Freebies & lesson

*Disclaimer: I use Photoshop Creative Suite and Photoshop Elements. I am unable to provide guidance for any other programs.

Something a little different today. I mentioned I had been making a lot of brushes recently, didn't I? Thought I'd share some with you and information on use.

When you load a brush into your system it is an .abr for Photoshop and (I think) a .jbr for PSP. To use, you click your brush tool and use the scroll down menu to select the brush you want. When you apply the brush to your page, you get a black or colored (depending on what your foreground color is set to) image in .png form. I call the result a stamp. Now you have a png that has transparent areas or areas of differing intensity. For our purpose here, let's assume you have used one of the frame brushes in the provided zip.

Perhaps you used the round frame. You look at your stamp and think it's a shame it's transparent. What to do? One easy solution is to under paint it (see example). To under paint, it is best if your stamp is done in black to begin with because it is easier to see. Let's start there, with the stamp on a layer by itself. Add a new layer under the stamp, choose a under paint color (it will be your foreground color in tool bar). I chose white, going for a shabby chic look. On that blank layer with your under paint color selected and using the stamp layer above as guide, fill in the transparent area of the stamp using a basic brush tool. Tidy up any areas that went beyond the area of the stamp. Looking through both layers, it is as if your black stamp is now filled in with white. Next, go back to the stamp area and change the color of the stamp (I'm assuming you know how to do this). I made my stamp pink and liked the way the layers looked together so I merged them for a shabby chic frame. With me so far?

You look at your frame and tell yourself it is okay but you wish the colors weren't so flat. What about styling it? There are heaps of free styles available on-line. Choose some that appeal to you and load them into your program. I decided to go with some satin styles. Again, I make a black stamp on a layer by itself and add a blank layer below it. On the blank layer I select a style and using my basic brush tool begin to paint as we did for the under painting. Now I have a layer of satin pink. I tidy it up and go to the stamp layer. I can just change the color of the stamp as we did before or I can click a style, this one a slightly darker pink and the stamp is styled. Happy with the result, just merge layers and you have a styled frame.

I've included the samples in your zip. There are also styled example for the other stamps. The leafy frame is done just as the styled round frame. The flower frame uses multiple styles. Just use a different layer for each. And the bird frame is simply gilded with a gold style.

I hope I've made the instructions clear and that this information will be useful to you.

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