Hi
It’s Anna here with my first 4 play challenge as a host.
Each week we choose 4 kits to mix & match exclusively.The challenge is to ONLY use items from the 4 kits that were chosen.
I decided to choose kits that either have my fave colour combos or elements that I always use while digi scrapping (i.e. stitches and masks and brads and brushes). It was difficult to limit myself just to four as there are so many great kits in store but finally I came up with the following ones:
Agnes Biro – Renewed Spirit elements
Sara Schmutz – ABC paper pack
Robyn Meierotto – In Stitches – Bright Basics
Tiffany Tillman – Artistic Photo Masks – set 1
And here’s what my great girlfriends at DHD created with these kits with some short summary of their work process.
First one by Aria:
Aria said:
Being my first 4play submission, it took me awhile to figure out how I wanted to put everything together. I absolutely loved the kits that were chosen this time, especially the artistic photo masks by Tiffany Tillman. I made the photo black and white to blend with some of the neutral colors of the paper and elements and clipped the photo to one of the artistic masks. It was so fun to use Robyn Meierotto’s stitching to embellish around the title and other elements!
Celeste explained:
When I saw Sarah’s ABC papers, I immediately thought I should scrap about something my son’s teacher said at our conference. I decided to use Tiffany’s photo mask clipped to some patterned paper as a little splash behind my paper and photo grouping. I lessened the opacity a bit to make it more dreamy looking. This element pack of Agnes’ is just brimming with goodies. it was hard to choose what to finish my page off with. Always a lover of buttons and brads, I gravitated towards those! The icing on the layout comes from Robyn’s stitches, if you don’t have them in your stash already, I suggest you RUN to the store and pick them up!
And next is Tiffany:
Tiffany shared:
I loved how easy and flawlessly I was able to combine two pattern papers using Tiffany’s masks. I used yet another of the masks to blend the photo into the pattern paper photo matt. I loved the old fashioned feel of this photo of my niece with her cousin and combined the old fashioned elements of lace, stitching and buttons with the pretty paper flowers to compliment my page design. I was thrilled with the way that these four kits worked together to complete my layout.
and finally me:
As I mentioned I love the colours of the kits so I decided to find a photo that would match them and I chose one of my fave blue bowed ballerinas. I processed it with a photo action by Coffee shop to make it look more dreamy and made it square as I liked this format best. Then I added a perfect for square format white Polaroid like frame and some brads and stitches which I can’t scrap without. I also used some script brushes from Agnes’ kit and two of Tiffany’s masks to add interest to the background. I changed their colours into blue and played with blending modes and opacity to blend them well together. Finally I looked for a quote that would match the page 
and found one I liked – hopefully you’ll find it inspirational too. I love using quotes on my pages as I’m not a great journaler myself but I’m very fond of collecting the words that I find encouraging and inspiring so I put them on my layouts to remember them.
Don’t forget that today only (ends Monday at midnight PST), you can get each of these kits for only a dollar, and one is even FREE! So go grab them, and then play along. Upload a layout using these four kits to the DHD gallery by Sunday, then come back here and post a link to it. Not only will you learn to stretch your kits, but you could win a gift certificate to DHD!
(Congrats to janfrn, last week’s winner!)
Today I am going to show you how versatile my cutting files can be. I always include PNG files in all of my digital cutting file kits that can be used as masks in your digital layouts. If you have a personal cutting machine, then all the better! You can use them to cut paper or to mask digitally. Right now we are going to focus on using PNG files as masks.
Open the 3 jpg paper files you’d like to use in Photoshop Elements. I used 
Then I open 3 png files I’d like to use. I used Deena Rutter’s
Lets get started by opening up your base layer of paper and the bracket edge file
I’m going to take my mouse right between the pink copy and the black png on the right hand side, while holding down the ALT key. You’ll see an arrow with two stacked circles. Now use your mouse to click.
