Blending Background Papers
Hi everyone, Happy Friday! Lex here to talk and show a little bit of how I blend background papers. One of the reasons digiscrapping is such a passion of mine is it allows me to play around with so many variables–background papers one of them. I find it so freeing and exciting and overall, really good for the mojo.
Materials used:
- Wallflower by Jenn Barrette and Meghan Mullens
- Masked Marvels by Julie Billingsley
- Courageous by Libby Pritchett
- Aloha Sunshine by Kristin Cronin-Barrow and Zoe Pearn
- Software: Adobe Photoshop CS3s
Why I Like to Blend Papers:
Some Examples of Blended Backgrounds:
How I Blend Background Papers:
Remember my confessed weakness for newsprint papers? I really loved another pattern in Julie’s kit so I was playing around and really liked the sort of fireworks effect here. I ended up duplicating one paper and fiddling with various opacities until I got the pattern I liked.
Libby’s Courageous is a perfect example of a kit that just has SO MANY awesome papers. I wanted to use them all, seriously! I ended up blending four different papers and played around for a loooong time because I was enjoying myself.
Fun Bonus: Playing with Paint Wash
Then I’ll change the duplicate layer’s color so you can see which layer is which.
I’ll shrink the duplicate layer (CTRL+T) so you can see the lower Paint Wash layer peeking out.
Then I’ll clip a pattern paper (CTRL+ALT+G) to the lower Paint Wash layer.
I’ll do the same for the other Paint Wash layer.
Tada! Cool, no? Then I’ll get to playing with blend modes, layer opacity, hue/saturation, etc until I get a blend that I like. Or I could put this blended mask above a set of blended papers. Or I could just have white space background and have this blended mask be the main background. Or I could keep adding paint wash layers and clipping papers to them. Or you could also use various other masks (I love Penny’s–especially this set!) and clip papers to them. Or I could just use it as a painted accent behind a cluster. Lots of options can happen here
If you’ve read Heather’s tutorial on Painting With Paper, it’s actually very similar, except that she uses brushes. Anyway, I hope you found some of these ideas helpful. As with learning anything new, have fun with it!
Sandy/tx-nana-scraps said...
on May 13th, 2012 at 12:54 pm
Your layouts are beautiful! Thanks so much for this tutorial, can’t wait to try it on one of mine.
Adrianka [helenvader] said...
on May 15th, 2012 at 8:22 am
I’ve always admired how you blend papers; and this tutorial is pretty cool.
Linda (larkd) said...
on January 6th, 2013 at 4:14 pm
OMG these are gorgeous. So glad I found this tutorial. I would never had thought to try overlays on such a variety of papers. Thanks.
Vivi said...
on September 4th, 2014 at 1:42 pm
I loved this, I do play with blends, but usually ” stick to two at the time, now I want to do 3 or 4. Thank you so much for sharing. I have pinned this to my pinter rest board, if that is not ok with you let me know and I will remove it.
Nita Carter said...
on February 24th, 2017 at 3:20 am
You said you played a loooong time. I hope my playing produces such beauty.