Good morning and welcome back to the Trixie Scraps Blog.  Today is our Masters Monday feature.

Last Thursday, I challenged you to create and share a layout with some Back to School photos.  On my sample layout, I bent the edges of my photos.  I wanted to show you exactly how I did that so you can replicate it if you’d like!  Ready?  Here we go!

Step 1: Open your photo(s). You are going to have to make your canvas slightly bigger so you have enough room to make the necessary changes around the edges of your photo.  Unlock your Background layer by double clicking on the padlock in the layers palette and then click on Image > Canvas Size.  Enlarge your dimensions slightly.  I found it was easier to choose Percent and just add on an extra 20%.  Make sure you check the “Relative” box so that your changes are equal all around.

Step 2: Put a stroke around your photo.  Go to Edit > Stroke and make your selections.  I did a 30 pixel stroke on the center of my photo, but you can change that to whatever you’d like.  It all depends on the look you want for your final photo.  (I forgot to take a screen shot of this…that’s what I get for trying to scrap while the kids are awake!)

Step 3: Now we’re ready to bend the photo.  Go to Filter > Distort > Shear.  Make sure Wrap Around is selected and drag the line in the middle of the box slight to the right or left (again, this depends on your own preferences).   Move your photo slightly over to the left so that you have room on your canvas for the next few steps.

Step 4: It’s time to create the shadow.  Hold down the Control key and select your photo layer.  Make a new layer out of the selection, fill it with a color (I used a dark brown, but you can use any shade of gray), and move it below your photo.

Step 5: Select your new shadow layer and go to Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal.  Move the shadow layer slightly, so that the left edge is flush with side of the photo and you can see a bit of it peeking out underneath.

Step 6: Apply a Gaussian Blur to soften the shadow a bit.  Go to Fliter > Blur > Gaussian Blur.  I used a blur of 4 pixels.

Step 7: I then lowered the opacity of the shadow layer slightly, to about 75%.  Again, this depends on your own preference and the shadows you will be using on your page.

And here again is my layout, done using Apples for Teacher by Trixie Scraps.  I hope you are able to use the tutorial…make sure you upload your layout to the Trixie Scraps gallery so we can all take a look!  Happy Scrapping!