Gift giveaway!!!!

The first ever gift giveaway is here for Tips and Tricks and we are so excited. Hopefully this is the first of many. We have so many great companies that have offered some of their wonderful, handcrafted products for this giveaway.

So here are the rules. #1 Leave your name (first name is all that's needed). #2 leave your email address so I can contact you if you win (if you are worried about privacy, simply email me at j4atkinson@gmail.com with your email and name) and finally, #3, tell me something you are interested in learning more about (it can be simple like Photoshop, cooking, sewing, etc.). Simple as that.

And as an added bonus, you can get extra entries if you simply do one or all of the following:

1. If you put a post on your blog about the giveaway with a link to this site, let me know in a comment or email with your site address and your name will be added twice;

2. If you add a permanent link to this site on your blog, you will be entered five extra times (be sure to let me know you did, with a link to your site, through email or comment); and/or

3. If you let your friends know about this and they enter and in their comment leave your name as a referral, your name will be added twice.

Scrap-n-Scribe

Scrap-n-Scribe makes adorable (custom if desired) journals, spa kits, cards, hairbows, headbands, gift tags, and much much more. There are so many great products and you won't be disappointed. For the winner of this you will be getting two nylon interchangeable headbands. Ever wonder where people are buying nylon headbands that are so popular right now? Well, wonder no more, it's scrapnscribe.com. You will get one light pink and one creme headband. These are perfect because they won't leave a mark on your little girl's head and they allow you to add the bow of your choosing by simply attaching it to the center ribbon. It saves you money because you don't have to buy a ton of headbands to match your outfits. Just buy one or two headbands and swap out the bows accordingly.

Scrap-n-Scribe Etsy
Scrap-n-Scribe.com




Someone will also win this adorable mini-notebook from Scrap-n-Scribe. This notebook is perfect for your purse or diaper bag. It's small enough to not take up a ton of room, but big enough for all those note, numbers, grocery lists that you need at ready access.



Bizzybee Creations

Who doesn't love custom Christmas cards! Bizzybee Creations makes the most adorable Christmas cards, custom or pre-designed (you can't go wrong either way because they are all so amazing). They also make cards for all occasions, address labels, birth announcements and more. The winner of this will get a Christmas card of your choice in digital format (it will be sent in .jpeg format via email).

Also, as an extra sweet treat, every person who enters this giveaway will receive a $5 coupon automatically. How great is that!?! Thanks Bizzybee Creations. Be sure to check out their site and order your Christmas cards now. They have some great deals going on (how's that for perfect timing!)

Bizzybee Creations

Brooklyn's Bows

Brooklyn's Bows is an awesome site that you can not only purchase bows from but they also teach you how to make great bows. Rarely do you find a site that will give you great instruction when it comes to making stuff and this is one of those places. There are a ton of places that make you purchase instructions and Brooklyn's Bows is generous enough to do it for free.

Just in time for Christmas, the winner of this will receive this adorable Christmas bow which is the perfect addition to your little girls outfit. (or yours, who am I to assume!?!). Be sure to check out this site.

Brooklyn's Bows

Silver Chic Jewelry

The winner of this will get this beautiful silver star charm from Silver Chic Jewelry. Be sure to check out their site for more beautiful, unique charms. They have some gorgeous charms and you can't beat the price. All of the charms will make great Christmas gifts so be sure to check them out and order yours now.

Silver Chic Jewelry

Iddy Biddy Bling

I decided to copy their description because it fits the jewelry perfect. But first, the winner of this will receive one newborn girl bracelet. Every little girl needs one.

At Iddy~Biddy~Bling we only use the finest sterling silver, bali silver, glass, stone, swarovski crystals, pearl beads and other quality findings. These bracelets are beautiful and made custom just for you! Your piece of jewelry will fit your taste and be heirloom quality.

Iddy Biddy Bling doesn't only make amazing, high quality jewelry, they also make custom shopping cart covers. I know these are high quality because I have one. I HATE shopping carts and the germs that cover them so I had to get one of these. Great prices and high quality, you can't be that.

Iddy Biddy Bling


Funky PolkaDot Giraffe

The winner of this will receive a custom diaper and wipe cover (you choose boy or girl pattern). These are so handy and stylish. I hate carrying a diaper bag, it's so bulky and heavy so this is the perfect solution to this. Not only does Funky PolkaDot Giraffe make diaper and wipe covers but they make custom burp cloths, changing pads and blankets, and you can get them all to match. Very cute! Be sure to check out their site, these will make great baby shower gifts, Christmas gifts or just a gift for yourself.

Funky PolkaDot Giraffe

Be sure to enter soon, the giveaway ends November 3rd

Organize ribbon

Do you have a gazillion ribbons like I do? I may have more than the average person just because I make bows but everyone has ribbon and if you're like me, I always found it impossible to store it. So to solve my lost, unrolled, mixed-up ribbon issues, I came up with this organization for all my ribbon. All it takes it a hot glue gun, dowel rods (I prefer using 3/16" x 12"), and I have no clue what it's called but a little wooden wheel thing. All of which are found in your local craft store next to each other. You can even purchase them all for under $10.00. It's really cheap.

All you have to do is put hot glue on the end of one dowel and attach the wooden wheel. For added security I glued the top and bottom once it was on the dowel. Then organize, organize, organize. I am all about color coordination, my closet is this way and so is my ribbon. To keep it from unraveling, I keep scotch tape with my ribbon so it's handy when I need to re-tape it after use. Then purchase or gets some use out of a box or bin. And there you have it, an easy, cheap, organized ribbon technique.

gift giveaway

To celebrate the beginnings of this blog I will be doing a gift giveaway starting Monday. So stay tuned, some great items from awesome companies are going to be given away. Be sure to check back and enter for your chance to win. More to come on Monday.

Eye popping

I searched forever and ever to find a technique to make those eyes pop on my pictures. I finally came to the conclusion that I would just have to merge a couple things I learned and come up with my own way of doing it. I know there are some great actions out there for purchase that work beautifully but I am someone who wants to do most things on my own. So I hope you find this helpful.

Start with your SOOC image. I recently started shooting in RAW (that makes me sound like a photographer but I assure you, I am not so just go along with it) after my friend recommended it and let me tell you, it's fantastic. The images are so much better. AS ALWAYS: click on the image to make it bigger.

Make all your corrections, adjustments, whatever you want done before we begin the next step.

You'll want to select the quick selection tool as shown here. Once clicked, you are going to select the iris on both eyes. Once both are selected go to Enhance/Unsharp Mask and then, as stated in a previous lesson, I tend to stick with 86/4/1 but for eyes will sometimes go higher on sharpen. This one I think I did around 94.

Now you'll select the dodge tool as shown below. Set the exposure to something low like 25-30 because we don't want the whites of the eye to look fake. Also, you'll want to choose a smaller size so we don't go anywhere but the whites of the eye. Once your ready just quickly go over the whites of the eye and this brightens it up a tad. Play around with the exposure to find a level you like.

We now have eyes that pop in our image.

simple touches

I am rarely disappointed when I spend some time playing around in Photoshop. I love playing with all the gadgets and seeing what I come up with.

Tonight I started out with the SOOC picture. This was taken at the Saratoga battlefield in Saratoga, NY today. This is Tea hanging off the fence surrounding the monument dedicated to Benedict Arnold's leg. No lie! I made my adjustments using the same method I used in the last lesson. But this time I noticed there was a lot of yellow in the end product and I didn't like it. So to fix it, I went to Enhance/Color Variation and there I played around with increasing and decreasing the colors. So to fix the over-saturation of yellow, I decreased the red once and made it darker, one click. In a future lesson I will show you how to use this same technique to make your image have a sepia tone.
I was very happy with the end result but I wanted to play around a little more and see what I could come up with. So here I made a copy of the above image (ctrl+j) and made my duplicate screen mode. I loved the effect. It makes her look so soft and sweet. I also added my new photo to a grunge frame for added effect.

Color pop in photos using Photoshop

I have made up my own way to make images pop a little more. There are a gazillion ways to do it and millions of actions to buy to do it for you. While the actions are wonderful and great to own, and I own a few, it's always nice to do it on your own. This is what I do on almost every picture with minor variations. And while I don't claim this to be the right way, I have discovered that people who share minor details with me make it so I can customize my own way of doing it.

So, with that said, we'll start with our original SOOC (straight out of camera) picture. This picture was taken at Louisa May Alcott's house in Massachusetts over the weekend. Very pretty!

The first thing I do is adjust the color for skin tone. Click on enhance/adjust color/adjust for skin tone. I then adjust the levels until the skin looks normal. Try playing around with this and see all that it can do.

Then I adjust color levels. Enhance/adjust color/color curves
This is never really the same, however, I tend to move it towards the same direction. It just depends how much I move it. Play around with and see what fits right for you and your picture. Every picture and every person are different.
I then adjust the levels. Enhance/lighting/levels. This allows you to add to the dark, middle and light colors in your picture. I tend to move the dark (left) side a touch, the light (right) a little less than dark and move the midtone to the left. Again, every picture and every person are different so play around with it.
We now have a picture that pops good. I like to adjust the sharpness of my photo next. Enhance/unsharp mask. There are hundreds of standard numbers out there but the one I tend to stick closely with is 86/4/1. However, on this one I did something more like 96/3.5/1.
You can then do your touch ups like removing any blemishes. I adjusted Teä's hair color by using the dodge tool to darken it a bit.

Here is a look at our before and after. Have fun and I'd love to see your creation!

Watermarks

I was asked recently how to do watermarks in Photoshop. This is a great technique to know so you can protect all your photos or creations you want to protect so others can't steal it. I should also let you know that this isn't the only way but this is what I find to be an easy way for me. The way I choose to do it is by making a brush with our desired watermark image. So let's get started.

First you want to start by making the watermark. You can do just your business name, a symbol, your initials or your name or anything else you can think of. If you are going to create anew watermark like I did using type, choose the type setting you want create the look you want all on a second layer so that we can delete the paper and leave behind just the type. I chose to do my type color in gray so it's not so dark because you don't want to dominate your photo (or maybe you do, who am I to determine that!)


Once it's created, remove the background paper. Here you can decided if you want to change the opacity so that it looks like a watermark, after all that's what we're making, right!?! To do that right above the layers palette you will see the word opacity and a drop down menu when you click on it. Change it to whatever you'd like, I did around 90%. Then I added a slight bevel (my new favorite feature!). To do this choose the simple inner style on our layer styles menu. I changed the bevel to about 24, this just makes it stand up a little. It's a personal choice, feel free to exclude it.



Now we're ready to define this as a brush. Go to Edit/Define Brush and rename your brush to whatever you'd like.
Once you do that, click on the brush and you will see your new watermark brush pop up.

You are now ready to use it. Another tip, when you have a darker image like I do, you may want to change the brush color to white so it shows up better.