In scrapbooking, you can work with shapes in many different ways. Let me share a few with you to help spark your creativity.
In Photoshop, the shape tool is located on the left side menu (about 2/3 down). You can access the shape tool by pressing the shortcut key “u”.
The most commonly used shapes are rectangles and squares. They can be used to create a frame or matt for a photo, can be used for paper layering and creating your own journal/pocket cards.
Other shapes that are often used in scrapbook page design include circles, triangles, diamonds, hexagons, arrows and hearts.
You can create your own custom shape but there are also many templates available in the Lilypad store that utilize shapes. You can find the TLP template store here.
Watch this 34 minute youtube video if you’d like to learn all about customizing shapes in photoshop, or watch this quick 2 minute youtube video. Here’s a 4 minute Photoshop Elements video you can watch. For Artisan 5 users, here’s a short video on shapes to watch.
You can fill a shape with color or you can clip a paper or photo to it. In Photoshop, place your paper/photo on layer above the shape you created. A quick way to clip two layers together is to hold down the ALT key and hover between the two layers in the layers palette, you will see a downward pointing arrow, now click and the two layers will be clipped together. To undo this clipping at any time, repeat the steps and this will then undo the clipped layers.
Repeating shape patterns can create movement, balance and draw attention to a specific area of your layout.
Here is a page I created using a template from Fiddledeedee with repeating triangles.
This page by cfile combines shapes, circles and hexagons.
WVSandy used repeating diamonds to draw visual interest to her page.
Amandaresende used a template by Rachel Jefferies utilizing diamond shapes creating balance and visual interest.
AmandaJ used repeating circles as both frames visual interest in her page.
Shapes can be fun to work with and can be used in a variety of ways. Try using a cascade of circles to simulate water bubbles or group triangle shapes together to create a mountain.
I hope I have inspired you to try using shapes in your page design.
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