Nap Time - and a Quick Photoshop How To

I took a few moments this afternoon to scrap a photo that my daughter took of her three boys all asleep on the couch. It's so adorable, and I wanted to get it on a page.

What's cuter than a sleeping baby? A sleeping dad and kitty with the sleeping baby!

I used the wonderful "Butterfly Wishes" kit by my friend Stacey at Scrapper's Alley. I used one of my favorite tricks for making a scrapbook page for guys - I hid the bow under the photo and only let the ribbon tails stick out. Sorry about that Stacey, it IS a beautiful digi-bow, though!

Astute readers will notice that there is NOT a golden background in the Butterfly Wishes digital scrapbooking kit (pictured on the right). Here's all I did to make it gold, which made the page pop!

I used Photoshop, but you can use any graphics program with layer blend modes (such as Photoshop Elements, Paint Shop Pro, for instance).

1. I brought in the grungy brown paper background
2. I put the green background paper over it
3. I changed the green background paper blend mode to color dodge mode
4. I adjusted the opacity of the green paper layer down a bit to get a soft gold.

When you use blend modes like this, lots of time you can retain all of the details on your papers, but get a wonderful tone shift. That's exactly what I wanted, because I loved the grunge and texture on the brown paper. If I'd done a color shift on it, it wouldn't have ended up with the various shades and vibrancy which the blend modes gave me.

Persian Dreams Used by Rachael Hudnall

I'm SO excited! Yesterday I learned that designer Rachael Hudnall is using my Persian Dreams I Patterns in her new kit! It will be featured at Digital Arts Cafe starting August 1st. I'm sworn to secrecy, so there's no peeks, and I can't even tell you what the name of it will be. It's killing me, but I'm not going to.

I will say that I've been a fan of Rachael's designs since she joined SNL a few years ago. Her creations are always artistic and have a wide appeal because of a timeless beauty in them. Rachael just gets better and better every time I see her kits. That's one of her sets in the small thumbnail above. See how wonderful she is? See why I'm so excited she is using some of those scrumptious Persian Dreams patterns?

Persian Dreams Patterns for Commercial Use

12 high quality grayscale repeating pattern tiles for commercial use bring exotic and intricate designs reminiscent of desert nights to your digital scrapbook designing fingertips in this set of exquisite patterns. You'll be able to set the rich backdrop to the very era of the tales of the Arabian Nights with patterns like these.

Additionally, there are 12 full size, 300dpi 12x12 inch filled grayscale pages using these same pattern tiles in various scales and fill angles in this set for quick projects and inspiration. Use as overlays in blend layers or as masks.

A generous commercial-use license is included - you can review it before you buy it right from the shop; look for the link at the bottom of the description of Persian Dreams I. I've included the Photoshop .pat file, a Paint Shop Pro pattern folder, and the individual png files for the pattern tiles along with the 12 300dpi full size papers filled with artful angles and scaling of these patterns in grayscale. Grab one and just start creating with it!

Don't miss the 100% tile view at the shop preview, too - you can see how flexible these patterns will be. Color them, overlay them, use them in masks, then distress them, grunge them up, or totally destroy them, it's your call. These classic lines will make you look good every time. It'll be our little secret!

They are all on sale until Monday at Midnight (Eastern time) at NutHouse-Scraps.com