At this time of year, I have flowers on my mind. I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of spring blooms here on the west coast. In my layout design, I often use flowers, alone or in clusters, all year round (I admit it, I have an obsession with flowers, both IRL and digital) but especially at this time of year it makes me happy to add flowers to my page. Let me show you a few ways I utilize digital flower elements.
I’ve used Valorie Wibbens “Sprinkles Foundation” to create this sample sheet. I’ve got most of her Sprinkles line of products. Not only can you find at least a few flowers in there, you will find other bits and pieces that work well together to make a cluster. You can find her Sprinkles HERE.
One flower was used to create all these variations. On the top row, the color of the middle flower has been changed, using a hue/sat adjustment (image>adjustments>hue/sat), moving the hue slider to the reddish tones. For the next flower (on the top right), after right clicking on the flower layer in the layers pallette (to the right of your workspace) and selecting “rasterize layer”, a selective color adjustment (image>adjustments>replace color) was made by clicking on the color box, then with the eye dropper clicking onto a spot on your flower you wish to change and then at the bottom, click the result box and change it to the color you wish to replace with.
Flowers are wonderful to use by themselves but it can be even more fun to create layers, adding depth to your flower, even more so if you add shadows to the layers. For the layers, I used elements from Sprinkles Foundation. For the first flower (on the bottom left), I selected a lace element, duplicated it, flipped it and put the two pieces together, resized and placed under the original flower. Then I added a pearl bed on the top. For the next flower, I open up a paint splat, duplicated and resized it, recolored with a hue-sat layer adjustment and then chose a small brush and stamped a bit of green and red overtop (I locked the pixels first by clicking on the lock icon beside the word “lock” in the layers palette above your created layers). Then I added a circular tag, recoloring it white (both are placed under the flower). I then finished it off by adding a button and sequin on top of the flower. For the third flower I duplicated the flower and on each I used puppet warp (edit>puppet warp) to drag and reposition the flower petals slightly. This created a different look to each flower. Then I resized each one so that they stacked together, each top layer slightly smaller.
Another way to use flowers is to create a cluster, a grouping of products and, again, the design choices are endless. You can really use your imagination to create a cluster, recoloring, warping, resizing, erasing, duplicating. It really is endless, what you can do to create a cluster.
I used Gina Miller “Mash Up 14” to create a cluster. Mash Ups include a variety of elements that work well together for creating clusters. Starting with the bottom layer, I selected a brush file stamped onto the page, , then added the blue flower overtop. I then placed the vine between these two layers, rotating, duplicating a few times and erasing away some of the leaves. I erased a lot of the first layer brush so that only a small amount peeked out from under the vines. The small flower stamp I duplicated and placed at each side of the flower, overtop of the first stamp layer. The circle tag I resized and placed under the bottom right of the blue flower and then duplicated and placed under the blue flower stamp on the right, allowing just a peek of the orange to show through. The blue flower was duplicated twice, recolored to orange (to coordinate with the tag) and resized, placing a larger one overtop of the flower, off centered, and the other resized smaller and placed under the blue flower. I finished it off with the blue gem on top.
Sara Gleason “Artifact” which, aside from being a beautiful kit, has some fabulous flowers, as seen here in my layout where I created 3 separate clusters.
Whether you use one or more flowers, create layers or clusters…it’s all fun! Flowers are so versatile to use in your page design. Have fun and experiment with them.
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