CT Guest Member!

Woo hoo! I found out yesterday that I was one of the lucky ones picked to be a guest Creative Team member for Krystal Hartley. Woo hoo! I'm so excited! Of course, most of the people reading this blog probably know all about her 'awesomeness', but if you don't go check her out!!

Well, yesterday I took the plunge. I started working on some Photoshop Element Tutorials. I didn't like the way my Popsicle Page below turned out because the kit doesn't have drop shadows on the elements and in Memory Mixer it didn't add shadows correctly to the elements in this kit (it looks like a box instead of following the lines of the element.) So I decided it was time to give PSE a whirl!

I found a great site with TONS of tutorials - both written and video - Hummie's World. I liked this because it started at the basics and then goes into more detailed topics. Plus the written tutorials are much faster to go through, but if there is a topic that's confusing it's nice to be able to see the video and exactly how she's doing something. She also has them broken up so you can skip around some of the more advanced topics and pick and choose what you want to do. You have to register to access the tutorials (free registration). I think all the written ones are free, but to access the video tutorials it's $5.50 a month. She even has several video 'previews' you can watch as a sample before you pay.

** Update ** Krystal send me a couple links to some other great sites for tutorials. I've looked at a few on Misty Cato's site and these are great too!

Misty Cato
http://www.mistycatodesigns.blogspot.com/

Jessica Sprague
http://spraguelab.squarespace.com/

I spent about 3 hours last night and got through a lot of the basics. I learned how to add the drop shadows, cut paper (like select a shape or text and then 'cut' that selection out of patterned paper - I've been wanting to know how to do this forever!!), use a template, etc...

I'm still struggling with some of the selection tool stuff, but I think more practice will help! I'm going to try to re-create that Popsicle Page below with shadows. At this point I'm not ready to switch over from MM to PSE for every page, since I'm soooooo slow, but there are so many more artistic things you can do in Photoshop!!

Off to go get the kids off the couch and out for a bike ride before it gets too hot!!

Oh - I did find out that I didn't make Eva Kipler's CT team, she said she had 150 people register. Yikes!! I should have requested a guest spot instead of perm and maybe that would have helped. But oh well, I can focus on Krystal's designs this way!! LOL!