Quick Tutorial #02 – Creating your own bows for scrap booking.

Hello All - I hope you are all well. I've come up with a little cheat to get realistic looking bows and other elements for all of your scrap booking layouts.

Ok – I have tried lots of different tutorials for creating bows mainly vectors and I just can’t get that real look that I am looking for! So I came up with a little cheat that you may want to try.

This tutorial assumes that you are familiar with your graphics program - if you have any difficulties with it please don't hesitate to drop me a line.

We all have bows lying around the house, right?

I have several that I found and decided were just what I was looking for so I got out my digital camera and snapped a few shots.

Here is an example:

The bow is dark gold on a silver jewel box which was a present last Xmas.

Once I’d decided on the picture that I wanted to use I made a copy and closed the original then converted it to a raster layer then I spent about 30 minutes on it removing the background to make a picture tube of just the bow.
To do this I switched between the eraser and the selection wand deleting bits of the background that I didn’t want until I was happy with the isolated bow.
I didn’t remove the whole of the shadow as I decided that it gave the bow a bit of depth.
Here is my bow now:

Ok – so far so good.
It really is worth taking the time to get the shape just as you want it at this stage.

Now I want to be able to colour this bow to match whatever scheme I happen to be working on and the colouring really depends upon the base colour or shade of your bow.
To make this easier when I’m working on a layout I like to have my elements all ready to just pick and colour – so to make this happen I create three templates from my bow.

First change the image you have just created to greyscale. Depending upon your starting image it will be a shade of grey either light, dark or in between.

Here is what my bow looks like:

It’s pretty dark but I’ve seen darker!

This will work great for richer dark colours but will look terrible for light and pastel colours so we need to lighten it. I use the lighten darken feature in PSP X by running the brush over the bow with the left mouse button held down to lighten.

Depending upon your project you may need to do this several times to get the shade you want.

For this bow I ended up with the dark bow, a medium shade and a nice light – almost white one for very light colours.
Here they are:

A little trick I have found when doing this is to run the lighten brush over the bow then go to adjust – add / remove noise – Edge preserving smooth and choose a level of 1 and click OK. Then run the lighten brush again. I don’t know if this is just in PSP X but if I do this the edges are smoother and you can lighten several shades at a time.

Have fun with all types of objects! I have some Christmas lights, several bows and even some stationery that I have created as templates in the same way.

Another bow: From a badge on my son's birthday card.

Denise.

Quick Tutorial - Display Bags for Scrap Kits

Hi All,
Hope you had a lovely easter. Ther snow disapeared as quick as it had come so we are now back to normal here.
I have been working on a quick tutorial for my display bags - there are probably lots of way to make these, this is just how I do it.
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This tutorial is © Denise Gibson of Denise G Designs. Written March 2008.Tutorial was written in PSP X but should be able to be completed in other versions.It way not be reproduced in any form. Group owners please use link to my blog: http://denisegtutorials.blogspot.com/

The items that you make from this tutorial are entirely your own to do with as you wish – you do not need to give me a mention or a link back but it would be appreciated if you do.

OK – let’s get started.Open a new transparent image 800 x 500 pixels. I like to use 300 pixels per inch but that is entirely up to you.
Use your selection tool and pick the rounded rectangle from the selection box. Background colour white – foreground null.

Draw out a large rectangle approximately 500 x 300 in size. Create as vector.

This gives you a topper with rounded edges – but for the base of this you want it straight not rounded. Firstly – right click on your layers palette and convert to raster layer.

Select your selection tool select the rectangle shape. mark out a selection at the lower end of your shape. Hit the delete button once this gives you the correct shape.

You can then use this as a template to colour it as you like to match whatever you are showing off in it.
As an extra you can go to selections – select – all then selections – float and selections – de-float. Then hit the delete button once. This will give you an outline of the shape. Save this as a .pspimage file and you can then pull it up and fill whenever you need it.

To make the transparent bag for your display: The bag will fit under your header so it needs to be the same width as your header – mine is 500. I like my bags to be rectangular so I make mine 500 x 700.

Open a new image 800 by 800 pixels to give you room to manoeuvre.
Use your selection tool and pick the rounded rectangle from the selection box. Background colour white – foreground null.
Draw out a large rectangle approximately 500 x 700 in size. Create as vector.


Convert to raster layer.
Now we are going to make it look more like a transparent bag by adding a few effects.
First go to effects = plugins and choose Greg’s Factory Output Vol II. From the drop down list choose pool shadow.
You can play about with this until you get the look that you like – I have reproduced my settings here for you: 76, 107, 50, 96, 71, 143, 95, 61

This is nearly the finished bag – but I like to give it a sheen by using Eye Candy 4000 glass with the following settings: 10.5, 100, 50, 70, 50, 51, 80

To make the bag transparent – reduce the opacity of the layer to around 60.
Here is how the bag now looks:
If you are happy with it then save it as a png to preserve transparency.
You can now put your bag together – using any colour or pattern you like for the topper – add fastners to the bottom of the top to make it look as if the bag is attached and add any notation you like.
Add your contents to a new layer under the bag.
Like this:

Hope this helps - any questions just drop me a line and I will try to answer.
Thanks
Denise.

Welcome to my tuturial Blog

Hello everyone.
Welcome to my new blog.

I decided to create a new blog for the tutorials as I wanted to leave my original blog for my designs.

Please bear with me as I move everything around.

Thanks
Denise.