Fire and Ice - Club Scrap Blog Hop

For the blog hop this month I thought I would show you all how to make composite brushes from several elements.

Step 1:  Move all the elements you are going to be using onto a single transparent .png.

Step 2: Move all the elements close to or overlapping one another - you can rotate, resize etc at this point until you have something that pleases you.  Here is mine:

Step 3:  At this point you will apply a mask to every layer in your composition.  The default mask will be white and a little rule you may like to commit to memory is black conceals, white reveals.  So working on each mask with a black brush you can "hide" parts of each image that you do not wish to see in your finished stamp.

Here is a photo of my slightly changed composite.

I am sure you cannot see too much difference here.  If you want a more distressed look you can of course change the size and type of brush you use and change the opacity as well.

Step 4:  You are now ready to make all your layers into a single layer.  The best way to do that is highlight the topmost layer and hit shift+control+alt+e which will create a new layer with the merged image.  (you also need to turn off your base layer if it is not transparent).

Step 5:  Working on the merged image layer place your cursor in the layer in your layers palette and do control+left click and that should give you marching ants around your merged image.

Step 6:  To make the brush - with the marching ants visible go to edit>define brush preset and a new dialog box appears.    Give the new brush a name and hit OK or save and you are done.

Below is a layout I made with the brush I created.

Enjoy.

Your next stop will be:

http://clubscrapcreates.blogspot.com/