Brushes. They are an essential tool for many aspects of graphic design. They also are a great asset on our scrapbook pages. I love brushes. They can give our scrapbook page more dimension, since they usually are applied directly on the background and therefore can serve very well to make the other elements pop off the page a little better. They can add grunge and texture to your page, which can define the tone of your layout. They can be used for emphasis, or in order to draw the observer’s attention to a specific area on the page (see layout below).

Originally, for today I had planned to prepare a tutorial on how to use photoshop brushes. But when I started googling this to do some research, I realized quickly that there are actually tons of great tutorials that explain everything you need to know about brushes. So, doing another one would be quite redundant. Simply google for something like “tips for photoshop brushes,” and it will bring up a range of various websites with tutorials and useful hints on how to use photoshop brushes in general. For us who love digital scrapbooking, however, I want to take the time today and point out some of the great uses of brushes (and stamps/rub-ons for that matter) on our layouts.

Ways to use brushes on a scrapbook page

Borders & Frames

A great way to use brushes is to frame your page. Simply pick a nice, ornamental type brush and stamp them along the edges of your background paper, and it will give your page a great look. (Reminder: Make sure to create a new layer before starting to use the brush. If you don’t do that, it’s impossible to go back later and make any changes.)

You can use brushes all around a page, or only on one side (edge), or even just in one or two corners.

Brushes also work great to frame your photos, and/or journaling:

Many designers specialize on brushes, stamps and rub-ons, and there are countless products out on the market with brushes that make beautiful frames to show off your photos. Simply place them behind, or on top of your photos. (For a more realistic look, I prefer to place them behind a photo, like a mat. That way they look like they’ve been brushed on – stamped – on the page. On both layouts above – click on the image to see larger image – I used a simple round brush with “Hardness” set to 100%. The only difference is the spacing – I made sure to set the spacing at a much higher number to get the dotted line.)

Mats
Another great way how to use brushes is to use them like a photo mat, behind a photo.

With the eyedropper tool, simply pick one of the colors from your layouts, create a new layer in the layers palette again, and start applying the brush to that layer. You can even go as far as combining various kinds of brushes together.

Clipping Masks
Brushes also can make great clipping masks. You can use them to clip photos or papers to your brush layer.

For this layout (above), I used a simple round brush from the default brush palette that comes with Photoshop. Only, this time I used a very large size at 0% hardness. After creating the brush on its own layer, I simply clipped the photo to it, and there was another great way to show off my photo.

Here is another page on which I clipped a photo to a brush. Only this time, I used a different brush to give the photo a different texture and feel. I used one of the spatter brushes that come with Photoshop by default and just “stamped” it onto the canvas (on its own layer, as always). Make sure to not click and drag the brush at the same time. Just use single clicks to make each stamp individually, otherwise the brush won’t look as tattered as it should.

Background
You can use brushes to create great backgrounds.

For this beach page, I applied a soft brush in several areas of the background (subtle, dotted patches). Then I simply clipped another paper to the brush layers giving the rather solid background a subtle added texture.

On this layout, on the other hand, I clipped the same photo to the background, and decreased the opacity level. This way, you can still get a feeling for the environment of the photo, although the image itself was cropped to just a small portion of the original photo.

As there are lots of different types of brushes, there are also many other things you can do with them. While there are brushes available in basically everything that you can imagine, for my scrapbook pages I have a few favorite brush types that I love to work with. They can be narrowed down to …

• Splatters,
• Paint strokes,
• Ornamental,
• Flowers and foliage,
• Alphas,
• and the default brushes that come with Photoshop.

I love using paint strokes on the background to contrast photos and elements. Splatters, on the other hand can give your page a rather messy, artsy, grungy feel, which is perfect for those kinds of layouts. Like I said, the possibilities with brushes are endless.

Don’t forget …
When working with brushes, don’t forget to play with the blending mode, opacity, size, spacing, degree of randomness and colors of your brushes palette. If you know how to use your brushes well, you can get stunning results.

Deviant Art

Lastly, I want to draw your attention to one great resource on the web: deviantart.com. It’s a website that offers literally thousands of photoshop brushes – most of them for free. Simply type “brush” in the “Search Art” field at the top of the page, and you’ll find yourself in “Brushes Paradise!” Most of the brushes I use, I got from that website. If the sheer number of brushes they offer intimidates you, however, you can also google brushes and there are many websites that offer smaller collections of photoshop brushes – many of them for free as well!