Two questions from a newbie

[iadoremac]

Hello,
This is my first post on the board. I am so inspired by all of your wonderful work on here. I am very new to digi scrapbooking i've been doing it for less than a month and have some questions. I would like to make some papers / kits of my own. Is there a tutorial on how to do this somewhere? Any tips? I have bought several and downloaded some of the free ones but have some ideas and would like to make some for the freebie area as well. The second question I have is I love the altered collage section on this site. How do you make those? I'm sorry if these are stupid questions but i'm new. Thank you for any help you may be able to offer me. Have a great day.

[Vania16]

First of all - welcome :) Glad you're posting! As for your questions, there are some great tutorials in the forums here - including some that Nancie and Michelle put together on designing paper and elements, you can find that here. . .

http://www.scrapartist.com/scrapforums/showthread.php?t=717

As for the collage stuff, I'm sure there are others who are better suited than I to answer, but I generally extract the person or object I want to use from my photo (if you're using photoshop there's a tool to do this in the filters pull down) and then add whatever other elements and background papers suit me - there's a bunch of great stuff in the shoppe for that - brushes, ATC stuff and of course Hope's wonderful designs! Hope that helps :)

[happyrobyn]

No stupid questions!! As far as collage/altered art goes, a good place to start is by participating in the altered/collage challenge every week. We are learning different techniques to create the looks. The best place to start is by designing from your heart. There are no limits in collage. You can use whatever elements that work for you. If you choose to cut out your objects, you need to extract them with your photo editing software. Or you can purchase some of Hope's already put together stuff from right here in the Scrap Artist shoppe. If you have any specific questions, feel free to email me directly - Robyn@ScrapArtist.com

[iadoremac]

Thank you ladies so much for the advice. I'm fixing to sit down and read the paper tutorial after I type this. I do have one more question how do you extract things in Photoshop 7? I told you i'm very new to all of this :o Thanks again so much. I love this site.

[happyrobyn]

Open the image you want to extract, then double click on the layer that says 'background' then you can re-name it. Doesn't matter what you call it - just name it something. This will unlock the layer. Then take your selection tool of choice - I like the pen tool and trace your outline of the thing you are extracting. Once you get your selection, invert it and hit delete. (I usually feather the selection 1 or 2 pixels before I hit delete.) Then you should have your nice, ewxtracted image. I hope this helps!

[NishaM]

See how sweet these girls are, just wanted to say welcome to SA have fun - Nisha

[scallywag]

You are going to thoroughly enjoy your time here at SA, and everyone is always willing to help. Welcome!

[iadoremac]

Thank you all for the kind welcomes. This is my fave messageboard !! LOVE IT !! Everyone has been wonderful. HappyRobyn thank you so much for the tips on extracting. I am playing around in photoshop as I type this. I will be posting to the altered/collage challenges in no time :) (I hope) Thanks again girls !

[happyrobyn]

I can't wait to have you join in! I look forward to seeing your work. Let us know if you ever need anymore help.