Something I Made!!

Well, Christmas is coming and it seems everyone is in the Christmas spirit, but much more cautious about spending. While many are hitting the stores, there are just as many finding ways to cut costs, and still enjoy the Spirit of Christmas. To me, its be a new, exciting challenge to see how I can create something new, spend less, and make it special. Photography allows for so many options and whether you print your photos at home, or send them out, there are special discounts for first time orders, free shipping, and more. There are three areas that I focused this year and here is what I did:

1) Holiday Office Party and Gift Exchange: I decided to make it homemade. I found a vintage style Candy pedestal for under $10. I was making holiday candies for family and friends so I made 2 doz to go along with the gift. All the candies were simple recipes using pretzels, oreos, peanut butter, rolos. For the recipes I used give me a call!

2) Christmas Cards. I made my own. The photo in this listing was a tree I found on my photography expeditions. A little photoshopping, a few snowflake brushes, a Word Art layer, and some other layers (all free, including the cardinal!!) and I am good to go! If you can't find any of the free things I am talking about, drop me an email or leave me a comment on this post and I will point you in the right directions.

3) Family gift exchange. This year, we are taking a cue from Just Something I Made and the gifts are coming from inside our house! Just go to her site and click on the Thrifty Gift Exchange Post on December 14th! We all have so much stuff in our house that we don't need, don't use, that someone else may enjoy. Why not give it a try. Our family is now on the phone, talking, trying to figure out what they are going to give up, or bring, and its really stirring up some humor, stories, and excitement.

I hope you will try to do the holidays and little different this year. You don't have to do it all, just pick a few things you can do and make it happen. You will be surprise how much fun it is!

First PhotoShop Lesson with Jessica Sprague

I had my first PhotoShop Lesson today with Jessica Sprague and as an on line class it was easy to navigate, easy to learn. She teaches you different techniques designed for Digital Scrapbooking, but it also is helping me learn how to improve my photos, create unique accents to the photos, size them correctly for reprints and more. This is all from a free class she is offering this month in celebration of her website/company birthday celebration.

I definitely plan to take some more classes from her but for now, I am learning quite a bit and its free! I had a question regarding setting my workstation up and downloading some files, and I sent a note to them and immediately got a response within an hour! I was truly impressed.

Why I like this class? I can take each lesson at my own pace, go back and replay the class unlimited times as I perfect my skills. Jessica really took the time to set this up for any one to learn, the audio is clear, she gives clear instructions, and is available to answer questions should you get stumped. When I choose to learn more, the classes are priced reasonably and to me, well worth the minimal expense. Here is the sample photo I designed digitally using Photoshop Elements.

Let me know what you think!! The photo above was one of the first lessons. It included cropping, applying a brush, text art, and using layers. Its not the perfect picture layout as I am just practicing, having some fun, but it certainly opens up all kinds of ideas on how to portray my photos. Anyone can do this. Its easy once you become accustomed to.