How many of you love the word arts, stamps, brushes and cut files that come in the kit or add-ons? What I love about them is that you can change the colors of them in so many ways. One of the easiest ways is to use them as clipping masks and use a painterly solid paper clipped to it. The best part is that the paper was made for the color scheme of the kit so it automatically makes it look like it was meant to match the kit. Below, I'm going to show you how I use this technique for each of the elements listed above. The concept is the same for each one 1) add your element 2) add a paper over the top of the layer 3) clip the paper to the element There are several ways you can clip your paper to your element 1) while holding down the alt key (option on Mac) hover your mouse on the line between the two layers and you'll see a symbol that looks like two circles merging together, when that symbol appears click your mouse and the paper will clip 2) CTRL + ALt + G (Win) | Command + Option + G (Mac) | CTRL + G (PSE Win) | Command + G (PSE Mac) 3) select the paper layer, then right click and choose "create clipping mask" 4) Layers > Create Clipping Mask Here are samples of each (click thumbnail to see larger photos) Word Art: Stamps: Brushes:1) add a new layer above your background 2) double-click on the ABR file to load it in PS 3) choose the brush you want 4) click your brush down where you want it on the new layer file Cut Files: Have fun with it, you don't even have to use solid papers, it's fun to use patterned paper too. I like to use patterned paper with brushes, it's like I'm painting my page with pattern. here's some of my workflow as I was working on my final page: I started out adding brushes, I added each brush to new layers so that they aren't all on the same layer. This gives me the option to clip different papers to each of them. It also makes it easy to move each brush around to my liking rather than them all moving together in one clump. I put a different background here to show the effect differently: And here's my final page after duplicating some of the brushes to fill the background, changing the butterfly to the woodgrain, adding in the word art and some stitching to finish it off.
I do this a lot and it's soo freaking awesome! You can even do it with photo;s if you want! Nothing is impossible!
I do it a lot too.... plus I also blend it in too to the bg papers. main thing to remember is the styles or adjustments you want to do to the piece must be done on the "brush" layer and not the clipping layer
Fabulous ideas here! I love all the different ways you can use a couple products together and get a zillion differrent results. Your finished page is gorgeous!
I know the technique, but am surprised how seldom I USE it. Thanks for the refresher, I'm going to challenge myself to use it more often.
