Repeating Patterns, Part Three

In Part One, we built a repeating pattern essentially on a grid. In Part Two, we went a little further and created a repeating, staggered pattern. And now, in Part Three we’re taking all that we’ve learned to create a repeating pattern with multiple options. Ready?

Open up a new canvas 2 inches square with a resolution of 300 pixels per inch.

Then duplicate your blank layer. The reason for this will explain itself.

Now take a look through your brushes or stamps and choose the one you’ll use first. I used a dragonfly from a free set of butterfly brushes (sorry, can’t find a ling to them). Resize it so it fits into a fraction of your square.

You can see that I’ve duplicated the dragonfly and positioned them in opposing corners.

Then I changed my foreground colour and chose a butterfly stamp, adding it to one of the vacant corners.

And duplicated THAT layer then I Merged all the layers.

I think you might remember this part. Edit>Define Pattern will let you save your creation as a pattern for use with the Pattern Fill tool.

You don’t HAVE to give it a name, but it might make it easier to find later.

Now you need a solid paper for your background. It can be textured, or not.

Then select the Paint Bucket tool, but instead of the Color Fill, go with Pattern Fill. Then go find your new creation.

One click on the paper and BINGO!

But wait! There’s more!!

This time I added some glitter to my brush layer.

And then some hearts…

… and some MORE glitter.

I missed a screenshot where I added in the silhouette of a girl jumping for joy, but you can see the result here.

Look at how amazing it looks with the glitter, which is still there.

Let’s try that one in a staggered pattern. I opened a new 2 inch tall, 4 inch wide canvas and applied the pattern to it. Then I deleted the second repeat so I’d have somewhere to put the offset. Filter>Other>Offset.

I used the same settings I had for the first staggered pattern we did back in Part Two. Then I Edit>Defined Pattern with a different name.

Yes, the same steps as before.

And there’s my new staggered-pattern paper! I could learn to love this technique!!

Have you tried any of the parts of this tutorial? I’d love to see yours!

Stackin’ ’em Up!

I’m seriously in need of a week where I’m actually not scrambling for a tutorial post! I was wide awake at 1 am wracking my brain for a topic. But what do you know… one magically appeared. I remembered there were still some really useful Guided Edits I haven’t shown you yet, so that’s what we’re doing. Let’s look at the Photo Stack, just for fun.

When I tell you that this technique is literally only about a 10 minute job, I know you’re thinking, “She always says that.” But it really is SO much faster even than using a template with photo stack, because with this edit, the software does ALL the copying and stroking. All of it! The hardest part is deciding which of the three options to choose, and I think that comes down to what you want the focus to be.

All I did to get this image was to click just once on the 4 frame spot I’ve shown below.

The very first image has the narrowest border already in place. A single click on one of the border options is the next step.

The medium border is still pretty skinny.

Even the widest one isn’t especially in-your-face. But that’s completely under your control! Before I show you that part, let’s look at the other two stack options.

The eight frame option looks like this with the baseline border.

Beefing up the borders to medium still lets a lot of the original image through.

Then the wider one, still not much of a distraction.

And then there’s the twelve frame option.

Medium

Wide

With this photo I think 4 frames is the right choice. So now I’m going to move to the Expert Editor.

Whoa! Look at all those layers! And each one is another opportunity to fine-tune the final image. (Notice the multiple copies of the photo layer? It’s a GREAT thing!)

Here I’ve selected one of the border layers. The border is actually simply a stroke on its own layer. The default settings are 10 pixels and 100% Opacity.

Pulling the slider to the right makes the border wider. I could also change the colour of the border in this menu if I wanted to.

I’m going to come back to that in a minute. But first, I’m going to unlock the background (original photo) layer so I can edit it. And so I can put a transparent layer underneath it. I right-clicked on the layer in the Layers panel then chose Layer from Background. That makes it like all the other layers, completely editable.

I then added my transparent layer underneath it by CTRL/CMD>clicking on the new layer icon (the blank sheet of paper) at the top left of the Layers panel.

I turned the visibility of the very first black rectangle off and now the original image is visible to the edges and can be erased away, leaving a transparent area instead.

Don’t panic about having to be precise with the erasing. It’s not a problem! All those extra copies of the original photo that are clipped to the stacked layers aren’t going anywhere. You can just use a big eraser and go for it!

After I did that, I decided I wanted to shift the stacked photos so they were entirely inside the canvas. So I CTRL/CMD>Z as many times as I needed to to get back to the black rectangle. Then I resized them a tiny bit, shifted them a tiny bit and rotated them a tiny bit until I arrived at what you see below.

Then I decided to make the borders just a smidge wider. I double-clicked on the fx icon on the first border layer to get into the Styles menu.

I didn’t go overboard, just doubled the width of the border on each one. And then I went back and erased the areas of the original photo layer to make my stack usable.

An advanced version of this Edit would substitute other photos for some of the frames, but it would be almost as much work as using a template would be… the photos would need to be resized and rotated individually then clipped to the spots.

If I was ready to put my layout together, I could just leave it as is for now and come back to it later. But I’m going to save it for later.

In order to be able to use it for a layout, the transparent background is essential. So I’m saving it as a PNG file.

To keep the images sharp I’m using the Slowest setting and Non-Interlaced. I gave it a name and saved it to the folder I’ve created for my (future) layout.

Before I forget, LilyAnn Fisherman left a comment on last week’s tutorial asking me if I couldn’t have made my clock face by texting-on-a-path. So I went back and did it again, using Text on a Shape. It was maybe a tiny bit less work, but I still had to fiddle with the spacing to line the hours up with where they should be on the clock.

And while I was at it, I did a mock-up of what I hope the clock will look like when it’s finished.

Check back in a few weeks to see if I succeed!

Fontastic Spring!

Once again I’m apologizing for not having a great tutorial prepared for you. I’ve been caught up in family obligations the last several days and haven’t had time for much else. I didn’t even get my family bible layout done. But I’ve noticed that almost all the comments on last week’s post mentioned the fonts I showed you. And I also noticed that I haven’t done a post about spring-y fonts. So there we’re going!

As I’ve mentioned before, I love dafont.com as a great source of free fonts; their selection is outstanding! I made a quick cruise through there and have found you a baker’s dozen of fonts (and a dingbat set) that would make great titles or subtitles for spring layouts. See if you agree. Each font is hyperlinked to the site; just click on the font name in the description.

Alpha Shapes Raindrops might be what you’re looking for when you scrap rainy-day layouts. If you simplify each letter on its own layer, you can use the Smudge tool to animate your drops.

Floralies is similar to Blomster, but a little “lighter”.

Florality isn’t technically a font, but the viny, leafy look of it is so pretty!

I’m thinking there are so many ways to make Alpha Flowers just POP off the page.

Flower Explosion is a little lighter too, but still really pretty.

Think how beautiful CF Flowers of Destiny would look with a Blend Mode like Multiply! Ooh, and a gradient… smashing!

Nebulo is really gorgeous, just be aware that it’s a mishmash of capital and lowercase letters.

I just love this one! Kingthings Willow has two choices for even more freedom and control.

Black Flowers Blossom is just pretty.

Vanessa is another really pretty font; imagine it clipped to a paper, maybe with a little border around it.

CF Springtime has a nice bit of heft to it, and those sprigs are a cute touch.

This whimsical little beauty would be an amazing addition of layouts with Day Dreams ‘n Designs‘ Daily Download kit Bee Mine. I think we also need to heed the message… Save the Honeybee.

This one doesn’t say spring so much as the name of it does. I like it though. Butterfly

That leaves only the dingbat set. KR Spring Me has LOTS of spring-y images and so many possibilities.

Do you have any favourite fonts that make you think of spring? It looks like spring might actually be on its way to my corner of the world. Our temperature finally got above freezing on Sunday for the first time since January 31. That’s a long time to be cold!

Heritage and History: Recorded

Late last week, I connected with one of my distant cousins on my mom’s mother’s side through Ancestry DNA. I never expect anything to come from my contacting them, and am always so thrilled when they respond. This particular long-distance connection led to an explosion of “new” family members for me and the beginnings of several friendships. But perhaps the best thing that has come from this is that I now have several photos of the old family Bible, that dates back to 1884.

I know there are more than a few of you loyal readers who are also interested in your family history and in recording what you learn for future generations. My family Bible photos are going to make an amazing layout. And GingerScraps has pretty much everything I’m going to need to make it special. And I’m going to let you in on my design process.

First, did you know you can search the store using keywords? On the far left of the store’s home page, there’s a search box right underneath the log-in panel. I typed in “heritage” and the search returned THIRTY-TWO pages (more than 500!) of possibilities. I know the right kit for me to use for my special layout will be in there somewhere. Here are some of the options I’m considering.

Many of these kits are part of a larger bundle, which of course is your very best value.

My heritage layouts go in one of two directions; I either focus on a single photo or I go with a collection of them. Because the photos by themselves are just “nice” but don’t tell the story, lots of room for journalling is a must. Our GS designers have so many options for templates that it’s like an embarrassment of riches. Here are some options for multi-photo layouts.

For titles and journalling, there are nearly as many options for (free) fonts as there are days in a year. I like to use decorative fonts for titles, typerwriter fonts for journalling – it needs to be completely legible for the story to be preserved. Here are some that I like.

Now, my challenge to you is to see if you can guess which kit, template set and fonts I will use for my layout. Check in the gallery at the end of the week to see if you’re right!

A Whole New Meaning to Copy-and-Paste!

Welcome to the tutorial that almost wasn’t! The last week has been a little difficult around our house and the weekend was particularly so. I didn’t have time to put together something to share with you before I had to go back to work yesterday. 12 hour shifts don’t leave a lot of energy, mentally or physically, and I always do two in a row so I was expecting to have to disappoint you all by posting a “sorry…” and a promise to do better. But the over-staffing fairy visited me this morning and I magically got the day off. Not having a topic in mind, I had to do some pondering. And then I learned something myself that I knew would be perfect for this week. So we’ll settle for late, rather than not at all. Here goes!

Have you ever put your heart and soul into a layout, then spent forever coming up with the perfect journaling – only to hate the way the journaling looks, or worse… see a glaring typo? Have you ever wished PSE came with a spell-check? Or that you could copy-and-paste something from a website? Well, have I got the trick for you! Word and PSE work together! And even better… all your fonts are there in Word too!

Your Word version may be different from mine; the interface might look different but this is pretty basic, and all the things I’m going to show you will work with any version. I opened a new blank document in Word, chose a font and set my formatting so that my text would fit inside a border on a beautiful journaling blank I pulled from Ooh La La Scraps‘ Shabby Chic collection.

I love using quotations for a variety of reasons. Like not having to think too hard! I typed out this one in a matter of a few seconds. I changed the size of the font for Mr Bergen’s name.

I just spotted a typo on my screenshot below. RATS! Word’s spell-check wouldn’t have caught it either, but it DOES catch those transposed letters, “e”s that should be “a”s and that kind of thing. It also capitalizes the first word of each sentence for you if you forget.

Then I opened up Elements on my desktop, dropped my journal blank onto a new document and set up the Text tool with the same font settings that I chose in Word. If I skipped this step now, Elements would default to the last settings I used.

Back to Word… I selected the text then right-clicked to open up a dialogue box. It looks like this. I want to Copy the text. (WSNH tip: the same keyboard shortcuts I’ve shown you in previous tuts also work exactly the same in Word, so CTRL/CMD>C will work to copy the text.)

I flipped back to Elements and Pasted my text into the journaling space. That can be done by right-clicking then choosing Paste from the dialogue box, or CTRL/CMD>V. Did you notice that Elements ignored the different text sizes?

Now I have the ability to change it up to suit my layout. I changed the text colour first by pulling the gray from the border.

Then I changed the font size on Mr Bergen’s name again. Now that I know the font size changes made in Word don’t move over to Elements, I can skip that step in the future.

Even better, it’s totally possible to Copy whole sections of text from a web site or other document on your computer and Paste it into Word. As you can see in the screenshot below, I’ve selected a new quote from my favourite quotations site.

Then I Pasted it into Word with a couple of clicks! Yeah. I wasted time resizing Ellen’s name. (Did you catch the typo in this screenshot too?)

Here you can see that I’ve got Elements open and it’s just waiting for me to Copy-Paste Ellen’s words of wisdom over.

Oh, right… I didn’t go to Elements and set up the font. So this is the font, size and colour I used for the last layout I created.

So I just Undid that step and started over. But this time I decided to use a Text Box. This handy tool helps to constrain the text so it doesn’t bleed out into areas where I don’t want it. To create a Text Box, with the Type tool click-and-drag from one corner diagonally to the opposite corner of the area you want to cover with text. This journal blank made it easy by having reference points in the border.

And then I pasted Ellen’s quote into my text box. Notice that it’s now centre-justified, rather than left-justified as it was in Word. I had “Center” selected in the Text tool settings and Elements over-rode Word.

This time I didn’t have too many changes I needed to make, other than shrinking Ellen.

But to show you how easy it is to change it to suit your purposes, I switched the angle from upright to right-italic and changed the text colour. I want to try this trick with texting on a path, but wanted to get you the basics now. Stay tuned!

Memory-Keeping with Not-So-Great Photos

I don’t know about you, but I’m seriously lousy at getting good selfies. Maybe I’m too critical, or maybe I just don’t look good in photos. But when the only photos I have of an event I really want to scrap about are those nasty selfies, what’s a woman to do? Such was the day I went to the beach on the Wild Atlantic Way… the ONLY day out of the whole two weeks I was in Ireland this time when it rained. It was also the only chance I would have to walk on the beach at Kilkee, where my 3x great-grandparents were born. So I went ahead to walk on the beach (although I didn’t walk the cliffs – I AM a bit of a chicken) and took the nasty selfies, then scrapped them into a minimalist layout for the January Color Challenge.

When I say it was raining, I’m not talking about the soft, misty rain Ireland is usually known for; it was more like a prairie downpour. My hair was plastered to my head and my jacket was soaked through. (And I was freezing… in July!)

If I was going to do something with these photos that I could live with, I was going to have to think a bit. I made a copy of my photo so I’d be playing with it and not the original.

Then I did something I’d never done before… I checked out the possibilities in the Effects menu. I played with each of the options to see what they do, and some of them will be given more attention in upcoming tuts. Imagine my surprise when I found an even quicker-with-fewer-steps sketch effect than we’ve looked at in other tuts.

Just one click and I had a sketch!

The effect produced another new layer.

The details are pretty blown-out, so I thought about how to find them again. (Although I wasn’t really upset that the crowsfeet are gone!)

I used the Levels adjustment (Enhance>Adjust Lighting>Levels or CTRL/CMD>L) to darken the outlines. With Levels, pushing the Input Levels dark value slider to the right as shown and the Output Levels light value slider just slightly to the left allowed some colour to leak back in, but also brought the details and textures back. The raindrops on my glasses are more obvious now.

I wanted a tiny bit more sketchiness so I duplicated the sketch layer (right-click on the layer then select Duplicate Layer or CTRL/CMD>J) then played with the Levels again. Can you see the difference in the histograms between the two images?

Just for fun, I played with some Blend Modes too. Some of them give really interesting results… There are no limits on creativity here!

I chose Pin Light. The only difference it makes is to brighten the image up a bit. And maybe sharpen the sketch effect a smidge.

Lowering the Opacity of that layer lets a bit more colour show through without losing the total sketch effect.

But naturally, I have to play a bit more.

I tried all the Modes then settled on Overlay.

That’s more like it! Some of the gray is gone,, the details are sharper and there’s a hint of colour.

After I Merged all the layers, this is what I ended up with.

And my final layout looks like this… The blended photo in the background is simply clipped to a mask then the mask’s Opacity was lowered a bit to blend the background a bit more.