Set of Star Brushes

It is almost Christmas and what would Christmas be without any stars? I thought I would dive in and design several stars and put them all in one easy-to-access brush file.
You can download the file for free right here:

JAM_StarBrushSet.zip

You can place the stars anywhere on your designs and lay-outs, use them singular or have them trail a line that you draw with the mouse or pen.

To use the brushes, download the file, unzip the file to a folder where you keep your extra brushes. Keeping brushsets seperate from the Presets folder of the PhotoShop folder will help to keep loading time of the software reasonable.


Star Frame

To make a border around a picture, follow these steps:
Select the Brush Tool and load the Star Brush set and select a star.

Use these settings in the Brushes Panel:
Tip Shape: size 160 pixels, Spacing 94 % or higher

Shape Dynamics: Size Jitter: 68 %
Min. Diameter 8%

Scattering: Scatter: 20%

Color Dynamics: Hue Jitter 5%
Saturation Jitter: 3%
Brightness Jitter: 4%

Check Smoothing (= default setting)

1. Drag two guides drom each side to the place where you want the frame or border to be, these will act like your visual aids.

2. Add a new layer in the Layers Palette and make this layer active.

3. With the Brush Tool selected, place the cursor in one corner, hold down the Shift key and click on the next corner of the frame. You will now have one line with stars.

Keep the Shift key down and click on the next corner. Another line is drawn. Repeat untill all sides are done.

4. Press Ctrl + H to hide the guides.

There is so much more to do with these brushes. Go and have some fun!

Extra WordArt for the Celebrate Scrapbook Kit

Here is the last addition for the Celebrate Mini kit from the Blog Hop. Single words with a patterned paper added, solid red paper and short sentences flowing along a line.
You can download this kit from here:

JAM_CelebrateWordart.zip

I am looking forward to hear from you. Leave a comment or email me if you like.

For the next post I am thinking about designing a set of brushes for Photoshop...

Extra Elements for the Celebrate Blog Hop kit

With a slight delay is here the extra kit with some elements which will fit the original Celebrate Blog Hop kit.

You can download it from here:

JAM_CelebrateElements.zip

Feel free to leave a comment, spread the word, or email me with the designs that you made with these kits. I would love to hear from you!

There are some problems with my computer, but as long as it continues to work, I will upload a set of wordart next week. Keep on eye on this blog!

More Papers for the Celebrate Blog Hop Kit.

As promised, I put together some extra papers in an extention kit for the Celebrate kit that was shared last week during the Blog Hop.

When we started to design the Christmas kit for the Blog Hop, we were sent a colour palette with these strange pink colours in it -even some light blue but I did stay away from that colour!
It was a real challenge to use the pink colours, they do look good with the pale green and dark green though.

You can grab the kit from here:
JAM_CelebratePaperExt.zip

Feel free to leave a comment, spread the word, or email me and show your layouts that you made with this Celebrate kit. My contact info can be found in the TOU of both kits.

Next week I will post an extension kit for you with some elements, so don't forget to bookmark this blog or add it to your Reader.

Welcome to the Blog Hop

Welcome to the Blog Hop from the graduates of the JessicaSprague.com Designer class of 2010. This kit is part of the huge kit that you can collect by visiting the blogs from almost 40 designers.

This Preview will show you some of the papers that you will collect when you visit all blogs. Please note, that for clarity NOT all papers are shown!

And here is the Preview of SOME of the elements that you can find in this collabkit. Not elements were included in this preview because of lack of space!

You can start dowloading my minikit Celebrate

from this link:

JAM_CelebrateKit.zip> Celebrate Minikit

Update 15 nov:
Then Bloghop is over! Please join us the next time!

Don't forget to bookmark this blog, an extension kit for the Celebrate Mini kit will be made available for download next week. Keep an eye on the announcement and download link on this blog!

And feel free to leave a comment or send me an email to show your work - contact info can be found in the TOU of the kit.

Happy scrapping!

Announcing the BlogHop from Graduates of 'Art of Digital Design Class'

Over 40 new certified designers from the JessicaSprague.com class of 2010 is announcing their BlogHop!

The event starts 11th of november and wil run through 14th november. You will be able to follow a trail of blogs where you can find digital scrapbook goodies to download for free!
Make sure you visit this blog here and start hopping along. See you then!

Free PhotoMasks for Download

In case you don't want to make your own photomasks, here is a pack with 6 different photomasks for you to download.

Download from here (4Shared.com)

These masks were made with the free brushes that Andrei Oprinca provided for free (Personal Use only).

To make your own versions, follow the instructions below and download the brushes too.
Have fun!

Creating a simple photo mask in PS

In my previous entry I mentioned the free brushes from Andrei Oprinca and supplied the link. In case you do not know what to do with it, I made a photo mask with these swirls. Here are the instructions for you to make some your self.



1. Start with a New Document
Select a transparent background, 300 dpi and the size of the page that you want to make, or, if you use the Photo Mask later as an element in a page, set the size of the new document to the size of the photo and add some extra along all sides.




2. Use the Rounded Rectangle Tool
Select the right tool, not the Marquee Tool. Set the following options in the Options Bar: Fill with Pixels, Radius 40 px, Mode: Normal.




3. Draw the Photo Mask
With the Colours set to Default (Black is Foreground, White is Background) draw the rectangle the size of your photograph. It is helpful to have the panel Info open, so you can see the size while drawing it.




4. Clip the Photo to the Rectangle
Drag your photo into this document, and clip it to the layer with the mask. (Hold the Alt key, hover with the cursor over the line between the 2 layers in the Layers Palette and click).
If needed, adjust the size of the photo using the hot key Ctrl+T.

5. Add a Layer Mask
Make the layer with the photomask active again. Add a Layer Mask (button at the bottom of the Layers Palette).




6. Load the brushes
Select the Brush Tool from the Tool Bar. Hit F5 to open the Brushes Panel. If you have not loaded the Floral Brushes set yet, you can do this by clicking the small arrow and selecting Load Brushes.
Browse to the folder where you have copied the brushset to and click the filename. The brushes will appear in your Brushes Panel now.




7. Add the brushwork
Select a brush and with Black as your Foreground Colour, stamp once at the bottom of the photo mask like I did. Use Ctrl+Z when you don't like the effect.
Try several brushes and save the project.If you want to use the mask later as a seperate element, save it in the PNG file format. You can then drag it into a LO when you need it.

Just stamping 2 times with a brush, at top and bottom, gave this nice effect. Quick and simple!

Great Floral Brushes for Free

On the site PSDbox.com, the designer Andrei Oprinca offered his floral brushes for free (Personal Use only, Commercial Use not Allowed). Since we always can use some more brushes I thought it would be fun to share this link with you. You can download them from here:

http://www.psdbox.com/brushes/floral-design-brushes/

Have fun!