25 Days of Christmas {Day 3}

**ETA: This giveaway is now closed--winner will be announced at midnight**

So today, we visit my realm of creating art...digital designing. YOU are going to be able to get a taste of what a designer does by creating your own very basic doodled frame (no drawing skills OR Tablet needed). First, let's meet one of my most FAVORITE digi designers out there.

One Little Bird Designs is the baby of Peppermint (yes, that's her real name...LOVE IT!!)

She doesn't know that I had secretly been stalking her when she just created digital layouts. She had this way of mixing stuff up on a page that was candy to the eye!! I finally got up the nerve to ask her to be on my Creative Team and she amazingly said yes! It wasn't long before she starting designing on her own and she was creating eye-candy for digi-scrappers to buy. I was in heaven....I even got the privilage to do a collab with her...

Tranquil

If that isn't enough, the girl's got a serious way of instigating side-splitting laughter. She's hilarious to boot...visit her blog to see what I mean.

Now that you've met today's sponsor, let's get to that tutorial. To create this, you will need some version of Photoshop (elements or creative suite). The instructions may vary depending on your program, but the general idea will be the same.

Put on your designing hats & let's get started!!

First you need to open a new document. I always work in a 12x12 inch document so that I can get perspective of a scrapbooking layout when creating my elements because that's where most of my customers use them. Go to File>New> and then name your document, choose the dimensions 12x12, select 300 pixels/inch resolution and then Background contents should be set to transparent.

(Fig. 1)

Set your foreground color to black and select the line tool by pressing U for custom shape tool and then right click and select the line tool. On the tool option bar (below the menu bar) set the line weight to about 8 px and select the fill pixels box (see Fig. 4)

(Fig. 2)

(Fig. 3)

(Fig. 4)

Create a rectangle by dragging your clicking and dragging your mouse for each side. Don't worry about it being perfect because it's gotta look like a DOODLED rectangle. :) Once you are done with your rectangle, we need to distort it to make it look more like a doodle. To do this, go to Filter>Distort>Twirl. Set the twirl to about a 15 degree angle by adjusting the slider...click okay. This will make your frame look really wacky...it's okay because we will adjust it to our liking later.

(Fig. 5)
(Fig. 6)
(Fig. 7)

Add a new layer by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+N and do step three again, only set the angle degree to about -15 degrees. Again, it's going to look really weird...it's okay! We are going to use the transforming warp tool to tweak the doodle to make it look less crazy. Go to Edit>Transform>Warp (or CTRL+T) and this will create a grid lines with rounded points over the image. These are dragging points that you click on and move around to get the look you want. Play around with them by dragging them in and out to get the look you want. You will want to do this to BOTH doodled layers that you created.

(Fig. 8)
(Fig. 9)
(Fig. 10)

And that's IT!! Just add some text and a shape to spruce it up and you've got yourself a frame that you can proudly say that you created!! :)

Okay, let's get to that giveaway...

One Little Bird is giving away TWO sets of her
12 Days Layered Templates & 12 Days Word Art.

AND lucky for those of you who don't win, you can still get these two items at an exclusive 20% off to my blog readers!! She has a coupon code for you..use code: 25DaysLS The code expires on Jan. 15th

Here's how to win (remember, I will be drawing 2 winners this time):

*post a comment for one chance to win
*post about this on Facebook (using this link: http://leora-sanford.blogspot.com/ ) and leave a comment to your FB post here by copying and pasting the http address in your browser window for a second chance to win

*tweet about this on Twitter (using this link:http://leora-sanford.blogspot.com/ ) OR retweet my tweet and leave a comment to your tweet here by copying and pasting the http address in your browser window for a third chance to win

GOOD LUCK and feel free to link me up to your layouts using your newly created doodled frame!! I would LOOOOOVE to see them! You have until tonight at 9:00 MST to enter.
Don't forget to visit our sponsors. :)
Leora

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Congrats to the winner of the CRH $25 Gift Card:



Congrats Yanina!! Email me at: sanfleo [at] cableone [dot] net