Realistic Tip | Creative Team Member | Christy Haig
Hello Fellow Scrappers, today I have a realistic tip for you.
I would describe myself as a realistic scrapbooker. I like my digital pages to look fairly realistic like they could be done with actual paper scrapbook supplies. Today I want to show you one of the tricks I use to make pages more realistic.
Here is a layout I'm almost done with using the kit Bedtime Ritual.
Check out the heart stamps on the left side of the photo.
I want the stamp to look like it is on the picture and going off the side onto the background paper. Why doesn't it look realistic? Notice that I have the picture shadowed. I shadowed it to make it look like it sits a tiny bit off the page. In real life, if I were to stamp over it, the stamp would push down the picture tight to the background and stamp both of them. When I lifted the stamp up, the picture would pop back up and the stamp would look a bit broken apart at the edge of the picture.
Take a look at this close-up and then I will share 2 tips to make it more realistic.
First, the heart stamps on my layout are placed on a layer above my picture. That way they show up over the picture, but it also means that they are sitting above the shadow around the picture. The part on the background paper should be sitting under the shadow. To fix this I am first going to duplicate the heart stamp layer.
One of the layers (we'll call it layer 1) I'm going to leave above the photo. For layer 1 I'm going to clip it to the photo so that only the part on the photo shows and the part of the photo is hidden. If your program doesn't do clipping, you can do the same thing by erasing or cutting away all of the stamp on layer 1 that is off the side of the photo and leaving the hearts that are on the photo.
The second heart layer (layer 2) I'm going to move to a layer below the photo. Layer 2 can stay complete - you don't need to clip or erase anything from it. However, you should no longer see the part of layer 2 that is under the photo, just the part that is sticking out the side of the photo.
Here is a close-up of the result. Notice that it looks mostly the same, however, we are now seeing two different heart stamp layers. Layer 1 is on the photo. Layer 2 is sticking out from the photo but is now under the photo's shadow. This is a step closer to realism since in paper scrapbooking the shadow would be going onto the stamp on the background paper.
Now for tip #2. In paper scrapbooking the photo, after being stamped, would pop back up a bit off the background paper. It often makes the stamp look a bit "broken" along that line. I create that look by moving one of the heart layers over and up or down just a tiny bit. Check it out:
Here is my finished layout. I love how the stamps turned out! Now it is your turn to try it!
Happy Scrapping!
Christy Haig
Creative Team Member
Bedtime Ritual by Humble and Create