annamarie's: let's inspire each other

Freebie Background Paper: Oriental with friends text embossed

Freebie: Butterfly overlay background & store announcement for new designer kit

Today's Freebie is a striped background with an overlay feature with plently of room for your message, photo and other embellishments.

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the links for today's freebie:

http://www.4shared.com/file/60388374/aeaf76f5/stripedoverlay1.html

 

For those interested I have just put a complete designers starter kit together, which will be at my new artella store, a great deal for just $5.00, it includes everything in the photos below: It takes a couple of days for the item to show up in the store so please stop back to check.

 

4 papers, 3 complimentary frames, 2 finished starter pages, 2 designer tools: a matching set of brushes, a matching set of patterns, and 12 matching colors kaleidoscope background papers for even more design fun!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please check out my Artella store to purchase the entire kit for just $5.00, and remember you can use it for commerical use.

 

Thanks for visiting.

Tutorial: How to make an abstract dimensional background

Hi Everyone, my vacation is almost over, it was wonderful being off for so long, but Monday I return to work. But, I did get most everything accomplished so far that I wanted to during my vacation, some gardening, shopping, crafts, relaxing, blogging, some tutorials, visit our state fair a few times, open my Artella store, apply as a volunteer for artella (still waiting to hear back on this one, wink, wink), write my first e-book, oh - and of course give my house a good once over too, ha, ha!  I look forward to retiring some day so I can do this year round.

I thought I would get a quick tutorial in before I leave to spend the day with my daughter for what else? Craft Shopping (we'll, and some shoes too) and visiting a second hand store or two.

Today's tutorial is really quick and can give you some unexpected results by just playing and trying new items, so here we go.

1. layer one make a gradient fill of your choice, this is what I choose and made it circular:

2. On Layer 2 bring in any kind of graphic overlay you want, the more features the better, here is what I did:

3. Now change your layers feature to difference: (you can play and choose others of course to your liking, but this tutorial is with difference selected)

4. Now you can just leave it as is right now for a fun background, or you can move ahead for some dimension. Make a copy of the overlyay so you don't destroy your original and turn off the background and original overlay. You should only have your copy of the overlay in view now, set to normal.  With your magic eraser, go ahead and start removing some of the white. Let's start with just the very top and far right side white spaces. Here is the result, I put a yellowed color back ground in quick for viewing purposes only so you can see how many I removed:

wherever you see yellow, that is the white that I removed. Now let's turn the yellow off or delete it.

5. Turn your background (gradient) back on and the overlay with the white removed. On the overlay layer change it to difference and this is what you will now have:

5. Now my favorite: bevel and emboss: go to layer, layer styles, bevel and emboss and let's add some dimension and sheen:

That's it, now experiement with what you have and play. Change the gradient layer to straight or diamond, change to another gradient, punch out more of the white space, and of course, try other overlays.

I hope this was easy and fun and you give it a try! Have a great day, I'm off!

My Artella Shoppe is now Open!

Hi Everyone, I just wanted you to know that I have just joined the artella shoppes. It's brand new with only one product in their right now, but I will continue to grow it.

I hope you will stop by sometime and check me out.

Below is the link to my first product for anyone interested. It is an e-book entitled "How to Make Candy Bouquets".

This is what the cover looks like.

and here is the link to my new store:

http://www.artellaland.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=6_35_49&products_id=1293

Thanks for visiting!

Freebies & Tutorial: 2 Fairy Backgounds with Cutout Overlay

Today's tutorial is in photoshop for the fairy and flower lovers. Let's start!

1. On layer 1 make a orange square and put the opacity at 60%:

2. On layer 2, bring in an image that you want, I am using a fairy. Also change it to the overlay feature in the layers palette.

3. On layer 3, bring in an overlay of your choice, here is mine:

Experiment both ways, with your overlay with a white background, but also with a clear background.

This tutorial was done with a clear background. Now change to color burn, and change the following settings:

Layer, Layer styles: Inner shadow (Multiply, 75%, Angle - 120, Check the "use global light", Distance - 5, choke - 0, size - 5)

Bevel and Emboss: (Inner Bevel, Smooth, Depth 26, up, Size - 2, soften - 0, Angle - 120, check the "use global light", Altitute - 30, Highlight mode - White - screen , opacity - 75%, Shadow mode - Black, multiply, opacity - 75%)

Gradient - Normal, I picked a orange gradient.

Here is my result:

That's It!  BUT, now turn off layer 1 and 2  (the orange background and the fairy) and bring in a new white background and this is what you now have:

keep changing your background color now to get other effects, also try fun gradients.

and yet another version:

Here is a link to download the finished pages above for those interested:

http://www.4shared.com/file/58826260/ccd33f4f/annamariesfairycutout.html

Freebie: My ARTELLA Inspiration "Photo Frame"

Good Morning Everyone, After doing bill's palette challenge, I liked the squares and decided to make a photo frame for artella creatives. Just take your work and post it on the frame and share in your gallery if you want to share your lastest inspiration.

 Here is what the frame looks like for those interested:

and here is the download link:

http://www.4shared.com/file/58364513/2a9a703f/artellaframe.html

Freebie: Photo Frame within a Photo Frame

and here is the link for those interested.

Tutorial: Creating the tiger star with a easy swirl effect.

Today's tutorial will start with illustrator software. It can be done in photoshop as well though.

1. on a 3" x 3" square, bring in a gradient with your choice of colors and choose Radial type. This is the color choice I am using for this sample.

2. Go to windows, tools, on the left hand side, 7 down, is the Twirl tool. Tear off this set of tools and have fun playing with it, but right now we will just use the twirl one.  Using the twirl tool, move it over and around the gradient image above until you get an effect that you personally like. Here is mine.

3. That's it, I said it was easy, now let's make something with it. Make a star with the star tool big enough to cover the swirl effect.

4. with the star activated let's go back to the twirl tool again and use it on one of the points. Do a little or a lot what ever you like. I like a little, then I can dangle something off of it.

5. Now take your star and put it on top of your colorful twirl effect (or whatever shape you decide to use). Now grab both the star and background together, right click your mouse, and hit "make clipping mask". This is what you now will get. the first star shows a gradient with a white background selected, the 2nd is with a black background.

6. Now let's take this last saved file and copy and paste it into photoshop to add some dimension. In photo shop, go to Layer, Layer Styles, Bevel and Emboss,  and play until you like what you see.

That's it, this is how the tiger star was made that was featured in today's issue. Have fun!

Here are several other stars to look at for inspiration.

Thanks for visiting!

Tutorial & Freebie: 4 quick steps to a textured grunge background - another way to make grunge

Hi Everyone, I received a few requests for tutorials so here is the first one. Grunge w/textures.

 1. Start on layer one with a color of your choice, I am using rust or brown.

2. Now let's add some texture to it, to go: Layer, Layer Style, Bevel and Emboss and choose Texture. Pick up any texture you like from your choices, it doesn't matter which. and really increase it's size. Mine is +755.

3. Now let's make another layer. On this new blank layer, open up your brush palette and choose a grunge effect style you like and another tone of the rust or orange color. On Layer 2 apply the brush or stamp and hit the Layer, Layer style, drop shadow. This is now layer two.

4. Let's add another layer and repeat 3. Pick a new and a different grunge brush or stamp, and apply that to layer 3, again go to Layer, layer style, drop shadow and add gradient overlay this time vs. just a color. Here is layer 3.

5. Keep going or end here. Now let's make something with our new grunge paper.

On Layer 1, bring in the same color as your grunge background again.

On layer 2 bring in some choppy shapes, I put two together on layer 2 to make this version and merged them together.

On layer 3 bring in your new grunge paper. Hit cntrl, alt, G and it will wrap around your choppy shapes. Now merge layer 3 and 2 together. Now Hit. Layer, Layer Styles, Drop Shadow.

Now add some texture to your brown background. Go to Layer, Layer Styles, Bevel and Emboss and the texture choice, and adjust size to what you like, mine is +161.

Here is a link to the 2 grunge samples above for those interested.

http://www.4shared.com/file/57773021/241ca3cd/2grungebackgrounds.html

Several FREEBIE digital artists background papers with swirls and neon

Happy Saturday, I've been starting to enjoy some of my vacation time, but took today as just a play day. Nothing special in mind, just playing with lines, neon outlines and the twirl and zig zag effects.  Here they are and a link for anyone wanting to use them for something.

Here are some more, non neon.

Now let's show two of the papers in action. Here are 2 of the papers made into digital flower pins.

Have fun using them as backgrounds, overlay them over something and change the transparency on them, color burn or multiply them over colors, use them to make other things, but most importantly experiment and have fun.

Here is the link to download the papers for anyone interested there are a few more in the zipped file than shown above.

http://www.4shared.com/file/57532203/fb5414a3/swirlsandneons.html

thanks for visiting!