Guild designer Dee Bee Designs has created a wonderful summer themed kit, “Sheltered Cove” as an exclusive design for the readers of the Artisan Notebook ™. This kit is available as a FREE Gift with the purchase of the June 2011 Artisan Notebook. Be sure and pick up your copy and be inspired to scrap your summer travels and vacations using this wonderful kit from Dee Bee Designs and the fantastic ideas found in the June issue!

Artisan Notebook contributing editor Debb Cozzi created this layout using the kit:

Debb shares these thoughts about the layout and how she created it:

This is a photo of my youngest son, taken eight years ago. My son is getting ready to graduate from 8th grade and he has grown up to be a very special young man. But when I look at photos like this I can’t help but feel a certain nostalgic sentiment. I confess I do miss and long for those days of my son’s young boyhood! One of the great things about our hobby is the chance to go back and work with these photos and all the special memories they represent! Following is a quick tutorial on how I created this layout using PSCS2.

1) Open background (I used “P_ShelteredCove9_DBDesigns” for this layout).

2) Open your photo (In this instance I did manipulate the photo a bit. I used my oval select tool with a feather setting of 20. I selected an oval around my son, inverted the selection and then created a slight blur in the background by going to: Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Use the radius slider to soften the focus. Once you get the look you like, click “okay.”)

3) Drag the photo on top of the background and use the move tool to expand the photo to the same size as the background. (Click on the corner of the photo, hold down the shift key and drag the photo out; this constrains the proportions of the photo so that there are no size distortions.)

Layer 1 background, Layer 2 photo

4) Set the blend mode of the photo to “multiply”

sand element added on top of photo

5) Add sand element and set the blend mode of the sand to “darker color”

add fence element-adjust shadows

6) Here I added the fence element. I used a style to add a drop shadow. To make the drop-shadow even more realistic make the fence layer active and then go to layer>layer style>create layer. This moves the drop shadow to its own layer. You can then use the move tool to adjust the placement of the shadow to give it a more realistic look.

add elements to "build" scene

7) I continued to add elements to fill in the details of the scene. When you do this pay attention to scale-make sure the size of the elements relate in a realistic way with the people in the photo.

add boat element to photo

8. I added the little boat element so as to look as if it is a toy my son left to bob around in the gentle waves. There is a great water element in this kit that allowed me to give the boat the illusion that it is in the water.

Added Frame

9) Because the word art I was planning on using had the phrase “Picture Perfect Memory” I wanted to play with the idea of “framing” the scene as if it were a preserved memory. I like the way the frame “breaks into” the scene and gives the whole layout a visual playfulness.

merged visable layers

10) I wanted to give the layout a frame using one of the other backgrounds in the kit. First I merged the layout (right-click in the layers panel and left-click on “merge visible.”)

Resize layout

11) I then resized the layout (image>image size) In the dialog box enter 11.5 inches and click okay.

add layout to new background

12) Open the background you want to use as a frame for the layout (I used “P_ShelteredCove6_DBDesigns”) Use your move tool to click and drag the layout onto the background. Because of the way I placed the frame in the layout I placed the layout in the lower-left corner of the background which framed the top and right side of the layout. To finish the layout I added a drop-shadow to the “layout” level.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. We would love to see what you do with both the tutorial and the kit and invite you to post your layouts in the Guild gallery.

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