The Secret of creating your own Embellishments

Here we are going to create a few of the elements that you can use for digital scrapbooking. Start off with a new document that is large enough for you to work with. If you are planning to use everything for print then choose 300 resolution so you can create work at print resolution, otherwise I'm using 72 for web here because it's a smaller file size.

It's really not that difficult to create your material that you can work with. Go to the custom shapes tool.

You can use fill pixels or shape layers. Here I'm using fill pixels.

This means you'll create shapes on whatever (normal) layer is active so you'll want to create a new blank layer

for each new shape unless you want some of them on the same layer.

Now simply choose a shape from the shapes drop down menu. You may have to load or choose different shapes if you're stuck to the default. I have created some custom shape downloads from Photoshopdownloads.com of grunge-tek shapes that I also use for digital scrapbooking.

Simply click and drag to create your shape. Click drag and hold down the shift key and then release the mouse first and then release shift to get a perfect scaled proportionate shape.

Now go to your Styles palette.

Go to the popout menu and load styles...

then locate in your folders where you have the custom .asl premade layer styles such as my discover photoshop downloads styles. Click ok to load these.

This is basically the big secret right here of a lot of scrapbooking elements: Layer Styles (and having a good collection to use from).

These are Photoshop's one click wonders. When you load the styles, everything that is contained within each of them is now in your computer so you'll get the actual different texture and contour overlays; whatever the unlimited combination of layer styles is and is saved as, you can just click and it will automatically apply it to your layer or shape layer. This is power my friend.

Just keep clicking on different styles to find one that you like for a particular shape/layer.

If you look in the layers palette you see the styles drop down menu shows which styles are being used. When you double click you will see the settings that are already programmed in for that layer style. You can also alter any layer style like this if you want and save it as a new one.

Just click on the arrow to hide the drop down menu. You can turn on or off individual effects by the eyeballs.

To duplicate your candy like shape layer, just drag it to the new layer icon and you now have two.exact copies.

Go to Ctrl T or Edit: Free Transform and hold Shift to scale it down to make it smaller.

You can create unlimited embellishments this way to add to your digital scrapbooking resources. They make perfect complements for many of your templates or scrapbooking plans.

I've scaled this one down so it's smaller. Now go to the styles palette and choose another style such as this gold look. Ooh, a gold crown.

Styles are how you make seemingly boring looking shapes into jewelry, bling, candy and much more!

Remember you can create layer sets to organize layers by clicking on the folder icon and then dragging layers into it.

Name your folder something you can remember.



You can also use Shapes Layers option as shown. I go into this in detail in my Basic Photoshop training. This will create a new vector shape layer everytime that you click and drag to make the shape.

Choose something else like the paperclip. Hold shift while dragging to scale it properly.

 

Now go through your layers styles to see if you can find something that makes the paper clip look realistic!

You can also apply Styles to shape layers just the same as fill layers.

Believe me I wasn't even a fan of styles until I knew what they can do! Now I want to keep making jewelry, photo frames, etc. and having fun with them!

ok you can create duplicates by dragging this layer to the new layer icon and use the moVe tool to move it around.

Try transforming Ctrl T and rotating one of the staples.

Make several copies if you want. These will be in proportion to the rest of your 'scraps'.

Now find another layer style...I like this one because it looks like a normal clear staple.

Now go ahead and organize these shape layers into their own layer set and name the set so you remember what they are.

How cool and easy is that?!