Soak Up The Sun
• Everyday Is a Winding Road

We ended up leaving after Sheryl Crow, because we were really there to see her show, even though she was the opener for Rascal Flatts.  We had to work the next day after all.  And we got our tickets for $20, so we felt we already got our money’s worth!  It was a fun night!

This week I worked on picking photos, making collages, and printing them out for my July Project Life.  July included our big road trip to Sonoma, Napa, and Santa Barbara.  So I made a Photoshop template to help me summarize some of our trip details.  I printed them out on 8.5x11 photo paper and they look really cool!  I haven’t decided whether I’m going to put some embellishment on them and slip them into 8.5x11 page protectors, or if I’m going to add them to 12x12 cardstock to make a page.

Some of the rest of the photos from our July trip.  I decided on 3” square photos so I could use the October Afternoon 16-up 3” squares page protector. 

Yesterday I worked on printing out the rest of my July photos and now they are all in pockets and ready to finish my July Project Life!

Todd made this grilled salmon with roasted corn relish dish this week.  It was SO good!  I chowed down, lol.

On Wednesday 8/20 we had dinner at The Kebab Shop after work.

And then went to the lake for a sunset walk.  We’re trying to savor summer before the daylight gets short again and we can’t go for walks after work anymore.

Yesterday was Todd’s company’s annual summer picnic.  We went and I got to meet some of his work friends, which was fun. 

They had a carnival theme.  I think it was more fun for the kids than adults.

This picture doesn’t do it justice.  That tent was ginormous!

Unfortunately, the food wasn’t that great.  I ate some of this and left the rest behind.  If I’m going to eat unhealthy things, they better taste delicious!  This food lacked flavor.

I got to tour Todd’s office.  These toys were on the shelf above his desk. 

Yesterday we spent all day cleaning.  We rented a Rug Doctor and steam-cleaned our carpet.  I also took photos of all the giveaway items that I decided I’m no longer keeping in my closet after my big closet purge.  I take photos of everything I give away to charity so that at tax time I can itemize for deductions.

This seemed to be the only photo I took of Noodle this week!  But oh he looked so content sleeping sideways on his perch.

And I’ve got three weeks of P90X3 workouts done!  My Daily Mile workout chart is looking great!  I haven’t worked out this much in a long time. 

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