Summer is full of weddings, sports teams, camp, family reunions, trips, day outings and much more.
Why not have a creative way to display your memories?
With a little bit of effort, and money you can create pages for your photo memories through scrapbooking.

I find scrapbooking is a great way to unwind, reflect and feel creative and have something to share with others at the end of the project. I often reflect back to my scrapbooks with great fondness and am always happy I put in that extra effort!

Creative Memories is a great line of scrapbooking products that can help you get started, get organized and have fun!
For years I did things the hard way, with a scaple knife and ruler, and eyeballed the circle cuts… well, the Creative memories products from their cropping tools line left my jaw dragging to the floor. How fast, easy and precise they are with little effort. Take the custom cutting system, mat and blades ( product detail ),

You get the cutting mat and three blades and you can use the circle patterns, oval patterns gemstone patterns etc (all sold separately) and in second you have a circle cut, and your surface is protected from the matt!

This is just one of the things that makes scrapbooking easier, they also have packages of papers and stickers to make it that much more easier.

To view, look at and order, go to: http://www.mycmsite.com/sites/catherinerobertson/

This is my dear friend Catherine’s site, she is a Creative Memories consultant, she is so talented with scrapbooking and knows her stuff for sure! So, please support her I’m a huge believer in supporting friends and family, Catherine is both to me!

If your looking for yourself or gift Ideas, this is defenatly the product line for you!

Cheers, and happy Scrapbooking

Story Behind the Blog:

I’ve always had people ask me, how do you make the one color black and white photos?

Well, here it is! I’ve created the Tutorial with the assumption that knowledge of Photoshop is greater than beginner.

This is one of my favourite processes for editing and enhancing digital photographs enjoy!

Begin:

Choose a photograph that would suit this technique, something predominate in the photo, Ie: a flower.
Open the selected photo in Photoshop, I’m using version CS3 Extended.

 

Once open, double click on the background layer in the layers panel, which automatically changes the locked background into layer0.

 

I’m labelling layer0, as ‘Base Layer’, duplicate this layer by dragging the layer icon over the ‘new’ layer button at the bottom of the layers panel.

 

This will automatically create a ‘duplicate’ layer of ‘Base Layer’. Name the duplicated layer ‘Desaturate Layer’.

 

So, now we have two identical layers, one named ‘Base Layer’ and the other ‘Desaturate Layer’.

 

Select the ‘Desaturate Layer’, and choose Image > Adjustments > Desaturate from the top menu, or Shift+Ctrl+U (on windows).

 

Select the ‘Desaturate Layer’ and from the tools panel select the eraser tool.

 

Set the eraser tool with an opacity of 10%, and a soft round brush, whatever size you feel comfortable using.

 

Erase the part that you want the color to show through, I do mine in layers so I can make the edging soft and flow nicely from the b/w to color.

 

Voila!

For the picture I chose, I’m also going to delete some of the flower so the purple shows through.

Happy photo editing!