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Note: Screenshots done in Photoshop CS2, however, techniques will also work in Photoshop Elements.
Brushes are some of the most flexible tools you can use on your digital scrapbooking layouts. But perhaps you have some older brushes that you don’t use anymore. You can create a myriad of new designs just by duplicating, flipping or rotating your brush design. Let me show you how to can bring interest and life back into those older brushes with just a few simple techniques.
Open a new 12x12, 300-dpi document with a transparent background. Fill the background with any color you would like. This is going to be our working document.
Next, open the brush of your choice. You can use any brush you like, and I encourage you to experiment with brushes that you may think won’t work well. I will be using brushes from the Swirls 1 and Swirls 2 Brush Sets. Resize the brush to a size that allows you to see what you’re doing, but not so big that it will cover the entire page.
You may need to change the orientation of the brush. The brush I chose is lying on its side, and I would like to start with it going up and down.
In order to change that, I go to the Brushes Palette and slide the rotation around until my brush is standing up. I’m now ready to start stamping.
Create a new layer and then stamp the brush once in black on the new layer.
Duplicate the image by hitting Ctrl+J (Mac: Cmd+J). Then go to Edit> Transform> Flip Vertical.
That looks pretty cool just like that, but we can do more. Using the arrow keys, move the duplicate image down so that the ends of the swirls are crossed.
We’re going to repeat these steps a few more times, this time rotating the brush in other directions to fill in all of our design. Duplicate the bottom swirl, then go to Edit> Transform> Rotate 90 CCW. Now move the swirl up into place on the right side of the design.
Repeat the above step, but this time rotate the swirl 90 Degrees Clockwise, then move it to the left side of the design.
To fill in the rest of the gaps, we will do something slightly different. First, duplicate the design as always, and go to Edit> Transform. This time, look at the Options Bar and you’ll notice that there’s a place to put the amount of degrees you want to rotate the brush. This time we will be rotating our images 45 Degrees.
Continue around the design duplicating and rotating each image and then moving it into place. Note: After rotating the first image to 45 degrees, you can then hit Shift+Ctrl+T to rotate the remaining ones the same amount.
You can now merge the layers and use as is for a fun embellishment, or duplicate it and spread it across the page to create a neat background.
Layout by Jan Hicks
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Tutorial written by Jan Hicks
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