Awesome News and my first tutorial!

I have a new store!! Coolscrapsdigital.com has been kind enough to offer me a home and my store is officially open!! In celebration of the grand opening and my birthday I am having a sale all month!!!


It is also CSD's birthday and they have lots of fun stuff going on this month! Including a blog train, lots of sales and a treasure hunt! Here are some previews...

You can find the blog roll for the train HERE and be sure to stop by CSD to find out about all of the other goodies!

OK now for my first ever tutorial!! This is going to show how I do the soft color efect that the pictures in my header have been treated with. This is created using Photoshop CS so I am not sure how it will relate to other programs but the general process I am sure can be duplicated. I am going to use my favorite picture of my oldest baby girl as an example. So first you want to open and resize. I like to use a 4x6 to start with most layouts so that is what this is set too. Here is your first screen...

now you want to go to Image>Image size and use these settings for a print resolution picture.

next I like to sharpen a little so I go to filter>sharpen>unsharp mask...

Now I like to keep the amount low and use the radius to do maost of the sharpening to avoid over pixilating. The settings I used here are amount=40, radius=4.0, and threshold=0.

The next step is to duplicate the picture 2 times so that you end up with 3 copies of the same picture. You can either right click and select duplicate layer or you can go to Layer>Duplicate Layer. Now you go to your second layer and change the blending mode to screen and then to the top layer and change the blending mode to soft light. After this select the circle at the bottom of the layer pallete and choose chanel mixer. Your screen should look something like this...

Now check the monochrome box at the bottom and I always use 100% red channel because of the soft glowy look it gives skin in portraits but you can experiment with different % in each channel if you would like. Here is what my box looks like...

Now finally take the channel mixer layer and pull it down below both of the duplicate layers. Now you can adjust the opacity on the top two layers to get the look you are going for and you are done! Here is the final screen and you can also see the final picture in my header also.

I also made an action of my steps for this tutorial and I am giving is away as a participation prize in my brand new photogrpahy challenges at both scrapbird.com and coolscrapsdigital.com. Be sure to go by and join in the fun to get the action for free! Hope you enjoyed and as always have a great day and happy scrapping!!

New Release and a Freebie!

My new kit Summer Blues is in the store today!! It will be 50% off from today until Sunday so be sure to head on over to Scrap Bird and pick it up! I had soooo much fun with this kit and it is my favorite so far! Here is a preview and some lovely layouts from me and some other very talented ladies :)

layouts by me

layout by Stephanie

layout by Rose

layout by Kay

And as if the kit wasn't enough I made and add on sampler with some neat word art, velum strips and a really cute buggy!

DOWNLOAD HERE

I am also still in search of some lovely ladies to be on my Creative Team so if you are interested please e-mail me at francoisphotography@yahoo.com. I require 2 layouts per kit posted to 3 galleries and hope to release 2 kits a month. I also would like some enabling and blog posts (if you have a blog) for each kit. Hope to hear from you and as always have a great day and happy scrapping!

A Mommy Tip

So I don't know if anyone has heard of Once Upon A Child but if you have kids who wear clothes up to size 14 you should check it out for sure! I LOVE that place! You can sell your gently used clothes and also get great deals on brand name clothes that aren't stained or completely worn out. I love Old Navy, Baby Gap, Target and Children's Place for the girls because they seem to fit well on my TALL children and I can get them super cheap there! Jeans are only like $5.50 for Aubrey (3T) and shirts I can get anywhere from $2.50-$4.50! Awesome savings! So if there is one in your area be sure to check it out cause I know everyone is looking to save a little money here lately :)

Freebie Friday on Saturday :)

Sorry this has to be short and sweet! Here is your Friday freebie, sorry it is on Saturday but better late than never! It is an add on cluster Frame for my kit Backyard Dreams. Hope you like it! Also I have a new kit coming soon so keep your eyes open!

Download Here

And as always have a great day (well night) and happy scrapping!

Freebie Friday

Well it is almost Saturday so I will have to postpone Friday's Freebie until then...Sorry I haven't been home much today and school starts next week so got lots going on here! I'll be back tomorrow for sure! Have a great night and happy scrapping :)

New Release and a Freebie

New release from ME today!! I finally got a little something done on the design end of things and made this quickpage album with my kit Backyard Dreams. It is on sale today through Friday 50% off! So go head over and pick it up at Scrap Bird Also Scrap Bird is having a weekly sale called Crazy Thursdays and they have select products on sale 50% off that day. I will have both Backyard Dreams and Love Story on sale 50% off tomorrow as part of the sale! So you could get all three products for 50% off tomorrow!

I also have a little freebie add on for you. One more coordinating quickpage that is NOT in the album in the store :) Just a bonus so if you like it you can go buy the album (wink, wink)

You can download HERE

Also my kit Love Story (below) is on sale at Stone Accents Studio for $2.50 so be sure to head over and take a look!
OK enough of the product stuff...and if you made it this far thanks for reading and not just pulling a grab and go! I was chosen to be a covergirl at Scrapbook Graphics for the month of October!! Yay!! :) I don't know if I had said that yet but I am so excited! (can you tell? I already added my blinkie to my blog...lol) I can't wait for October. I also would really like to participate in a blog train for October if anyone knows of any please drop me a line on here! I know of a few but was just wondering if anyone knew of anything really cool or one with some familiar faces. So as always have a great day and happy scrapping!!!

New Releases from DID

Lots of cool new Releases from the fantastic designers at Designs in Digital! Here are two the first is from RK Designs and the second is from Page Frocks. Both are gorgeous and of course I have included some layouts that I did so you can see them in action :)

You can pick up this kit HERE

and it will be on sale 50% off today and 30% off through Sat.

You can get this kit HERE

and it is also 50% off today and 30% off through Saturday

She also has a fabulous free Quick Page for you HERE

Also Designs in Digital
is having a speed scrap tonight Wed night at 8pm CST so if you can make it come! It is alot of fun and you also get this awesome participation prize....

Also if you tried to download the previous Love Story quickpage and couldn't try again please...It was brought to my attention that all of my download links were password protected so I fixed that. Sorry! Have a great day and Happy Scrapping!!