One of the really fantastic things about writing Scraps of Mind is that I get to meet (in a virtual sense) many wonderful people from all around the globe in the scrapbooking blogosphere.

One such person is Joe Cheray from Wildheart’s Web 2.0.

Joe wrote a series of articles on Scraps of Mind a while back called Texture Tuesday where she showed us how you can create and use textures in digital scrapbooking.  She and I have been blog buddies ever since we both went through the Blog Mastermind Course together.

Anyhow, it seems Joe was invited by her local Kansas TV station to do an interview about digital scrapbooking and during the interview she gave Scraps of Mind a plug. How cool is that?

You can see the interview here.

Thank you Joe.

I really appreciate you thinking of me.  Especially when you must have had a bunch of nerves to deal with at the thought of being interviewed on TV.

Scraps Of Mind - All about scrapbokking, digital scrapbooking and hybrid scrapbooking

Join Wildheart of Wildheart’s Works for this week’s edition of Texture Tuesday. Wildheart is a Paintshop Pro expert, but I know you’ll enjoy the tips and tricks even if you’re not a PaintShop Pro user. And you’ll find plenty of ideas to help you work with textures in your own program.

Time to Think About Your Christmas Designing

With Thanksgiving just a couple of weeks away and Black Friday the day after it is time to start thinking about getting your sites ready for Christmas if you haven’t already started to.

I put together a few tiles to get us thinking about Christmas site designing and prepping.

You can see more of Wildheart’s textures at her blog, Wildheart Works or feel free to contact her at joecheray@gmail.com

Other Articles You Might Like:

Texture Tuesday -last week’s segment

Get a Traffic Rush to Your Blog with StumbleUpon

Scrapbook idea – Dressing up your photos

Scraps Of Mind - All about scrapbokking, digital scrapbooking and hybrid scrapbooking

Wildheart’s Texture Tuesday series has been running on Scrap of Mind for 5 months now.

In that time she has brought us many beautiful and interesting textures. And I thought it might be a good idea to talk about how I like to use them in my own scrapbooking.

Regular readers of Scraps of Mind will know that I’m a user of Photoshop Elements 5. My understanding of the mechanics of other software programs is limited so I’m writing this from a PSE perspective.

What is a Texture?

Textures change the surface of your photo or element to look like it is made from another material

In PSE they are found in the Filters menu. And by activating a layer and applying a texture filter you can change the appearance of your photo by making it look like it is made out of another substance: canvas or brickwork for instance.

In scrapbooking textures are probably more widely used to help create interesting background papers for digital scrapbook layouts.

Unlike with brushes and gradients, PSE doesn’t allow you to load and save your own textures in the textures filter. At least I can’t find a way. If anyone knows of one I would be very grateful to hear it.

So my favorite way to use texture files is to blend them with backgrounds.

Now the beaut thing about blending textures is that it doesn’t matter if you have a low resolution texture file. It will still give a great result when you drag it out to cover your background paper and apply a blending mode.  I’ll show you what I mean.

The above image shows you a 300 pixel per inch background paper. I have dragged onto it a tiny texture image that I saved from one of Wildheart’s previous texture posts. It’s just a little 72 pixel per inch image and you can see how tiny it is. Now let’s look at what it looks like when I drag it out to the full size of the background paper.

The texture layer is now covering the background paper and although there will obviously be a degradation in quality, it will not be apparent when we complete the next step, which is to blend the two layers together.

You can blend the layers together in a variety of ways.

In this example I have used the Overlay blending mode (found in the drop down blending mode menu in the Layers Pallet). You can see the different the texture has made to the paper. It really gives it dimension and substance. And yet the paper doesn’t not look anything like the raw texture. I love doing this to customize my background papers.

You might pick a different blending mode. I recommend you select one in the blending menu. This will highlight the field in the menu box and then you can use your mouse scroll wheel to scroll through them all and pick the one you like.

Alternatively, you can reduce the opacity of the texture layer in the layers pallet to blend it softly into the layer below.

Different textures will work best with different blending options.

Have you tried using textures in this way?

Or maybe you have other favorite ways of using them. I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments below.

How do you use textures in scrapbooking?

Scraps Of Mind - All about scrapbokking, digital scrapbooking and hybrid scrapbooking

Join Wildheart of Wildheart’s Works for this week’s edition of Texture Tuesday. Wildheart is a Paintshop Pro expert, but I know you’ll enjoy the tips and tricks even if you’re not a PaintShop Pro user. And you’ll find plenty of ideas to help you work with textures in your own program.

Last week I brought you some fresh and interesting textures from Torley Textures. This week I am going to show you a few frames that I made with more of the textures found in this incredible array of stunning textures.

I recommend that if you haven’t checked out the link I gave you last week to go and download these gems, to do it this week. It is a huge asset to your texture and pattern library. They can be used in Paintshop Pro and Photoshop.

I do want to point out that for frames something that has a slight pattern or texture to it yields the best results. You could certainly use something with a bit more WOW factor. However, if you want a more uniform look to your frame then a texture or pattern with more subtle detail works best.

The first frame is made from a texture called Styxx.

This next one is Vertical Chiffon

and last but not least a lovely Mocha

I want to mention as well that I have had issues with my hosting company this week and have a back up blog and domain over at blogger yet.

I will be using http://wildheartsworks.net from now on and it should be ready to go soon after Google is finished propagating it. I am liking blogger now more than I used to as there is more out there that you can do with it than you used to be able to and you don’t have to settle for the standard templates Blogger has to offer.

You are free to snag these for your own frame files or whatever you want to use them for.

You can see more of Wildheart’s textures at her blog, Wildheart Works or feel free to contact her at joecheray@gmail.com

Other Articles You Might Like:

Texture Tuesday -last week’s segment

Get a Traffic Rush to Your Blog with StumbleUpon

Scrapbook idea – Dressing up your photos

Scraps Of Mind - All about scrapbokking, digital scrapbooking and hybrid scrapbooking

Join Wildheart of Wildheart’s Works for this week’s edition of Texture Tuesday. Wildheart is a Paintshop Pro expert, but I know you’ll enjoy the tips and tricks even if you’re not a PaintShop Pro user. And you’ll find plenty of ideas to help you work with textures in your own program.

Now after my celebration last month it is back to business.

I belong to a few Paint Shop Pro groups on Flickr and came across Torley Textures. They offer a huge pack of fun, fresh, funky, and exciting textures.

Since it is still fall and Thanksgiving will soon be here in the United States I decided I would go through the texture files I got from Torley’s site and find some fall related textures to share with you.

I like the second one. It is like a fall leaves abstract.

While the bottom one has kind of a parchment, patchwork feel to it.

I would highly encourage you to check their page on Flickr out and download the texture packs.

You can see more of Wildheart’s textures at her blog, Wildheart Works or feel free to contact her at joecheray@gmail.com

Other Articles You Might Like:

Texture Tuesday -last week’s segment

Get a Traffic Rush to Your Blog with StumbleUpon

Are you a Scrapbooking Cardmaker or a Cardmaking Scrapbooker?

Scraps Of Mind - All about scrapbokking, digital scrapbooking and hybrid scrapbooking

Join Wildheart of Wildheart’s Works for this week’s edition of Texture Tuesday. Wildheart is a Paintshop Pro expert, but I know you’ll enjoy the tips and tricks even if you’re not a PaintShop Pro user. And you’ll find plenty of ideas to help you work with textures in your own program.

As the Month Winds Down So Does the Celebration

This is the last week of October. Where did the time go?

It is my pleasure to give you a few more of my best pieces of work done with Paint Shop Pro to round out the month with.

Click thumbnail to view larger image

Click thumbnail to view larger image

Click thumbnail to view larger image

Click thumbnail to view larger image

The second one to the bottom is a tutorial I found on the internet. The bottom one is a tube challenge I participated in over at www.pspclassiccreations.com.

The top two are my own ideas you may recognize the golden bars of notes from a piece I showed last week.

I want to thank Karen and her readers here for letting me showcase my work and also for helping  me celebrate my blogiversary over here as well. It has been a great year and it can only get better. It has been a pleasure to show my skills to others and to also let them see how much I am growing as a digital designer.

Wildheart has been celebrating her blog’s first anniversary during October. Why not click over there and check out what’s been happening?

You can see more of Wildheart’s textures at her blog, Wildheart Works or feel free to contact her at joecheray@gmail.com

Other Articles You Might Like:

Texture Tuesday -last week’s segment

Get a Traffic Rush to Your Blog with StumbleUpon

Are you a Scrapbooking Cardmaker or a Cardmaking Scrapbooker?

Scraps Of Mind - All about scrapbokking, digital scrapbooking and hybrid scrapbooking

Join Wildheart of Wildheart’s Works for this week’s edition of Texture Tuesday. Wildheart is a Paintshop Pro expert, but I know you’ll enjoy the tips and tricks even if you’re not a PaintShop Pro user. And you’ll find plenty of ideas to help you work with textures in your own program.

The Celebration Continues

In the ongoing month-long celebration over at Wildheart’s Works’ one year blogiversary I am bringing you some more of my best work.

It has been such a great year. Some of the pivotal milestones in my blogging career have been:

• My first Joint Venture deal with Karen here at Scraps of Mind.
• Finally being able to buy my own domain.
• Taking Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind Course.
• Learning the power of a Stumble.
• And I made some new friends over on Twitter with Wendy Persails list of Twitter mom’s project.

Last but not least I have been growing as a digital artist.

Please enjoy four more of my best pieces.

Note: To use the texture below just click on the thumbnail image and then right click and choose Save Target as… or Save link as… and then save it to your Texture Preset folder as a JPG file. You can then load it as a texture in your photo editing software program.

This last one was a piece inspired by Nanson’s Place. I added the sparkles and the little ink blots. Still this is one of my most favorite pieces working with the gradients in Paint Shop Pro.

Wildheart is celebrating her blog’s first anniversary. Why not click over there and check out what’s happening?

You can see more of Wildheart’s textures at her blog, Wildheart Works or feel free to contact her at joecheray@gmail.com

Other Articles You Might Like:

Texture Tuesday -last week’s segment

Get a Traffic Rush to Your Blog with StumbleUpon

Scrapbook Idea – Scrapbook Your Garden

Scraps Of Mind - All about scrapbokking, digital scrapbooking and hybrid scrapbooking

Join Wildheart of Wildheart’s Works for this week’s edition of Texture Tuesday. Wildheart is a Paintshop Pro expert, but I know you’ll enjoy the tips and tricks even if you’re not a PaintShop Pro user. And you’ll find plenty of ideas to help you work with textures in your own program.

The Best of Wildheart

In celebration of my blog’s one year anniversary I am going to offer to Scraps of Mind readers this month what I consider my best work as a type of present as well as a year in review combination celebration.

I am going to start this off with some backgrounds I had made back when Yahoo360 was actually a decent blogging platform that allowed for bloggers who used that platform to be very creative while not having to learn a ton of html and css.

Note: To use these textures just click on the thumbnail images and then right click and choose Save Target as… or Save link as… and then save them to your Texture Preset folder as a JPG file. You can then load them as textures in your photo editing software program.

The first three were experiments with the seamless tiling tool in paint shop pro and then the bottom one is done with the balls and bubbles effect. And I also used an environmental map to give the bubbles a slight watery look. I used a blue and white gradient and just played around with the angle of the gradient until I found an angle I liked.

Tune in next week for more of what I consider my best work.

Wildheart is celebrating her blog’s first anniversary. Why not click over there and check out what’s happening?

You can see more of Wildheart’s textures at her blog, Wildheart Works or feel free to contact her at joecheray@gmail.com

Other Articles You Might Like:

Texture Tuesday -last week’s segment

Christmas Card Alert

Top 10 Scrapbook Ideas to Rekindle Your Scrapbooking Inspiration

Scraps Of Mind - All about scrapbokking, digital scrapbooking and hybrid scrapbooking

Join Wildheart of Wildheart’s Works for this week’s edition of Texture Tuesday. Wildheart is a Paintshop Pro expert, but I know you’ll enjoy the tips and tricks even if you’re not a PaintShop Pro user. And you’ll find plenty of ideas to help you work with textures in your own program.

In her first Guest post on Scraps of Mind, Wildheart brought you a tutorial on how to make frames in Paintshop Pro. In this week’s Texture Tuesday she answers  a reader’s question and brings you more on the world of Frames.

Answering a Reader’s Question About Multi-Section Picture Frames

Tommy asked me how to make a multi-section picture frame when he surfed into my How to Make frames with Paintshop Pro segment. This is actually very easy to do.

What I did was open a canvas 400 by 400 pixels with a background color of gray. I opened up another canvas of 200 by 200 pixels and chose an oval frame. I copied this canvas and then pasted it as a new selection. Repeated it again positioning the current past selection under the previous one.

After I completed this I then found a nice blue mat frame with a little bit of texture to it and resized it to 200 pixels by 400 pixels. Copied it and then pasted as a new selection next to the two ovals.

I JPEG optimized it and here is the final result.

Now if you want to position pictures into this it is very easy to do. I just chose the gray background to give it that look you see in stores with the different colored papers under it.

Really all you would need to do is find the images you want in the frames and then frame the images and resize them as I did above.Then placing them on a bigger canvas size adequate enough to fit the arrangement you are looking for.

You can expirement with different frames as well to see what works best for you. Also you can save them to your frames file in your paint shop pro files to use at a later date.

You can see more of Wildheart’s textures at her blog, Wildheart Works or feel free to contact her at joecheray@gmail.com

Other Articles You Might Like:

Texture Tuesday -last week’s segment

Christmas Card Alert

Top 10 Scrapbook Ideas to Rekindle Your Scrapbooking Inspiration

Scraps Of Mind - All about scrapbokking, digital scrapbooking and hybrid scrapbooking

Join Wildheart of Wildheart’s Works for this week’s edition of Texture Tuesday. Wildheart is a Paintshop Pro expert, but I know you’ll enjoy the tips and tricks even if you’re not a PaintShop Pro user. And you’ll find plenty of ideas to help you work with textures in your own program.

A Fall Texture for You

Here in the States it still feels like summer, we have had near 90 degree temps in my state of Kansas. I thought it would be nice to make a texture and a glitter tile for us to get in the fall mood .

One thing I do love about fall is that the leaves turn such beautiful colors. When I was a little girl we had a maple tree out in the front. The leaves would turn such robust colors of red and orange. Maple leaves are really, in my opinion one of the prettiest, in the fall.

Things that I love about fall also are the field trips to the pumpkin patch with my son and getting treated to apple cider, freshly made and ice cold. Oh, and pumpkin pie made from scratch, the smell of the pie permeating the whole house.

Now there is only one thing I dislike about fall and that is the ever looming approach of winter. Here in Kansas our winters have traditionally been known to be bitterly cold with wind chills below zero.

Now that I have had a chance to share a little of myself with you let me now share this fall texture …

Click image to see larger view

… and a fall glitter with you.

Click image to see larger view

To use these, or any of the textures the Wildheart has created for you in this series, just right click on the image and choose Save link as… or Save target as…

Then you can open the texture tile onto your layout and stretch it to fit. Use your blending modes to blend the texture with your background paper.

You can see more of Wildheart’s textures at her blog, Wildheart Works or feel free to contact her at joecheray@gmail.com

Other Articles You Might Like:

Texture Tuesday -last week’s segment

Scrapbook Idea: Scrapbook your Garden

Top 10 Scrapbook Ideas to Rekindle Your Scrapbooking Inspiration

Scraps Of Mind - All about scrapbokking, digital scrapbooking and hybrid scrapbooking