I wish you cheerful Holidays and a lot’s of happiness, health, love and success through the next year!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

bsilvia :)

Be different! Be among the first in this new revolution! Say NO to the tyranny of the new age called Christmas shopping pressure. Marketing companies see you as a sheep that only needs to work – earn and spend. But, guess what, it doesn’t say anywhere that you have to spend money for Christmas!!! I checked in the Bible the other day. I checked the Constitution as well. You DON’T NEED TO SPEND MONEY FOR CHRISTMAS. Nothing bad will happen to you.

To give to the ones you love is fine. It’s cool, but here is another good news – they will appreciate the time you took to make something for them with your own hands. They will appreciate it, that’s for sure.

Make a picture, a drawing, a poem or frame a photography. Make a cake or prepare a dinner surprise. Think think think! Don’t just rush in some super-store and spend spend spend just because everyone does it!

Be creative. Be yourself. Don’t be a sheep just following the herd.

Here you can download gift cards (or little greeting cards: 2,55″x3,7″) and print them (9 cards - one paper sheet A4 or letter size). Cut them on the lines, fold on the dashed lines and make them yours.

This tutorial will show you how to create, fast and simple, but effective, winter scene in Photoshop. Use it for your own postcard, greeting card or scrapbook page.

1. Create a new document 6”x4” and color the background using Linear Gradient Tool with light blue (cyan) to white like this:

2. To make hills landscape use the Elliptical Marquee Tool and make some ellipses on a new layer holding down the “Shift” button like this:

3. Fill the hills shape with the same linear gradient fill you used for the background. Copy the “hills” layer and flip the layer horizontally. Now, lower the upper “hills” layer a bit. Reduce the opacity of the hills in the background (lower „hills“ layer) to 50%

4. It should look like this:

5. Add some white thick brush strokes in the blue area and

6. use the Blur Tool (50) to create the clouds effect.

7. It should look like this:

8. Now we need some trees? Yes. Use Polygonal Lasso Tool and create triangle as shown on the following screen shot.

9. Then, press Shift key and while holding it down make another two triangles and the trunk as presented on the following screen shots.

10. Now it’s time to fill the trees with some color. For that purpose we will use the gradient that we used earlier in this tutorial. Convert the tree to a Smart Object – later you can duplicate it and change it’s size without loosing it’s quality.

11. When done with trees, merge all layers that contain trees and copy it.

12. Duplicate the trees layer. Drag one of them between two layers with hills. Flip that layer horizontally (that hill is already flipped so the tress will match).

13. Now we need some snowflakes. A perfect opportunity to use my “Snowy skies” Photoshop brush. Let’s make it white.

14. set the snowflakes layer opacity to 50%.

15. Simple winter scene in Photoshop is done!

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Few Simple Samples

© Photographer: bsilvia | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: bsilvia | Agency: Dreamstime.com

© Photographer: bsilvia | Agency: Dreamstime.com