Nifty Use for Eraser Tools

This is a fun and creative way to create a scrapbook layout that you can't do very easily if at all with traditional scrapbooking. This can be done with any photo editing software that has layers and an eraser tool (which is most, if not all of them).

Open a new file with a transparent background. Create a new layer and call it "frame". The frame used here is a freebie from Creative Memories (see link in right margin of blog). Load your frame into this new layer.

Then make a new layer and label it "photo". Place your photo on top of the frame, sizing it as desired.

Then move the frame layer up on top of the photo layer.

Then use your eraser tool. I used a couple of different opacities and a couple of different brushes to get this effect. To get that scratchy look I used an eraser tool shape in Paint Shop Pro called "surreal". Erase all the frame from the focal point of your photo, and erase some of it from the edges.

To keep the transparent background, save the file as a .png.

Freebie roller-skating background

Here's a background I made with the roller-skate drawing. The texture came from www.grungetextures.com.

Copyright Lisa Twede, 2009: Free for personal use. Contact me for commercial use.

Roller-skating Freebie!

This is a drawing of roller-skates I did. It is a .png image with a transparent background.

Copyright 2009 Lisa Twede: Feel free to use this for personal use. For any commercial use, please contact me.

Freebie Happy Halloween

I used a free font called Dracula. This font is available at this link: http://www.fontriver.com/font/dracula/ or here: http://www.urbanfonts.com/fonts/Dracula.htm

This is a .png file with a transparent background. You shouldn't see the white if you download and use this file.

Freebie Background - Skeleton Leaves

My current picaboo book

This is a link to be able to view the book I'm currently working on. It is just a chronological scrapbook of my life in 2009. I still have some gaps to fill in, like my son's running. I will probably just keep adding pages until the end of the year, and then print myself a copy.

http://preview.picaboo.com/Webview/CoverPage.aspx?user=000000000004B7DF77&album=000000000004DB9119

Grunge

A lot of scrapbooking backgrounds and embellishments have a lovely distressed look to them. This seems to be very popular with both traditional and digital scrapbookers. I certainly like them.

Here is an example of one particular background that I really like, and it is a good example of what I am talking about: http://backgrounds.picaboo.com/Backgrounds/BGViewEntry.aspx?entry_guid=96057cfe7f6e43009a871e4501a63a71&catid=0&subcatid=0

But there are tons of them. Well I've been trying to figure out how to do this. The stock textures you get with Paint Shop Pro, and I imagine most other applications, are too uniform to achieve a look like this.

Well in my quest to figure out how to create this distressed look I've come across a term: grunge. Grunge brushes, grunge textures, etc. I have only begun my quest to create the perfectly grunged background. I haven't figured it all out yet. But I did come across this tutorial for how to make grunge brushes. It says it is written for GIMP or Photoshop, but Paint Shop Pro has all the same tools. I think it can easily be adapted. Haven't tried yet.

http://www.shadow-logic.net/2008/08/13/grunge-brush-tutorial/

But I have a whole new eye for taking photographs now! I want to take photographs of dirty, icky, scratched, marred, beaten, weathered anythings so I can use them to make grunge tools in my quest for the perfect scrapbook background!

Oh, and check out www.grungetextures.com for some grungy photos already available!