In the PressRoom with Shaui Lee

Welcome to another edition of In the PressRoom! This week we are featuring Shaui Lee, who has been a member of the creative team since March 2008. She is also a digital designer - the creative genius behind Fei Fei's Stuff.

When I first sat down to draft Shaui's profile for this week's PressRoom, I didn't know what to list for her specialty because this girl is good at *everything* and her layout gallery is an intriguing and eclectic mix of different styles. She can do clean and elegant, artsy and bold, whimsical, graphic, realistic. You name it, she can do it all. And she especially excels at combining different styles that the average scrapper wouldn't dare attempt to put together. Then it occured to me that that's what her specialty is - Shaui's a master mixologist! She has a talent for combining different kinds of elements together into a layout.

and she has an incredible knack for combining different styles:

minimalist + whimsical + a dash of realism

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- a little bit about shaui -

program I use to create layouts Photoshop CS3

camera Canon D40

I'm a (choose one: morning person | night owl | other: please specify) I can be both. i think :) I need to get up early for my dayjob. I wake up at 5am. And when I am feeling inspired to scrap or design, I can stay up until 3am get 2 hrs of sleep and then go to my dayjob :)

things that inspire me my family, fei's laughter, Roy's cooking, friends

things that make me happy a good book, annual vacation in Manila, designing, scrapping, picnics

favorite technique right now, i like using motion blur. Here is a recent layout I made using that technique:


my scrapping style is eclectic. I can be a minimalist and sometimes I can go crazy and put every element that i like. It depends on my mood. but, most of the time, I like to put a lot of elements.

I can't get through the day without kisses from Hubby and Fei

favorite movie? song? artist/band? my favorite movie is When a Man loves a Woman and Pretty Woman. my fave song right now is by Rihanna and T.I. Live your life, my fave artist is Justin Timberlake :)

favorite vacation destination I want to go to Japan!

I love how Shaui always adds a touch of realism to her layouts. This week we are leaving you with a tutorial (written by Shaui) on how to create realistic drop shadows.

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Tutorial: Drop Shadows
written by Shaui Lee for paislee press

Do you ever wonder how to do a slightly curled effect on the edges of photo frames? Here is a step by step tutorial on how you can make your own shadows. You can apply this not only on photo frames but to almost anything that you want to put shadows. This tutorial applies to Photoshop CS2 and higher only because this will be using the “warp tool” which is only available on higher versions. Are you ready? Let's get started!

1. Choose the frame that you want and drag it to your new layout by selecting the MOVE TOOL on your TOOLS PALLETE.


2. Your new layout should look like this. As you can see there is a new layer ‘Layer 1’on your LAYERS PALETTE which is your frame. Now, duplicate ‘Layer 1’ by right clicking it and choose DUPLICATE LAYER or hold CTRL+J on your keyboard for a shortcut.



3. Your LAYERS PALETTE will now have a duplicated layer of your frame.



4. To make our LAYERS PALETTE more organized and properly labeled (which you can also apply to your future layouts) let us rename our layers. You can do this by right clicking on your first layer and choose LAYER PROPERTIES.


5. A new window will appear and fill in your new name for the layers. Let us name the top layer as “frame” and the bottom layer as the “shadow.”

6. Now that our layers are properly labeled let us start making the shadow. Click on your ‘shadow’ layer to make it current.



7. Set your colors by clicking the FOREGROUND COLOR and the COLOR PICKER WINDOW will appear. Choose Black for both foreground and back ground colors.



8. To see what we are working on turn off first your “frame” layer by clicking on the little eye.


9. To make the shadow, click the IMAGE tab, choose ADJUSTMENTS and then the GRADIENT MAP.


10. The GRADIENT MAP window will appear. Click OK. Your frame will now turn to complete black.


11. To make our shadow more realistic. We put a blur on it. To do this, click the FILTER tab, choose BLUR and then GAUSSIAN BLUR.



12. The edge of our frame will now look like this. Slightly blurred on the edges.


13. Adjust the opacity of our shadow to 50 (you can choose the level of opacity of your shadow depending on the lightness or darkness of your background.)



14. To give the curled effect on our frame, we will use the WARP tool. To use this we click the EDIT tab, TRANSFORM and then WARP.



15. Our shadow will now have rounded circles which we call the dragging points. Drag the lower left and the lower right points slightly to the direction shown on the image below.



16. Delete the inner shadow of the frame by using the RECTANGULAR MARQUEE TOOL. Then to get rid of the ‘marching ants” by hitting CTRL+D.


17. And that’s it! Your slightly curled edge photo frame is ready to use. Don’t forget to pop in your favorite picture!