Digital Scrapbooking Day is on its way, and the festivities have already begun at Pixels & Company! And boy, is there a lot going on this week! I’m here today to break it all down for you. Let’s dive in, shall we?!
It’s Time for a Sale
We have some awesome specials in the shop for DSD! First, the entire store is 35% off now through Sunday:
But you also have the ability to save as much as 50% off your entire order during the celebration, and here’s how:
>> Save 40% off when you spend over $25
>> Save 45% off when you spend over $40
>> Save 50% off when you spend over $50
This applies to the whole store and there are so many amazing deals to be had! Be sure you roam every corner of the shop and check it out—because you don’t want to miss out on these bargains.
I’m adding some more confetti to the party, too! Be sure to check out my DSD Deal of the Day every day, now through Sunday:
Every day there will be a different kit offered for the low, low price of just $2.00! Check back here every day during our DSD Sale and see what the Deal of the Day is today!
New This Week
As for me, I have a fantastic new collab to share with you today! Mari and I had both been thinking of making our own kits for Halloween this year, but we both felt like we wouldn’t have enough time before DSD to make something awesome. It left us feeling blue! So, Mari suggested that we get together and make one amazing Halloween collab!
Here is our new beautifully spooky kit, Happy Haunting:
This collection contains 18 papers, 78 elements and an uppercase iron alphabet with numbers and some punctuation. You can also purchase the papers and elements separately as well (but you’ll save when you purchase the entire kit together!).
Here are some amazing pages from the girls on my creative team. First, here is a page that is simply darling from LeeAndra:
I love the centered composition of this pretty page from Pamie:
And I love the way that Judie used the alpha on her beautiful page:
The Company Stash
Also the November Company Stash has arrived a few days early! Here are my contributions to this month’s coordinating collection.
First, I have a pack of patterned papers: Hopeless Romantic : Papers
Then there is a set of plain watercolor solids: Hopeless Romantic : Watercolor Papers
Next, I created a set of elements that includes 73 pieces of coordinating paint and word art elements. There is also an additional folder that contains 6 stamps and an .abr file so that you can use these pretty elements with other kits, too.
Here is the Hopeless Romantic : Paint pack:
And finally, I topped it all off with a wooden alphabet: Hopeless Romantic : Alpha
Here’s a gorgeous page from Amy using different pieces of the Stash:
And a pretty page from Susanne that uses lots of paint along with the watercolored papers:
Now—for even more goodies!
P&Co. Blog Hop
The girls at P&Co. are having a blog hop, as you may know (maybe that’s why you’re here? LOL!). As part of our hop, I thought I would share 5 little time-saving tricks about Photoshop that I’ve discovered over the years—and they are huge time savers for me. I thought they could be helpful to you, too!
>> Move a Layer with a Keyboard Shortcut – Have you ever been busy layering flowers, leaves and labels on a page and thought, “Gee, I think that element needs to be on top of this other one”? Well, you don’t need to move over to your mouse. If you hold down CTRL and use the bracket keys, you can move a layer up (CTRL + ]) or down (CTRL + [) with a quick keystroke! This can be a huge time saver as you decide where you want to place things. You can keep making changes quickly with a tap of the keys instead of spending a lot of time dragging an element up and down in the Layers tab with your mouse.
>> Drag & Drop to Place Elements – Let’s say that you’ve opened up a new kit and picked out a paper you want to use. Now you’re looking over the kit’s elements and you see several things you want to play with. Select each item (hold CTRL and click on each one to select it), then drag them from your folder into Photoshop and release the mouse once you’ve landed on your paper. Photoshop will start to place each file on a separate layer for you. (Bonus: it also saves the file names of each element as the name of the layer. You won’t have to struggle to remember what kits you used when you’re writing up the credits for your page!)
>> Do it all with Styles – If you’ve been scrapping digitally for a while, you’ve probably discovered that you can add your favorite drop shadow settings to your Styles tab for quick and easy shadowing. (And if you didn’t know that, now you do! Just select the shadowed layer and click on the “Create New Style” button in the Style tab). But did you know that you can also save things like Blending Modes as a style, too? I like to use Overlay and Soft Mode a lot, so I’ve created four styles for myself: Overlay at 100% opacity, Overlay at 50%, Soft Light at 100% and Soft Light at 50%. Now when I want to blend something, instead of spending time looking though the drop down menu, I can quickly make changes by clicking through those options in my Styles tab to see which one looks best!
>> Make Yourself an Action – Is there something that you do over and over again in Photoshop? You should consider automating the whole process by recording your own action! For example, when it comes to making the preview for a new kit, I know I will need to save several different sizes for my shop and for my blog. So, I have one action linked to a key (I picked F6), and every time I hit that key, Photoshop takes over and starts resizing, sharpening and saving things for me! It’s something I don’t have to spend any time doing anymore. In seconds I am done and moving one to something that’s a lot more fun. I’ve made actions for myself that will make a brush, save an element, turn a photo black and white… once you start making actions that work with the press of a button, it gets to be very addictive and you find yourself thinking of new ways you can save yourself more time!
>> Use A Brush Without Loading it – Have you ever bought a brush pack but found you didn’t need to use all 27 brushes right away? Well, if you have a .png copy of that brush or stamp, there’s a magic little button in your Layers tab that you can use to lock its transparent pixels. Locking the pixels allows you to recolor any .png without having to worry about adding it to your brush collection! (For more on this technique, check out my tutorial here: How to Change the Colors of .PNG)
I hope you find these little tips to be helpful!
Freebies Just for You
And now… for the freebies!
First of all, the P&Co. girls have made this awesome new collection for DSD, North of Ordinary:
And you can pick it up for FREE now through Sunday. Here’s how:
Jump aboard the blog train. (Congrats! If you’re here, you’re already on it!)
Collect the letter or number from each designer’s blog—and make sure you’ve started at the top, because when you put all the letters together, it will spell out a coupon code that you can use to pick up the kit for free! (The phrase should make sense once you’ve picked up all the pieces. If not, you might have missed a blog!)
Once you have the code, just add North of Ordinary to your cart, enter the code and you’ll be able to check out with the kit for free!
Here is my letter:
(ps. The first letter of the code is on the P&Co. blog—if you didn’t start there, be sure to jump back to the beginning!)
Here is the list of all participating designers:
P&Co.
Scooty’s Designs
Amanda Yi Designs
Mari Koegelenberg
Dawn Farias
Digital Scrapbook Ingredients
creashens
Sabrina’s Creations
Scotty Girl Design
KimB’s Designs
Celeste Knight
Jen Allyson
Mommyish
Sugarplum Paperie
Kelleigh Ratzlaff Designs
Robyn Meierotto
Wishing Well Creations
Anita Designs
Deena Rutter
Karla Dudley
Gennifer Bursett
If this is your first time visiting my blog, you may not know that I have a three FREE coordinating mini kits available, just for you! It’s the Lovely Day : Collection (and it will be retiring at the end of the year, so be sure to pick them up soon!).
Here’s where you can get each piece:
Be sure to like me on Facebook, stop by my shop and sign up for my newsletter to pick up all the pieces!
And in Closing…
Well, to finish off my longest.blog.post.ever, let me end by telling you how thankful I am for your support over the years…
This DSD marks my 7th year designing and it all started right here on this site when I opened the Sugarplum Shop on November 3, 2007. It doesn’t feel like it could possibly be that long, but when I think back to the early days it just warms my heart! I was so nervous to launch my own shop into a sea full of competition. I had heard rumors that other designers could be mean and ruthless people, so it was scary. LOL!
But then I was invited to be a part of the Sunshine Girls where I learned that actually, other designers could be very supportive and helpful! I also hosted my first creative team calls and made some dear friends through having my own team. It was actually a CT guest of mine that first introduced me to the owner of the Digichick, which became my first big shop! Then one day I moved into the role of store owner at TDC and I really learned how great this community is. The friendships I made there with other designers, admins, creative team girls and customers have lasted through the years (in part, thanks to Facebook! Ha!). I’ve even been lucky to get to meet and hang out with some of these girls in real life, too. Sometimes, with all the miles that separate us, it can feel like we are all alone in our own part of the world. Meeting people who are just as passionate about digital scrapbooking as you are is a treat—you “get” one another and you can talk for hours, too! Watching all your kids play together is pretty amazing, too.
At the end of the day, as I look back at all the places I’ve been lucky a part of, my heart is just so full. I’ve learned so much as a designer. I’ve grown so much, too! Many people have helped me to get here and have invested in my success. I feel so fortunate to have made so many good friends along the way. And I feel so blessed that my customers enjoy using the things I make! Sure, it’s fun to make kits for the sake of making pretty things… but the best feeling comes from seeing how you all use those things. There’s nothing like it! I love getting to be a part of your memory keeping process. It’s such a privilege—it gives me goosebumps to think about it!
For all this and for all your support I am so grateful! Thanks for making it a wonderful seven years.
Sending you a ton of wishes for lots and lots of Happy Scrapping this DSD weekend!
Nicole