Glass stones

Glass Stones

Tutorial - Glass Stones (originally by Lori J. Davis) - As with many tutorials that have been on line for many years, the links become unavailable! * Read notes below and you should be able to achieve a result.

Here I played with shapes and the warp tool and different colours to create the shapes underneath my stones.

Tutorial Note

Open new canvas 400 pixels x 400 pixels
Click on Effects / Artistic effects / Balls and Bubbles
Click on last used and select ljd_GlassStone preset,
Lower the zoom to about 22 so you can see the whole bubble
then you will see will see a little deformation bounding block
push the corners inwards to lower the size of your bubble slightly.

Extra Note for those who cannot use or do not have the ljd_GlassStone preset
here are the Manual Settings in Artistic Effects / Balls and Bubbles

Shape - single ball or bubble
Surface - colour #ffffff Opacity 15 Shininess 50 Gloss 80
Maps - none
Illumination - Maximum 15 minimum 0 Lights 1 colour #ffffff highlight size 28
Save as GlassStone preset

Follow tutorial and then these are her shadow settings

Shadow Horizontal and Vertical 6
Opacity 70 Blur 37 Colour #000000
Save as GlassStone shadow

Choosing the Right Mat Colour

Choosing the Right Mat Colour



Using any image of your choice - use your colour picker to choose a complimentary or contrasting colour that suits your image to make your frames and mats.

I chose to images from Public Domain

Note from Pat

Add a texture and slight inner bevel and drop shadow.
You could save your mat frame separately as a .psp image or .png image for future use.

My results for posting - merged all layers and resized to 78 pixels per inch and 600 pixels on the largest side, smart size. Saved AS mymatname.jpg

After doing this exercise, you might also want to go to "2 create your own colour palettes" and make your image mats or frames, by choosing from the palette colours.

Colour Palette and Theme

Colour Palette and Theme

Create your Colour Palette/Choose Your Theme

Tutorial Notes by pat/PCArt
Before you can create your "kit" you need to have a few ideas to plan what you want to accomplish.

We need to Think about these things when creating our kit.

What do you want to make - Are you making a whole kit, a quick page, or a Greeting Card. Is it a series of papers and elements, ribbons, tags, brads and all?
Keep a little note book nearby. Perhaps you could make quick mini sketches of your ideas on a piece of paper, this will help you to create your layout ideas. Write down any ideas you have to help you construct your kit. Write down anything you don't want to forget.
Image/Photo - decide which image/s or photo/s to concentrate on.
Colour/Palette - Then you need to choose your colours. This is where you decide what colours your frames, papers, ribbons and so on are going to be. Use this as a quick reference while creating your kit.
Occasion/Reason - Birthday, Love, Wedding, Season, Holiday, Children, Someone special, Pet?
This will help you decide what kind of elements or patterns you want to use.
What is it going to be used for? Is it for own personal use, is it for Printing, or for Giving away as a Freebie, or for the web, do you want to sell it on your Blog?
If it is for Printing or giving away as a Freebie or Selling on your Blog - you need to think about size!

Read this Article Print Design vs. Web Design
so that you can understand more about where we are going. It is very important to make sure that your sizing is appropriate for the use. Remember you can size down fairly easily but sizing up really is not an option.

Creating graphics for the web or your e-mails does not use a lot of memory, but creating "professionally" at the size and dpi or ppi required for quality printing does!
Unless you have an mega powerful computer, you need to be prepared to work a little slower as large images take time and patience.

When giving away or sharing
1) Always state on your work what it is to be used for and in what format it is saved.
For example "Papers are for 12" x 12" layouts and created in 300dpi .jpg format"
This tells your guest/customer exactly what they are getting.
It could be that "Images are created for use on the web or in e-mails and are 72dpi .jpg format"
or "Elements are created for printing on 12" x 12" layouts and are 300dpi in .png format"
2) Always state your Terms of Use!

TUTORIAL Create your Colour Palette
(by PCArt)
Open the image you want to use for your colours - duplicate it - close the original.

Go to Image / Decreased Colour Depth / 16 Colours
Settings Palette - optimised median cut and Reduction - Nearest Colour / OK
Now look at your colour palette in Paint Shop Pro - it shows you only 16 colours.
Open a new image 300 pixels x 50 pixels
paintbrush click on presets and click on the little bent arrow to get to your brush default setting then change your settings to Square - Size 50 - and Hardness,Density,Opacity all at 100
Use your dropper tool to choose your colours from your 16 colour palette in Paint Shop Pro.
Paint your palette choosing the 6 colours you want to use.

You need to click back and forth from your decreased colour image to pick your colours from the palette in Paint Shop Pro and then go back to your new image to paint the squares.
Add a thin border if you wish and name your palette.
Save as .jpg

Here is my result
I used the 6 middle colours on the left side of my 16 colour palette


Here is a blank palette for you


Just open it in your workspace copy it and close the original

Now as you choose your colours you can flood them into your blocks.
Save your colour palettes as .jpg images and save them in your work in progress (kit) folder or class folder - you can then open your palette up in your psp work space and use it to refer back to while you are working on creating your kit.
I hope this is helpful to you

Now there are many ways to do something if you know how and following my post today I have had a few interesting alternatives to test.

Thankyou Patrick for sharing this interesting link http://whatsitscolor.com/- this was way too much fun!


I never imagined that one of my favourite shades of blue
was the complimentary colour to this little image that I have been testing
with all the colour palette tricks today!

This is really a fun way to quickly sort colours for a kit!
Complimentary Dominant average colour on frame #92a2d7
Dominant average colour this page background #d8c892
Top 10 of 94 unique colours in the little image are in the patterned background.

Another way to create your colour palette using Toadies - Thank you TM
Here I used the image again from above.


Made a copy and closed the original
Effects/ Plugins / Toadies / Plain Mosaic 2 / Cell Width and Height both to 61 / Alpha Threshold 0 /Edge/Hard/Soft/Off 0
I hand picked the colours I fancied with the magic wand,
and copied and pasted them onto my palette.

Ribbons and Bows

Ribbons and Bows

Try Shawna's Suede Ribbon too

Now you have had fun making ribbons flat and curled - how about trying your hand at making bows?
Look at bows see how they are constructed then make a copy of your ribbon and cut and paste your pieces into position.

Use the warp tool and or warp brush to bend and push the ribbons into shape
Use your curls for the ribbons hanging down.

Remember to practice and experiment cut them, paste them, twist them, warp them, and colourize them!!




Use the warp tool to bend the ribbons hanging down. Remember practice makes for improvement.

DLL files needed

DLL Files Needed

Sometimes we add plugins or filters to our graphics program and they just don't seem to be there.

There are 5 different DLL files needed to run most filter/plugins/add ons with your Paintshop Pro graphics program that are NOT always installed or are not located in the proper folder for your operating system.

I am uploading them to our files section so you can get the ones you do not have.
I have scanned them with AVG and they are clean but always scan things yourself for peace of mind!

MSVCRT10.DLL
msvcrt20.dll
Msvcrt40.dll
msvcrt.dll
plugin.dll

If after installing a plugin/filter AND once you have restarted your graphics program you get a message saying your program is unable to load it, place the above listed DLL's from the zip file as follows:

Windows98: All DLL's go in C:\Windows\System

WindowsME: Plugin.dll goes in your C:\Windows folder AND into your graphics program plugins folder. Msvcrt10.dll goes in your C:\Windows\System folder.

Windows2000: All DLL's go in C:\WINNT\System32

WindowsXP: All DLL's go in C:\Windows\System32

Vista - All DLL's go in C:\Windows\System32

They apparently cannot do any damage - if you put them in the wrong place they will not work.
If they are in the right place they work immediately.

Curled Ribbons with Visros (if you have it)

Curled Ribbons with Visros

based on settings by Laura White  Tutorial link no longer available. See notes below and have fun experimenting!



Open a new image 600 x 600 pixels at 300 pixels per inch.
Draw out a rectangle using preset shapes
Convert to raster layer
Fill with pattern or colour of choice
Keep selected
Apply chosen texture

Go to your plug-in menu, choose Visros, then Twist.
Use the settings below.

Position - Top left
Selection - Input
Parameters
direction - 30
location - 100
radius - 30
Page properties
Keep going back to Page Properties
and go to each of the property options and choose
Fore Page - image (the rectangle you drew) - opaque
Back Page - solid custom color - opaque -
(on the patterned ribbon I used - image - master image - opaque)
(on the plain ribbon I used - solid - customer colour and chose a darker shade)
(on the pale pink ribbon I used - solid - front colour - opaque)
Ground Page - solid - transparent - make sure the slider is fully to transparent
Unselected page - solid - transparent

As always, Experiment,
Try changing the direction / location / radius / settings
and using Adjust / Hue and Saturation / Hue/Saturation/Lightness - try colourizing your finished ribbons

Maybe try adding Greg's Pool Shadow to your straight ribbons - use intensity at about 52

Rick Rack or Ric Rac

Rick Rack

Tutorial - Rick Rack from (Pracken's Paint Scrapbook Series)

I absolutely love the variety of tutorials and skill from this talented lady!




Creating Rick Rack or Ric Rac (I wonder what the correct spelling is here?) was easier than I thought it would be so I enjoyed this valuable lesson.



Tutorial Note from Pat

Click image for larger preview.
I drew mine on 17 inch x 1 inch canvas at 300 pixels per inch with a line width of 150 (to be able to use it corner to corner if need be on a 12 inch page)
I used a pale blue gradient to draw the line - Angle 0 / Style Linear / Repeats 7
At this size I made my Effects / Distortion / Wave settings
Horizontal - Amplitude 0 Wave Length 1
Vertical - Amplitude 6 Wave Length 3
SAVE AS .png

Experiment

Copy your rick rack and paste as a new layer
Try adjusting colours, using
Adjust / Hue and Saturation / Hue/Saturation/Lightness
Experiment with textures and other material fills, blinds effects etc.,

Size Guide

Element and Paper Sizes

Digital Scrapping Size Guide for Elements and Papers
by PCArt


This is a quick visual size guide for Digital Scrapping, these are basically the sizes I work with and I hope these guides will be helpful to you.


Note:- Images have been re sized for Preview from 12 inch x 12 inch 300 pixels per inch to 78 pixels per inch and 600 pixels x 600 pixels / Smart Size / All Layers.

Converting Scraps Printing sizes
to TAG for web sizes
(by PCArt)

A question comes up quite often when creating Scraps for printing - about them being so big, and how people who do NOT want to print but only want to create for making TAGS for the web and for e-mail, don't know how to adjust thier sizes.

When you look at tags sometimes large elements like paper clips and buttons are used "almost as big".

It really is a question of personal taste.

Can you believe converting your size while creating from a tutorial is this easy?
Simply follow the Scrapping tutorial with the dimensions given, But change from 300 pixels per inch to 72 pixels per inch :)


Please note that creating on a smaller image also means down sizing the textures etc., given in the tutorials, so you will need to experiment with effects and filters to suit yourself.

Also a 12 inch x 12 inch paper will still be too big for a tag even at 72 pixels per inch so if you plan on creating a "paper" for your tags make it about 600 x 600 pixels at 72 pixels per inch.

EXAMPLES
POST CARD Print Size 6 inches x 4 inches at 300 pixels per inch as per Scrapping Tutorial/size guide.
*Converted to TAG size - same dimensions 6 inches x 4 inches at 72 pixels per inch
Postage Stamp for print size 1 inch x 1,5 inches 300 pixels per inch as per Scrapping Tutorial/size guide.
*Converted to TAG size - same dimensions 1 inch x 1,5 inches at 72 pixels per inch

Make Stickers

Making Stickers

Make sticker like images by using preset shapes and then adding a white flat edge to your images.

Use the magic wand to select areas of the image and while selected, apply a soft bevel to those areas to make them appear raised or cushioned above the white edges.



Try applying a texture to your areas of colour and a soft bevel too.

Make your own Brads

Make Your Own Brads

Using the skills you have already acquired, open a new image and then using shapes - circle, select and while selected fill with patterns and use image effects kaleidoscope to create amazing patterns. Apply a slight bevel to the edge and there you have a lovely brad!  Save as a .png image to place on your scrapping pages.