Digi Handprint

I needed a handprint for something a little while ago and couldn't find anything I liked online, so Kate and I got out the paint. As there seems to be a shortage of handprint Photoshop brushes, I thought I would share one here.

Click here to download the zip file.

Digi Dots

It's National Digital Scrapbook Day! (Or International. One of those.)



To celebrate, I'm sharing some polka-dot patterns that I made recently. Click here to download. This is a PAT file for Photoshop, with four different patterns in it. If you unzip the folder and then drag the PAT file into Photoshop, it should load automatically. (The icon looks like this:)



And here are some fun things that you can do with patterns!



Create a pattern fill layer (under Layer > Layer Style > Pattern Overlay, or click the "create new fill or adjustment layer" icon in the layers palette). Choose the pattern you want, and then adjust the scale to change the size of the dots. These patterns have black dots on a transparent background, so I added a white layer underneath.

I hardly ever use pattern layers, myself. (They do seem kind of boring.) The really cool thing is that once you have a pattern loaded, you can use it as a texture in the brushes palette.



Click on the brushes palette and go to "texture." Choose the pattern and adjust the size. I put my mode on "subtract" and checked "texture every tip." You can play around with the different modes and see what they do.



You can paint with polka dots!



Or try this: use a distressed brush, pick two colors, and in the brushes palette (under "color dynamics") set the foreground/background jitter to 100. I also increased the brush spacing (under "brush tip shape") and added an angle jitter (under "shape dynamics").

If you want to switch to another brush and keep your settings, click on the lock icons in the brushes palette. (Don't forget to unlock them when you're done!)

I'm using CS3, but I think most of this is basically the same in Photoshop Elements.

Happy birthday to my blog! (Here's a present!)

My blog is four years old today! This particular blogiversary is significant, of course, because Andy is the same age now that Kate was when I started blogging. These pictures of her sitting were taken on July 25th. Andy's still not sitting, but he's got the Carpet Commando thing down and is rolling and worming his way all over the place.

Here's a little digi-gift for my blog birthday!



Click here to download the zip file. ("Save as," and then you'll have to unzip the file before you can use it.)

These frames were previously part of my contribution to the March 2009 megakit "Fresh" at NDISB.

I also got this up in the store a few days ago:



Super-realistic tears with a cool edge that lets your paper color peek through in places. It looks especially good with dark colors.

My brain has been more in crocheting than digi design lately, but I do have a lot of things that I want to do. So many projects, so little time!

(Update: Since NDISB has closed, this template is available here.)

Pinks and Potatoes

It's National Scrapbook Day! And I finished my big digital design project that I've been working on. This is a collection of fun handmade embellishments, all in different shades of pink.



(Update: Since NDISB has closed, this set is now available here.)

I've been working on pieces for this over the past year or so (my felt butterfly is in there), but I've been really focusing on it for the past couple of weeks, trying to get done in time for NSD. I kept coming up with more and more things, and probably could have kept going, but I figured this was a good stopping place!

I got to play with so many things in making these pieces... paper, ribbon, Sculpey, felt, beads, wire, cardboard, paint... and potatoes, of course. I made a potato-print flower and stamped a cardboard frame with it, and then turned the potato over to Kate to play with for a while.



I also stamped the potato in black and made some coordinating brushes.



HelenaJole_FlowerStamps.zip (Click on that to download the zip file. Includes recoloring instructions.)

Happy National Scrapbook Day!

Digi House-Cleaning

This is not about using Photoshop to get rid of clutter in the background of your photos. Though that would be useful, too.

At NDISB we do these monthly collaborative mega kits, and then when the month is over we can package up our contributions and put them in the store separately. I had a ton of stuff sitting on my hard drive(s) waiting for me to do something with it. I've spent the past couple of days getting things sorted and packaged, and ended up with a few things to put in the store and a few things to give away here.





(That crumpled mat template is free, but I decided to make it a store freebie rather than a blog freebie.)

Update:  Since NDISB closed, the last two products are now on my new site.  The others are not currently available.

And here's everything else! I'm just posting it all here, and hope it might be useful to somebody. Click the file name to download and save it onto your hard drive. You'll have to unzip the files before you can use them.



KitschNKaboodleDoodles.zip (1 MB)

Four doodles--it was supposed to be a 50's style kind of thing.





ApresSki.zip (18.8 MB)

I like this set a lot but if I were going to do it now I'd go with something more realistic for the stitches and mittens. But it's cute.




PrimaveraDeFirenze.zip (8.85 MB)

The watercolor flower thing will only look good on a light background.




HeyNonny.zip (13.12 MB)

These are the papers I made for the Hey Nonny Nonny kit--I really like them, but I'm not sure how generally useful they are.





Celebrate.zip (1.2 MB)

Doodles from last year's New Year's kit.

Paint Block Freebie

Here's one of the rejects from working on Masks and Mats. It was stamped with acrylic paint on cardboard (you can see some of the corrugation in the texture). It's really not usable as a photo mat, but I thought it was cool anyway so I thought I'd share it here. Click here to download the zip file. ("Save as," and then you'll have to unzip the file before you can use it.)



In Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, you can lock the transparency of a layer by clicking on the little checkerboard icon that looks like the Purina logo, up at the top of the layers pallet. (Make sure you have the right layer selected first.) When the transparency is locked then you can just fill the layer with a new color. You should be able to press alt+delete to fill with your foreground color, and control+delete to fill with your background color, but I find this always stops working after I've had the program open for a short time. What I usually do is use the rectangle tool and just draw a big rectangle over the area that I want to fill. It's faster than using the paint bucket.

You can also use a soft round brush to add touches of another color on the locked layer. I used two shades of purple.