I am by no means a shadow expert!!! I don’t think I want to be either LOL because when i have a bad shadow day (and I do have them) people will be like awwwwww I’m sorry!!! LOL I’m not very good at explaining things and have never written a tutorial or tips or anything to describe how I do my shadows so please bear with me. I will try not to make you lost!!! I am going to give you the basic settings I use for a lot of elements! I will give you the size, opacity and distance ranges I use and you can decide which settings you might like for yourself. I am going to also give you a few tips and some suggestions that I use myself when shadowing!

I use the same settings for various elements but there are the ones I use as a basic but I DO sometimes adjust either higher or lower depending on how much drama I want with my shadows

ALL my angles are at -45 degrees or -30
and my blend mode is always Multiply
The color I use depends on the paper and kit used.

I LOVE to shadow. I have the most fun with ribbons as I use them on most every page!!! Okay with ribbons I change up my settings. I stay at 70 opacity unless it’s a light paper and I lower it to about 55.
I will totally go wild with the distance and size. I will also sometimes use the warp tool and just pull the curl part of the ribbon edge down a little bit but not all the time. I never really go above the settings I just told you about but sometimes if a ribbon is on the top of the page I will add maybe an extra 5 to the size and distance to 40 distances and 45 size.
I usually shadow THEN resize (and I’m sure I do it backwards lol) so my shadows tend to be blurry if I make the ribbon really small. In that case as I do with my strings I will duplicate the layer and it will look so much better. If it ends up being too dark I will adjust the opacity on the layer and the duplicated one

I love foliage! I use a much bigger shadow on my leaves and foliage. I really like them to just go BAM off the page. Sometimes if I am working with really small foliage I will use my flower settings I gave you above also

With lighter papers I drop the opacity down to 50-55 percent. I use the same size, angle, blend mode and distance. I just make the opacity a tad lighter. I sometimes will make the shadows closer to the paper much lighter than the ones that are layered on top. I might use the regular opacity settings I usually use also. If the lower opacity is to light for you even on light paper then play with the settings till you find something you like that makes you go wow that really rocks lol

Before this is with no shadows

After with shadows! This really does make a difference.

Feel free to play around and have fun with them. Good Luck and Happy Shadowing!

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