How to use photo masks in Paint Shop Pro

This Tutorial will cover what you need to know about using masks in your Digital Scrapbooking Pages

For this tutorial I'll be using Coral Paint Shop Pro X, and should cover different versions of that program. (If it doesn't please get in touch and I'll update this tutorial).

What you'll need.

First you'll need a mask, for this tutorial I'm going to use some that you download for free over at Pixel Scrapper.
http://www.pixelscrapper.com/marisa-lerin/templates/photo-mask-19-image-commercial-use-digital-scrapbooking-free-download

A Photo to use the mask with. I'm using this one of the Tree of Life (Credits to Mark Barbieri, he has posted a bunch of pictures over at Mousescrappers for people to scrap with.)

Extras: If you're making a Digital Scrapbooking page you may want to use a Digital Scrapbooking Kit to go with it. I'm going to be a little lazy and just use a Pre-Made Paper stack for this Tutorial.

This was made by Linda over at MJ-AJ Designs using a Kellybell Designs Kit called "Around the Riverbend".

I'll also use some Pre-made Word Art from the same KellyBell Kit, this time it was made by
Jessica over at Handbags & Scrapbooks.

Once you've got all that open up all 4 files in Paint Shop Pro.

Copy and paste your photo as a new layer onto your paper stack. (Feel Free to resize your photo if needed.).

 Next up make sure your Photo layer is selected (silly me in the picture below had selected the wrong one).
Then go to Layers > New Mask Layer > From Image.

You'll then get a box pop up like the one Below.

In the Source Window, you'll find a drop down list of all your currently open files. Pick your Mask file in this list. 

Then in the Create mask from, choose Source opacity. Then ok.

You can see a little bit of the mask in the above picture, but it needs a little resizing. Have a play changing the scale of the mask layer and photo layer and the positions of both on the page until you get something you're happy with.

There. As you can see I've added my Word art layer on top of my work. I think I would like to change the position of my Photo just a tad.

As seen above select the Group layer of and right click. Chose Merge and then Merge Group. You can now reposition it on your page.

When your happy with that, you're all done. Make sure to use "Save As" with your file and change your file name so you don't save over your paper stack file.

You can find links to all of my tutorials by clicking on the buttons over in my side bar.

Card Making

Last night I was browsing on Facebook and I saw that Hobbycraft where looking for volunteers to test out some new card kits. While I can't say I'm brilliant at making cards from scratch (I'm too cheap to buy expensive die-cutting machines and all the accessories for them for the relatively small amount of cards I send people a year, although Adam is trying his best to convince me I do make a lot of cards compared to non-crafty peeps). I did enjoy making last years Christmas cards from a kit. It was nice that in the box I bought I have everything I needed (apart from little extra glue) and most importantly everything matched everything worked together. I could just get down and do the fun part of creating. So I've submitted them my details along with some pics, don't think anything will come of it but you never know.

 Anyway these are the pics of some of the cards I used, these are some of the birthday cards and some left over Christmas Cards.

Mousescrapper Weekly Challenge #100

I think Saturdays should be my Scrapbooking post day, so to start off here's a reblog of one of my pages.

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In an effort to get practising with using my newly purchased kits and digi scrappbooking in general I took part in my first weekly challenge over at Mousescrappers.

The challenge was to do one of the previous challenges you have never done before, this gave me a lot of choice and let me be hyper flexible. I chose week 90's challenge. "Design a page using a kit you've never used before" Again nice and flexible here, apart from my only forays into scrapbook element making, all of my kits have yet to be used.

I finally settled for using "Beachy Keen"  From Kellybell Designs.

I'm happy with that being my first attempt.

A wounded flower

This week I finally got my Birkenstocks out of the cupboard, to celebrate I put on my new nail polish I bought at the weekend. It's from LA Colours and the shade is called Apricot Fizz, its lasted pretty well so far and it was a bargain at 99p a bottle.

Me, Mum and Granddad were enjoying tea out on the patio while Mutley was stomping about (there were Magpies about) when he brushed past one of the hyacinth pots. Mutley is pretty much a Juggernaut when he is moving forward and he took out one of the flowers as he went past.

We picked the poor flower up and popped him in a glass of fresh water, even though I'm sad that it won't last as long as it would if it didn't get broke I am loving the beautiful scent that it is given off . 

Granddad happily getting on with the project of building some more window boxes. Having bought the decking planks and built the all the parts except form the sides yesterday.

Today he carried on and now all that needs doing on the first one is painting and adding some plants.

Adam's birthday is creeping around so I've been busy up in the crafting room trying to brain storm some cards, I have a few pics to share but I'll update later on those since he sometime peaks at this blog.

Things to Make

I love being inspired by things on the web, especially crafty things. So many things I want to have a go at or something I can take ideas from. The later I keep stored over on my Pinterest Boards. The former either I try or just keep getting put in the back of my mind in limbo.

This list is a part repost from another blog that was a 2012 project list. However I'm going to give it a tidy up a bit to reflect my crafting in general. 

Make more cards - Despite the price of stamps going up to stupid prices this year, I still want to do this. I got a lot of pleasure from making Christmas Cards for 2011 so I want to do more. I have a fair bit of supplies to use up so this one will be relatively low cost.

Two blankets for Mutley - My gorgeous pup (ok a few years too old to be a pup) likes to be warm during the winter. So I'm thinking making him a couple of fleecy blankets with a crochet border.

My teddy bear - he's been sat in the cupboard unfinished for the better part of 5 years and now I've gotten to grips with my sewing machine, I should be able to get his looking nicer than my hand stitching attempts so far.

Doorstops. I want to make a purple coloured one for mum's room since the pink one she currently has doesn't match the new bedding she has just bought. A neutral coloured one for my god mother, myself and my granddad.

Cross Stitch - Really didn't thing I would be interested in trying this one, but a few sample magazines I found on my my Ipad's Newsstand  has convinced me other wise.

Glass etching. - This one is heading towards my pipe dream crafting. I really would like to personalise some glasses for next Christmas, a nice wine glass for mum, pint glass for Adam ect. Just need to do some research into how best to do it. I've read that the acid etching cream gives better result and can be watched in the dishwasher.

Another pipe dream project. Silver clay. I see this stuff used from time to time on craft forums and recently on Kirsty Allsop's new craft series. What I would really like to make would be a leaf pendant, using a leaf from the rose plant Adam bought me when I finished my A levels. (no one thought that thing would last for too long, but it's thriving in a nice big pot outside the kitchen door, it even was flowering again a few days before Christmas).

Closing my other blogs

Over the years I have had several blogs on the go, some for my crafting, some for gaming and some for scrap booking. However I'm going to start updating links and reposting things onto this blog so everything is in once place.

It will mean I get to post and update a lot more and also I'll have all my links to my fav sites nicely listed instead of  being randomly scattered around the web.

A perfect weekend

What A perfect weekend for a first blog post. It started off getting surprised to a nice hot cup of tea from Adam before he headed off to work.

I got dressed and enjoyed breakfast outside. All of the bulbs we planted last October are now in full bloom and the scent from the hyacinths was beautiful.

Clear blue skies as far as the eye could see.

The Rose that Adam bought me when I finished my A-Levels is looking really healthy, although we did have to give him a spray to protect him from greenfly.

Mutley was chilling in his favourite sunning spot, before running about the garden to chase the magpies away.

One of the Hyacinth pots. I mixed the colour up when planting them last year, very happy with how they turned out. Unfortunately most of the yellow ones seem to be struggling a bit, the ones in this pot seem the best out of all of them.

The Daffoils have all shot up as well and so far haven't started getting droopy. Dispite buying mixed coloured bulbs, Its about 75% pure yellow ones with the rest being yellow and pale yellow, however somewhere in one of the planters there is a single pure white one.

Our homemade window box, now that is has some colourful plants in, its made the other windows look a little bare. So I think this year we'll be making some more up.

The Above are two little flower pot decorations that M&S sold last year. They are just cute, and we hoped to find another watering can one but they seemed to be sold out in very M&S we visited after we got these ones.


When Adam got home we headed down to town, I got treated to some fab new nail polish (£0.99 and it last for ages) and a few bits from Hobbycraft (Aida, embroidery hoop and some pieces of felt.). I drooled over a die cutting machine display for a minute trying to convince myself that I really don't need one. Adam wasn't helping one bit commenting on how many cards I do make myself.

On the way home we stopped by KFC (Our local one has really friendly staff and the food is always freshly cooked.) We arrived home and enjoyed our meal out on the patio.

On Sunday we spent the morning in the Black Forest park, we haven't taken Mutley over there for a while so it was a nice treat for him. Normally he's a little bit nervous of travelling in the car so we thought we would have to bundle him into the car but surprisingly he put up little resistance and hopped on my lap once I got in. He had a little shake once we started driving, but that soon stopped, and once he realized where we were going he perked right up giving happy little grumbles. We spent a good few hours wandering around, enjoying lunch (and a nice bowl of water for Mutley) at the open field part of the park, before we walked around the lake and headed back to the car.