Review by Edeline Marta

The first time I read that I would be writing about brushes, I was so excited. But by the time I opened my Microsoft Word, I was panicking because I didn’t know what I should write for this article. I emailed Laurel and asked for some directions as to what should I write. She pointed me to this e-book by Shalae Tippets, which is amazing.

Mastering Brushes for Photoshop by Shalae Tippetts

After I unzipped this e-book, I was so happy because this book is really helpful and gave me some inspiration to write this article. This book has lots of choices of what you can learn about brushes. And I found what I wanted to learn and then write about with brushes.

There are so many brushes, as we know, out there; here are some categories of brushes that I know:

1. Word Art
2. Edges
3. Alphas
4. Frames
5. Doodles
6. Decorative
7. Swirls/Flourish
8. ETC

Normally I use brushes as additions on my pages like edgings, doodles, alphas and swirls. I never knew that you can do so much more with brushes. I picked from the e-book one technique to share with you. I have learned “Creating Paper Cutouts Similar to Die Cuts” which is not difficult to do, and gives awesome results.

First I selected this brush from Erica Hite and stamped it on a transparent layer; you can choose any color for it.

And then I chose my background paper that I wanted to use as the die-cut paper and placed it under my brush layer.

And then I Ctrl+Clicked on the brush thumbnail in my Layers Palette until the marching ants came up (see the green box on my image), but then highlighted the background paper layer in my Layers Palette.

Then I went to Layer> New> Layer Via Copy (Ctrl+C to copy) and the new layer came up. You can hide or delete the background paper and your brush layer.

Now you can drag your die-cut into your layout. You can use many kinds of brushes and turn them into die-cut papers for your pages.

So here is the final page that I did. I used the Flourish Brush and die cut it on my right and left sides of the page. I added a little bit of shadow to make it look realistic. Also I added Grunge Patterns and a Doodle Brush and then I reduced the opacity.

If you have lots of word art, you can also turn it into a die-cut. Use the same procedure to create it for your layout title. You can also use a frame brush, or an alpha brush to make a die-cut. You can do many more if you want to with this technique. It is so amazing when you know what to do with some stuff. You can have variations of techniques and improve your skills.

I personally encourage you to buy this e-book; there is also a Photoshop Elements version. I hope this article inspires you to be creative with your brushes. Thank you for Laurel for pointing me this e-book, without this book I would never have had any inspiration!

Layout by Edeline Marta
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	Note: Commercial license versions of Oodles of Doodles: Spirals Brush Set, Oodles of Doodles: Flourishes Brush Set and GraphX Brush Set are also available.

Edeline lives in Halmstad Sweden. She is married and has a 4-year-old girl and a 2-year-old boy. She has been doing digital scrapping for about 2 years now.