Little Birdie Digital Designs: DHD Blog Hop!!

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

DHD Blog Hop!!

Hello & welcome! I'm glad you've made your way to my blog as part of the Design House Digital Blog Hop! If you are starting here first and have no idea what I am talking about, you can head to the beginning at the DHD Blog.

In order to snag the free collaboration kit below, you must collect a part of a code from every blog you visit. Put the items together in order and you will have a coupon code to redeem on the site for your free collaboration kit, Sweet As Spring.

Twelve designers contributed a total of 67 elements, 51 papers, and 4 alpha sets to this gorgeous
kit, and the treasure is worthy of the journey. But, in addition, everyone who downloads the kit before
Wednesday, March 27, will also be entered into a drawing for a $15 gift certificate to the Design House Digital shop!

We have a challenge for you, too: build something amazing of your own! Using just the Sweet as Spring collaboration kit (and your own photos, of course), create your own project and put it into our Sweet as Spring Challenge Gallery. If you post your project before April 17, you will be entered into another drawing for a $15 gift certificate to the Design House Digital shop, but the challenge gallery will remain open afterwards, and we would love to see your layouts any time.

And that's not all. If you want even more goodies that coordinate with this kit, be sure to "like" DHD on Facebook (here) and to sign up for the store newsletter.

Before I get to sharing my part of the code, I want to talk to you a little bit about ombre. The ombre trend has been budding all around us for a while. From fashion to home decor, from food to craft, adding a bit of ombre can really add some fun to your life! I've created a board on Pinterest to give you some examples too so take a look.

And I'm going to show you one simple way to add a little ombre to your layout using the gradient fill tool. Here's what you need to do:
1) Choose a background paper
2) Choose something to overlay onto the paper (ie: a background overlay, a brush, or even some text)
3) Create a layer above your overlay layer
4) Set your foreground and background colors. These will be the two colors that the gradient blends.
5) Use the gradient tool to fill the layer (ombre is generally top to bottom but you can mix it up if you like) You can also play around with your gradient tool as much as you want. Go from the background color to nothing, fade to a lighter shade of that color, fade to another color completely, or even add additional stops with other colors.
6)Clip the fill layer to the overlay layer and presto!

Here are a few examples using a paper from Be Bold and a damask pattern from Just Basics Distressed Overlays.

In the first example, I fade from the background color of the paper to a lighter shade, top to bottom.

In this example, I set the foreground to a hot orange and the background to the paper color.

In this final example, I added in a bright yellow by adding another stop on the gradient. I also used the tool at a diagonal.

These are just a few of the ways you can add a little ombre to your layouts! What other ways will you use it?

Well, thanks for stopping by! You can visit as often as you like, and you can also like me on facebook for more inspiration and updates. And finally, here is the item you are looking for!!