Blog Party Day 5 - Freebie, Coupon, & More!

The week has flown by......it is already the last day of the Cafe J blog party!! Thank you so very much for joining in and even though this is the last party post, the contests are all still going on so here’s the ‘master list’ of contests you can still participate in over the weekend. Most of these take only a minute to play and there are lots of Cafe J gift cards for prizes so click on each contest name to go to that day's post for more details & to join in the fun if you haven’t already!!

Newsletter Signup Contest

What: Sign up for the Cafe J newsletter in the right hand sidebar.
Deadline: Sunday, April 19
Prizes: Several Random Winners will Receive Cafe J Gift Cards
Winners Announced: Monday, April 20

Art Gallery Challenge Contest
What: Create a page using Cafe J Art Gallery Collection freebies or other products from the Art Gallery Collection by Cafe J.
Deadline: Monday, April 20
Prizes: Several Winners will Receive Cafe J Gift Cards.
Winners Announced: Sometime Next Week

Win Your Order Contest
What: Place an order of any amount at Cafe J Wednesday, April 15 - Friday, April 17.
Deadline: End of the Day, Friday, April 17
Prizes: Several Winners will Receive Cafe J Gift Cards worth their Winning Order Total.
Winners Announced: Monday, April 20

Showpieces Contest
What: Share Ideas for upcoming Showpieces.
Deadline: Tuesday, April 21
Prizes: Several Winners will Receive Cafe J Gift Cards
Winners Announced: Sometime Next Week

Now, let’s get on with Day 5!!!!

Sport your Blinkie Contest!
This one is easy! All you have to do is grab my blinkie from the left sidebar of my blog & add it to your signature at any or all of your favorite forums. My tag team & I will be browsing through the forums/galleries over the next week and we will pick random Cafe J gift card winners when we see you wearing the Cafe J tag team.

Friday/Saturday/Sunday Coupon
Yep, that’s right! This coupon code is good through the entire weekend!! Use code GETMORE to receive $4 off on your purchase of $10 or more!

Friday's Tips/Tricks-Shadowing Acrylic Elements
Today, I would like to share with you one of my own signature methods of shadowing acrylic elements. This method is particularly useful when you want to give an element a little extra depth & lift.

I have 2 main actions that I use as the base for my signature shadows-one for smaller objects and one for larger objects. You can download them here if you would like to use them for this tutorial, but I don’t know if they will work in PSE, sorry!

There are 10 main steps listed below and it may seem like a lot to do, but once you have done this several times, it goes really quickly, especially if you use the action.

1. Place the acrylic element on your page; for today’s tutorial, I am using an acrylic heart that is about 4 x 4 inches on my page; you may download it here if you like.

(If you have installed my action, select your acrylic element in the layers palette, choose the small objects action, press play and then skip down to #6.)

2.  (If you have installed my action, select your acrylic element in the layers palette, choose the small objects action, press play and then skip down to #6.) With your acrylic element selected, choose layer/duplicate. A new window will open up, name it ‘shadow’ so you don’t get confused later.

 3. With the shadow layer selected, choose image/adjustments/hue & saturation. A new window will open up.....use these settings
hue 0
sat 0
lightness -78
& click ok.

 

4. The shadow layer should still be selected. Choose filter/blur/gaussian blur and in the window that pops up, set the blur at  3.4 px & click ok.

  5. Select your shadow layer again and at the top of the layers palette, adjust the opacity to 70%

6. (If you used the shadow action, you can start here again) Drag the shadow layer just below the acrylic element in the layers palette.

7. Select your shadow layer in the layers palette and using the arrow keys on your keyboard, click the down arrow twice and then the right arrow twice.

8. At this point, you have an option to make the shadow more prominent. The easiest way to do this is to select the shadow and hover your curser at the bottom right hand corner of the box around the shadow on your page. Click and hold on the little double arrow (noted by the 'x' on the screenshot below) and rotate it a little to the right. If your element will be layered on top of a lot of different pieces, you may want to rotate it even more, then double click to set the shadow layer again.

{Right now, the shadow is in the right place, but the acrylic element looks cloudy and gray. We will take care of that next.}

9. Click on the thumbnail picture of your acrylic element in the layers palette. The acrylic element on your page should look like there are little ants marching around it.

Select your shadow layer in the layers palette and click delete. This will delete the part of the shadow directly underneath your acrylic element which will restore the acrylic element's clarity and color. You may need to click delete several times in order to accomplish this.

Click Select/deselect to make the marching ants go away.

10. There are several different ways to adjust the lightness/darkness of your shadow. You can play around with the opacity level in the layers palette to lighten or darken. You can also duplicate the shadow layer if you like. And anytime you want to make an acrylic element a little whiter and more prominent, you can duplicate the acrylic layer.

Last, because I am a bit of a geek I like to click on the box next to the shadow layer in the layer palette so I can see what it looked like before, this gives you the WOW factor! hahaha and makes you feel very accomplished! Here are the before and after pictures!

Friday’s Freebie
I made an acrylic button alphabet for you today so you can practice those acrylic shadowing techniques! It includes a full lowercase, uppercase, and some symbols.

Thank you again so very much for joining me for the Cafe J blog party! I realize that you have many valuable things to do with your time and I feel honored that you have chosen to hang out here for a few minutes each day! I will be posting winners over the course of next week, so I will see you Monday!!!

Download Friday’s Freebie here!

Comments

[Tami]

Thanks so much!

[Lynncal]

thanks for the wonderful blog party and pressies!

[Jill]

Great week Janelle!

[Kait]

Thank you for the samplers and wonderful tutorials. Keep up the great work.
Kait

[SandraC]

Loved every single day of this week, thanks for this blog party and the freebies. Hope you will host more of these :-D

[Nzingha]

Thanks for all these freebies and a special thanks for explaining shadowing acrylic pieces. I don't use them much simply because I didn't know how to work the shadows.

[XenaKM]

Thank you for your tutorials and actions!

[sunnie2004]

Brilliant tuts & thanks so muc for the goodies all week I so appreciated them!!

[Laser]

I wish this didn't have to end. I really found your tips and tutorials so helpful. I hope you will continue to provide more every now and then. I appreciate it so much when others share how they do things so that I too can learn.

All the freebies you offered this week were awesome as well.

THanks so much

[Karen Maggie]

Love the tutorial and the alpha too! Thank you! :)

[Mary Rogers]

I have enjoyed your blog this week Janelle! thank you so much : )

[Marisa Sócio]

Thank you for the samplers and wonderful tutorials!

[Cathi]

Thanks so much for the tutorial and the alpha...wonderful!!

[Laura]

Great tutorial, and thanks for the freebies!

[Susan]

Love the alpha! Thank you!

[flora]

oh wow thank you for the amazing tip will have to give it a try.thanks janelle for all the wonderful goodies:0)

[Nanedejardin]

thank you so much it's gorgeous !

[mary]

Thanks so much for being so generous, love this one ;)

[akizo]

thank you for this lovely alpha!!

[Bree]

Great alpha! Thankyou! And thank you thank you for not using 4shared! :)

[Marilyn]

Thanks so much for your tutorial and the goodies to go with!
Marilyn

[Rachel (Rach3975)]

Thanks for the great tutorial, actions, and alpha!

[Barb]

I really appreciate the tutorials and the extras that go with them. Thank you for taking the time to do it. I love the acrylic alpha too. Thank you so much for all your shares.