Scrapbooking papers and layouts cost some serious bucks. And why spend those hard-earned dollars on scrapbooking paper when you can design it yourself easily in Photoshop to print?
This guide is quick and easy, guiding you through the steps to create a fully themed pansy scrapbook set. You won’t need anything special – nothing to download – just a copy of Photoshop version 7 or higher. You’ll also want to have made your pansy before you continue. Find the pansy guide here.
If it’s hard to find the drawing a pansy tutorial, try this cool tip: click the “Ctrl” key and the “F” key at the same time on your keyboard. This will bring up a little search box in the bottom of your browser. Type “Pansy” and it will start scrolling through the text to find the Pansy tutorial.
Pansy Scrapbook Set – The Steps
- New Canvas – First, we’ll want to create a canvas that will print out beautifully on regular paper. When you click “File” and choose “New”, hit the arrow on the dropdown box labelled “Preset”. Choose “US Paper” or “8.5 x 11”, depending on which version of Photoshop you have.
Using this setting will automatically create a canvas that is sized properly, and it also automatically sets it to RGB mode with a white background – and it sets the resolution to 300 pixels per inch, which allows us to print out crisp, clear pages.
- Block the Paper – Now, we’re going to “block out” the paper. Essentially, we’re just indicating where we’ll have different design elements on our scrapbook background paper. Use two to three colors that are present in your original pansy and draw three rectangles on your canvas. The farthest left rectangle is the thinnest, the middle rectangle is about two and a half times the size of the first, and the last panel covers the rest of the page.
Reference Illustration 01.
- Bring in the Pansies – None of the steps in creating our paper are difficult, but this is probably the easiest one of all. Go to your original pansy, and drag over just the petals (you won’t want the stem or leaves for this design) into your new canvas.
You’ll probably have to resize the petals just a little so that they fit inside the middle rectangle. When you resize them, make sure to hold your “Shift” key down on your keyboard to constrain proportions – to keep it looking right. Then, stagger the pansies down the length of the middle rectangle.
To make the pansies “hide” behind the other two panels, you’ll want to make sure that both the left and right panel layers are above the pansies in the layer palette. Rotate a few of the pansies so that they aren’t all the same angle.
Reference Illustration 01.
- Dot It – Now we get to make a bunch of polka dots down the left rectangle.
The easiest way to do this is to create one perfect circle (grab your circle shape tool and hold the shift key down on your keyboard while you draw the circle out) and duplicate that circle once. Then, move the first circle so that it is near the top left corner of the rectangle. Move the second circle so that it is nearer the right edge of that rectangle, a fair way down.
Now, you can merge the circles (click on the top circle layer, right-click it and choose “Merge Down”). Duplicate that new layer, and scoot it down the rectangle. Repeat this process until you have a polka-dot design all the way down. Reference Illustration 02.
5. Stripe It – This is our last step, and will be just as easy as everything else has been.
Using the same color as you made the dots in, use your rectangle shape tool to drag thin rectangle stripes down the right side of your scrapbook page. You can do this the same way you did the dots – draw one rectangle, duplicate it, merge the duplicated layer down, and keep going. This saves time and helps ensure you keep the rectangles spaced evenly.
Reference Illustration 02.
You can also change all the colors in your scrapbook background paper easily by using a layer style. Just click “Layer”, choose “Layer Style”, and pick “Color Overlay”. Choose your color, set its mode to “Hue” or “Color” … and off you go with a whole new color in a fraction of the time!
