My first from scratch scrapbook project. Awhile back I enrolled in "Photoshop Elements Techniques". It's a website that has lots of information, tutorials, downloads, etc. for Photoshop Elements. The scrapbooking pages I have done so far are from kits and/or some creativity on my part. After doing a couple of tutorials on this new site, I have come to realize the power behind Photoshop products. I don't know how deep I will get into it as I am basically not artistic, but I have committed myself to wading through all the tutorials, etc. and hopefully some of will stick.

The tutorial I did today was to create a cutout, basically for a picture frame. Frankly, the instructions were not good, either in the tutorial or in the instructions for using Photoshop Elements located within the product. Point in fact, the tutorial called for using a shape for the cutout. Now, I knew what a shape was, there is a pull down where you can pick generic shapes to use as a cutout or frame or whatnot. But, I needed to go get a shape from an Adobe site. The instructions said to download it and install it by going to Edit, Preset Manager and loading it in through there. There WAS no shapes in the pulldown - brushes, patterns, etc. but no shapes. I clicked here and I clicked there to no avail. So I went into the forum and sent a note. Good thing I mentioned I was a blond, because when I got back to my project low and behold the new shapes were there in the pulldown. But they went away when I went back to my default shapes. What had I done to get them there in the first place? After some experimentation, this time I paid attention, it seems you click on the shape file and it temporarily puts the shapes in your pulldown. Now, this makes complete sense as there are probably lots of shapes I might want to download and use, but they would clog up my pulldown menu and probably affect computer performance if they stayed permanently. (Sort of like having 10 gazillion fonts installed - who?? me??) But, boy....you'd think they'd tell a person this. Once I had this licked I was back to the project and the next wall I ran into was a problem in the tutorial....the author was assuming I knew things I do not and that I would know I had to create a new layer for my "shape". LOL. It took me hours to complete the following, which I don't even care for particularly, but I did it ALL from scratch, including the pattern on the background. What you see here is what some digital scrapbooking sites call a Plopper - all you need to do is insert a picture between the parchment layer and the background and add some journalling and/or embellishment.



Oh, the shape, of course, is the peacock. Yah know, I don't even think I have a picture that goes with the frame. ROTFL....

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