Tips & Tricks – Perfectly Pinned :)

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Hello everyone! Beckie here today!

I thought we’d expand on what we learned last time in our Tips & Tricks series about how to use masking to make your ribbons magical, by now showing you how to use masks and the burn tool to make realistic effects with pins!   Ready to get started??!  Let’s go!

Here’s the finished product we’re going to be making.  It’s a simple journaling spot using the papers and elements from Wild Love. I’ve included the cute little pin from this collection, as well as the sweet little heart dangle.  Notice how it appears to be hanging from the pin, and the pin appears to be stuck through the paper?

Step 1: Get Set up.  Set up all of your materials, size them as you desire to have them on your finished product and place them EXACTLY where you want them.  We’ll be using layer masks to “erase” portions of our elements, and you should only do this after you’ve re-sized and placed everything in its final position.  At this time you also want to go ahead and create layer masks for the pin and the heart dangle, as we’ll be using them.  This post has details on how to create layer masks in PSE if you need a refresher :)

Step 2: Hang the heart

Zoom WAY in on your elements (I’m at 400% below) so we can do the very detailed work of masking off a tiny portion of the heart dangle to create the effect of the heart hanging from the pin.

• Click on the layer mask for the heart.
• Press the “b” key to select your brush tool, select a hard edged round brush and be sure the color is set to black.
• Use the “[” key to make your brush smaller – so that your brush is the same width as the pin.

Where we brush black, the heart image will be hidden…but not erased! this means that if you make a mistake, just switch back to white and paint over your image again to un-hide it :)  Now, we need to hide only one side of the heart charm to create the effect that it’s hung from the pin.  Using the image below as reference, position the brush to the LEFT of the hook on the heart that you plan to hide, exactly above the pin.  Draw a line as shown below (it’s only red so you know what I masked off!).  Want a perfectly straight line? click to start the brush tool on one side, press and hold the shift key, then click where you want the line to end.  Voila - perfectly straight line between those two points! :)

Step 3: Attach the pin

Repeat the same process again, this time with the layer mask for the pin selected.  Brush over the portion of the pin you wish to hide – giving the appearance that a portion of the pin is hidden underneath the circular label.  Again, the image below shows you where I chose to mask to “hide” a portion of the pin.

Step 4: Burn, baby burn!

Now we need to use the burn tool to add that subtle shading that creates the realism to our pin effect.  Again, I’m brushing with colors here to illustrate the directions.

• Select the burn tool (“o” key).
• Set range to “midtones”, and exposure to 50%.
• Draw straight lines where I have painted in RED in the image below (two lines).
• With the burn tool still selected, now set the exposure to 25%.
• Draw straight lines where I have painted in YELLOW in the image below (two lines parallel to the red lines). You don’t want to overlap the lines.
• Lastly, using your burn tool still at 25%, burn over the area where the edges of the pin meet the paper, where I’ve brushed with purplish pink in the image below.

When you complete these steps, this is what your image should look like this:

Now, we could stop right here and this looks pretty darn realistic when viewed at 100%!  I have one additional “bonus” step for Photoshop users.  We can fine tune the shadow of the pin a bit to further enhance the effect that the pin is actually attached to the journaling circle.  To do this, we need to push the shadow of the pin closer to the pin as it approaches where the pin enters the paper.

so…here goes!

• If you haven’t already done so, create a drop shadow for your pin.
• We can’t edit the shadow directly as a layer style, so in the layers palette, right click on the drop shadow and select “Create Layer” (click “ok” to the warning message about not being able to re-create all aspects of the layer style).  We’ve now put the shadow in its own layer so we can edit it directly!
• Select the smudge tool from the toolbox (may be hidden behind blur or sharpen tools in your toolbar).
• I made my brush 3x bigger than what I used for masking (it was 5 px for the mask, I set it to 15px for the smudge).
• In the layers palette, be sure the new shadow layer for the pin is selected.
• This is where you’ll need to experiment a bit, but gradually decrease the distance of the pin shadow as you approach the point where the pin meets the paper.  Make a series of strokes from the shadow towards the pin, pushing the shadow underneath the pin to give the appearance that the pin is getting progressively closer to the paper. I roughly tried to end up with my shadow following the path created by the lines below:

Let’s see the final product one more time!

Well that’s all I have for you today!  I hope this pin technique is something new to add to your scrappin’ toolbox :) Have a wonderful week!! Anna will be here tomorrow with a post I’m sure we can all relate to!

BeckieTips and Tricks, Uncategorized 5 Comments