January 15: Painted Edges

JANUARY 15 - Technique 2: Painted Edges

Welcome to my technique challenge for Day 15! For this challenge, you will be using a brush to create digital painted edges for paper/elements.

CHALLENGE INSTRUCTIONS:

• Paint the edges of at least 1 product on your layout. This could be your background paper, paper layers or elements (i.e. tag, journal card, label).
• Your brush work should be visible and prominent.

Watercolor brushes and textured brushes are great tools for painting edges but any brush will work. I like to use a soft edged brush as opposed to a hard edged brush, personally. Reduce the opacity of the brush as this can create a build-up of color as you move the brush back and forth over the edge, experiment with opacity but generally 15-50% works well.

Here is my layout with painted edges.


PAINT/INKING INSTRUCTIONS:

• Before you start inking, create a blank layer above the layer of what you will be brushing the painted edge on.
• To get started, select a brush and reduce the opacity (15-50% as a guideline), then click on the foreground color box (see image below) and select a color to paint with.
  
• The two layers will be clipped together when you finish inking. This ensures that the inking is only applied to the product you chose to ink, not anywhere else on your layout. (You can ink directly onto the product layer if you wish without creating the top layer but I recommend working on the blank layer for stamping, as this allows you to alter or delete the paint layer without altering your product layer). In Photoshop, with your cursor, hover between the paint/ink layer and the product layer, while holding down the ALT key and then click to clip the two layers together. An alternate way to clip the layers together is to go to LAYER in the menu bar, choose CREATE CLIPPING MASK.

The orange highlights show the brush layers clipped to the paper/element layers.



Here is my LO with and without the painted edges. With a busy layout such as this, your eye wanders all over the page, but with the painted edges it helps to direct your eye across the page, making it easier to "see" what's on the page.



Changing the color or enlarging/reducing the brush size as you swipe around the edges can add another layer of dimension to the inking. Try adding a thin stroke of color along the edge and then go back over that area again with a larger soft brush and build the ink up as you swipe. Also, try selecting a slightly lighter or darker brush color for further variation in the paint/ink build up on the edges.

An optional brush step that can create interesting inking patterns but is not necessary in the inking process, is to change the jitter size and/or spacing of a brush which will rotate the brush each time it is applied. Experiment with slider amounts but I find that generally size jitter of 20-50% works well and angle jitter I tend to keep on the low end of the slider amount. But each brush is different, so play around with it and see what effects you can get.



Here is a video tutorial on how to paint the edges of your paper in Photoshop Elements.


TO RECAP THE CHALLENGE REQUIREMENTS:

• Paint the edges of at least 1 product on your layout.
• Make sure that the paint/inking you brush is visible and prominent on your page.

MOC GUIDELINES FOR ALL CHALLENGES:

Your page must be a new page in order to count for the Month of Challenges. Your page must be posted in three places:

1. Uploaded to the TLP Gallery (not an outside hosting site).
2. Posted in your page thread you created in the MOC Layouts Folder. You should have one post per completed challenge page. If you complete all 31 challenges, your thread should contain 31 posts. Please do not comment in the participants’ page threads so we can keep them clean.
3. Posted in this thread. People can comment here if they wish.

Pages must contain at least 75% current Lilypad product (currently for sale in the store from either permanent designers or guest designers).

 

Updates and clarifications to my challenge will be posted here as necessary.

HERE ARE SOME INSTRUCTIONS GENEROUSLY SHARED BY SOME OF OUR MEMBERS. THANK YOU ALL FOR HELPING EACH OTHER!

QUESTION RE BRUSHES (bjc asked):
Any brush will do, a soft edged round brush (this is usually the default kind of brush most often used in photoshop and I think other programs too) but a hard edged brush works too, it just creates a different look. A textured brush, a watercolor brush, stroke brushes, splatter brushes, etc........try different brushes and see what kind of effect you get. Try stamping down onto the page (a single tap of the brush onto the page) and then try swiping it across or back and forth to see what that does. Also, I find that most times I reduce the opacity to help build up the color and create more texture with the uneven stamping. Try changing the size of the brush and if your program allows customization, try changing the angle, jitter, etc to see what that does.
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From Angela Toucan:
we don't have clipping to layers in Craft Artist - elements etc are not each on a separate layer like in PS etc. This technique can be done, but it's going to be a bit more complicated.
So in Craft Artist:

1. Place the item to be painted on the page
2. paint along the edges - it will overlap
3. set the blending mode for each brush stroke
4. select all the paint strokes and group them together.
5. select the item and copy it
6. paste the copy ontop
7. Select the paint strokes group and the top item - right click and choose crop.

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From QuiltyMom:
For Artisan 5 users: It's very simple to do. You just need to play around with the effect to get the look you want. Thankfully there's that wonderful "undo" feature! (I do believe that's my favorite feature on the whole program. )

Go to the Touchup tab on the Toolbar. From there choose either the Lighten or Darken option. The other options can also be fun as well, but Lighten and Darken are the best place to start. On the right of your screen you'll need to choose the amount, pattern, diameter and opacity that you'd like, then start playing around! I find it's best to start with the Amount set at 1 and use the most diffused/soft pattern (the option to the right).

For Artison 4/SBC 4

1. Go to your Format Photos tab.
2. Click on the Touchup icon (located in first box on the left side of the ribbon). An image editor will pop up onto your screen.
3. Choose to Lighten or Darken. From there you have two choices: Brush Size and Brush Pressure. You can also add or change your color using the different options.

Have fun playing around with the different settings to see what you can do. Let me know if you have any other questions!

This is also a great way to add extra dimension and shadowing to elements that otherwise aren't there, such as darkening the edge of an element to make it look like it's wrapped or bending around something, like the ribbon sample below. The ribbon didn't have the dark shading at the top - that's something I added in. It's a fun technique to learn and use.

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From meagan43:
For us Artisan Users - Possible way to create this. (*edit - note, I used SBC4, so may be different for other versions)
1. Click on item to be painted
2. Open "Format Photos" and click on "Touch-up"
3. Select "Paint" and choose color. Change brush size and brush pressure".
4. Then, start brushing the edges. Change size and pressure as needed.
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I found some videos for PSE and Craft Artist that might be helpful for those that want to know about loading/selecting brushes. Hope these help.

Photoshop Elements install brushes, explains options and recoloring (10 min)

PSE install brushes (45 sec)

PSE stamp with brush tool

Installing & using brushes in Craft Artist (4 min)