6/10 - It's Friday !!! Check out my new releases ....

Good morning all ! Hope you've all had a great week so far. Before I show you what I am releasing this week, I need to let you know who won my Sneak Peek RAK. 

Congrats to chocochoco !! You've won both my new releases this week - please contact me with your email address.

I am also hosting a Bingo chat on Sunday 12th June over at Funky Playground. I'd love to see you there - if you don't fancy the bingo, come along for the chat !! I have 3 great coupons to give away along with a coupon to my own store for everyone who attends.

For more information, head over to this thread to find out how you can play along.

Now onto this week's templates - 

Do you love single photo layouts that show off your most special pictures? Single photo pages should have layers and elements that highlight your pictures with just the right balance. This template pack offers two options: intricate layered templates and simple clean templates, so you can best design a page that makes your picture the center of attention.

Funky Playground / GingerScraps

And some amazing (as always) inspiration from my CT :

Jordan

Melissa

Tronesia

Niki

Ashly

This creative set of templates is full of fun circles! Give your pages a unique look by cropping your photos in circular shapes or surrounding edged photos with round paper cuts and elements. These templates offer a balance of white space and paper/element layers for the best-looking pages!

Funky Playground / GingerScraps

And yet more fab CT pages :

Julie

Christie

Don't forget you can grab both these template packs at either of my stores for 25% off until Monday !! 

Have a fantastic weekend !!!

Our First LGF Standouts!

 
Happy Thursday everybody, this is Kim, and I am so excited to be kicking off a regular weekly blog feature, GSO Thursdays. Every Thursday, I will come and showcase some amazing layouts made with Little Green Frog Designs templates by Andrea's customers. At the end of each month, Andrea is going to pick a winner and award a prize! Interested? Then, let’s check out a few gorgeous layouts for this week.


First, check out this adorable page from roxanamdm, using the Say it With Photos Template Pack. Beautiful colors and look at those sweet smiles!

Next up, this adorable page from scrappyt also with Say it With Photos templates. LOVE the idea behind this page. It is about an adorable conversation journaled to capture a fanciful explanation of where the hairbows keep disappearing to!

Look at the rich colors in the beautiful page by snowdrop, using Andrea’s Just Four You Template Pack. Beautiful blues and golds and the unique diagonal look of the page is perfect for her regal photos!

Finally, this absolute stunner from runtosky using the same Just Four You Template as snowdrop used. Such incredible leaves, flowers and shadows!

One of the wonderful things about being on Andrea’s team is seeing all the different ways people can use templates for so many different looks. Little Green Frog templates are so versatile and look at all the inspiration you can get by browsing through these pages!
Are you a fan? Have you purchased Little Green Frog Templates and have a page to show off? If you would like put yourself in the running for next week’s GSO Thursday, please leave a link here to whatever layouts you want to share! Post a link to your layout and your name in a comment on THIS post and we will come find you!


Come back and check at the end of the month for the winner of the June GSO prize!

6/8 - Sneak Peek Wednesday and a chance to win !

Hope everyone is enjoying their week ! Here's a little sneaky peek of what's to come on Friday. 

Leave me a comment and I'll be back Friday to pick a winner - who'll win not one but both of my new releases !! 

Meet Kim !!

I'm back with another CT interview - this time with my other right hand woman - Kim (aka kmkarayannis). She is just one of the sweetest people I know and I look forward to our chats on IM. 

Here is what she had to say :
How did you get started and how long have you been digiscrapping?
I have been digi scrapping since 2008 and really got into it in 2009 when I became part of the the ScrapMatters community. I was a paper scrapper for years before that, but when all my local stores started closing down, I gave digi a try and have never looked back. Speaking of which...anyone want to buy all my cardstock?? 

What advice would you give someone just starting out digi-scrapping?
The BEST suggestion I could make would be to find an online community that feels right to you and JUMP RIGHT IN! Participate in challenges, chat in the forums, leave love in the gallery. You will make friends quickly and learn so much so fast! 

On average, how much time do you spend scrapping each week?
Well, this REALLY varies for me because I have a lot of stuff on my plate and the past few months have been rough, but anywhere from 2-10 hours. 

What are your scrapping strengths/weaknesses ?
I am a multi-photo kind of girl, and I think those are my best pages. I also think my clustering is pretty okay! My weaknesses are...inventing original composition on my pages, making simple clean pages, and scrapping with holiday kits, except the Christmas ones of course!

Who or what inspires you in the scrapping community? Any person or site in particular that you look to for inspiration?
Good grief...this is a long list. Andrea's pages amaze me...they are what caused me to become one of her loyal followers. I want to scrap like her. I also love to check out pages in the gallery at SM that have lots of layers and are packed full of stuff. I love pages by Tanya (tanyah666), Liz (mommy22girls), Melissa (profiler_mar) and Kim B (kimbytx). But now that I am on Andrea's CT...I have to look no further than this group of ladies. I mean, have you SEEN the stuff they are coming up with every week? Making these templates different in so many ways! So inspirational! 

If you could have Andrea create a template pack just for you, what would it be and why?
I am always interested in templates that have LOTS of photo spaces and LOTS of layers and elements. I have asked Andrea for a set of multi-photo, super-layered, double-pagers, but she threw her show at me.

What is your favorite LO you have ever done for Little Green Frog Designs?
That would have to be this one:

HERE for credits
I made this with her All in a Week Template Pack which of course I LOVE!!


What wish have you not yet fulfilled?
Okay, I am going to go casual with this one, rather than deeply personal...I want to landscape my backyard and remodel our bathroom! 

If you could spend a day with anyone (dead or alive, famous or not), who would it be and why ?
All of my grandparents, all four of them at the same time. If we're talking famous types, absolutely, hands down, no doubt, Queen Elizabeth I. 

If you were invisible for a day - what is the first thing you would do?
Observe my son for a day at school. I REALLY want to know what he is like when we are not around. 

Describe yourself in 4 words: 
First words that came to mind...Sensitive, creative, hungry, stressed (I'm sure those words would be different at different times...or even different once I eat my lunch!) 

What bad habits do you have? 
I procrastinate with my grading and my grad school work. I don't floss enough. I take too many things personally. I am an emotional eater. Wow, I sound lovely don't I?


Hope you enjoyed getting to know Kim a little more - pop on over to her gallery here for even more inspiration. Next week I'll be back to introduce you to Julie !

Sunday School: How to use a Layered Template

When I first started digi-scrapping almost three years ago now I had no idea how to use a layered template. I used to drag the pieces off the template onto my photos and paper and try all sorts of weird and wonderful tricks to make my paper the same shape!

So when Andrea asked me to write a tutorial for her blog I knew where I had to start.  I am currently making a brag book gift for my husband for fathers day using Andrea's Mini Memories Brag Book Template Pack; so it seemed like a good opportunity for a series of tutorials.  I'll start this week by showing you how to use the layered templates to make a page and then next week I will show you how to put the brag book together. Trust me if I can hybrid you all can too!

Part 1 - How to use a Layered Template

1 Open your layered template in your software program.  I use Photoshop CS5 but the principle of using a layered template is the same for earlier versions of Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.

2 Open the photo that you want to use on your template. In your layer window select the photo layer of your template. You can do this by right clicking on the photo layer on your template as well.

 3 Drag the photo onto your template. You will see from my example image below how my photo is behind the frame on my template because i have dragged it on top of my photo layer on the template.

 4 Now we need to clip the the inserted photo to the templates photo layer and position it on our layout.  To do this hover your mouse pointer between the photo layer bar and your inserted photo layer and hold down 'alt' The mouse pointer will change to a white and black overlapped circle and your photo will attach to the photo layer. This is indicated by a downward pointing arrow. Now you can resize and reposition your photo to your taste within the photo layer space.

 5 Once you are happy with the position of your photo merge your inserted photo with the templates photo layer. To do this right click on your inserted photo layer, a drop down menu will appear and you need to select merge down. At this point I also delete the 'photo' text layer so that I do not have the word photo written across my image.

 6 Now we can start to add papers to our layout.  Open the paper you wish to use, select the paper layer in your layer window the same way you did for the photo and drag the paper into your layer. Clip the inserted paper to the paper layer, as we did for the photo and when you are happy with the position, merge the layers again.

 7 Repeat this process for all the papers that you need to insert onto your layout. In the example below you can see that I have 'papered' the background, the frame and made a start on the journal strips.

 8 Now its my favourite part, time to add the embellishments.  I use the template elements as a guide to get me started, following there position and size. However as I start to build up my element layers I will sometimes deviate away from the suggestions.  This is fine, its your layout so go with your own creativity. Once you have finished with the templates 'guide' elements remember to delete them so that they are not peeking out beneath your clusters.

 9 Continue adding elements until you are happy with your layout, add a title and some journalling if you want to. Then make sure you have shadowed everything.  Learning to shadow helps to give your layout depth and realism.  There is a lot to learn with shadowing techniques, too much to cover here in this tutorial. However Andrea always pre-shadows everything in her template for you so if you clipped your papers to her layers these will already be beautifully shadowed. Then for ease you can always right click on a paper layer and select copy layer style. This will copy the shadow for you enabling you to paste it onto your unshadowed element layers.  just right click and select paste layer style to do this. As you grows in confidence you will learnt to tweak your shadows and enhance your layouts. 

My layout here uses Trixie Scraps and Armina Designs Collab 'Quality Time'

Join me next week for our hybrid tutorial - make sure you have chipboard, heavyweight photo paper, book rings and ribbons, buttons etc to decorate.

3/6 A Grab Bag and a Brag Book !!

It's Friday !! Which means it's new release day !


But first, the winner of my little RAK - Mr Random chose MJ-AJ Designs - congrats !! I will email you your coupon code later today.


This week I got the chance to collab with a good friend of mine - Melissa, of Cluster Queen Creations to bring you our For The Love of Photos Grab Bag !


With something for everyone, this amazing template grab bag offers you a variety of photo options. Two-picture templates that are perfect for highlighting the most special photos, and multi-photo templates for those of you that love to show off as much as you can on a page. With this collection from Cluster Queen Creations and Little Green Frog Designs, you know there will be no shortage of layers to help you make your pages gorgeous! Grab this collab and finish those pages you have been waiting to scrap!


There are 16 (yes, 16 !!) templates in this Grab Bag and it is priced at only $4 - a huge saving of $13. 

Funky Playground / GingerScraps

Here are the individual previews :

And here is some inspiration from my amazing CT !

Sarah

Melissa

Jordan

Julie

Christie

Emma

Tronesia

Ashly

If you've been racking your brains for a Father's Day gift this year, why not make that special man in your life a brag book album. This set of 7 x 5 brag book templates will make it a breeze !!

Funky Playground / GingerScraps

And here are a few pages destined for a couple of very lucky dads !!

Kim

Emma

Keep an eye out on the blog next week - Emma will be here with a tutorial and Kim will be scanning the galleries and picking some stand out pages using my templates (so make sure you get them posted !!)


Hope you all have a fantastic weekend !