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Friday, May 27, 2011

Creative Boxes Using Brackets

I found that Lynn had asked “How do you make these?” on the Wrapcandy forum.  So, I just had to take the challenge.  Thank you Lynn for the inspiration!

I wanted to make this as easy as possible so I went ahead and made a bracket brush for this tutorial. 

This tutorial was written using Corel Paint Shop Pro X but will work easily in earlier as well as newer versions.

 

Materials:

My Bracket Brush (get it HERE)  Download the brush and the accompanying brush script  and place them in your Brushes folder within PSP or within My Documents/My PSP Files/Brushes. 

 

Step 1 – Create a new image using the following settings:

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Step 2 – Set your foreground color to the color you want for your brackets and the background color to the color or pattern you want for your background.  For this tutorial I am using a polka dot pattern for my background and a couple shades of purple darker for my foreground color. 

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Step 3 – Go to the layer titled Raster 1 in your Layers Pallet.  Right click and duplicate twice.  Your Layers Pallet should look like the following:

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Step 4 – Make Copy (2) of Raster 1 the ACTIVE layer and then select your Paint Brush tool.

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Find the brush titled BracketsBrush2. Be sure the Load Variance button is checked.

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And then place the brush in the center of the image and “Paint” your bracket onto the workspace.

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Step 5 - Go to your scripts toolbar and using the drop down box select the Scripts Restricted folder and run the Center Layer script.  This will make sure your brackets are centered.

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Step 6 – Using your Magic Wand tool

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select the area OUTSIDE the brackets.  Your “marching ants” will appear as follows:

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Step 7 – Go to Selections/Modify/Expand

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and use the following settings:

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Step 8 – Make the layer titled Copy of Raster 1 the ACTIVE layer and then select your Flood Fill tool.

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Right click and flood fill the area OUTSIDE the bracket with your background pattern or color. Then go to Selections/Select None.  My image appears as below:

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Step 9 – Make the layer titled Raster 1 the ACTIVE layer and flood fill using the color of your choice.  For this tutorial I am using white.  My image appears as below:

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Step 10 – Make the layer with your bracket the ACTIVE layer (Should be Copy (2) of Raster 1).  And go to Selections/Select All then Selections/Float and then Selections/Defloat. My brackets are selected and the workspace appears as below:

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Step 11 – Go to Layers/New Raster layer and add a new layer.  Then go to Effects/3D Effects/Cutout and use the following settings:

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Go to Selections/Select None.

Step 12 – Make the layer with your brackets the ACTIVE layer and go to Effect/3D Effects/Drop Shadow and use the following settings:

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Our image now appears as below:

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Now you can leave these as layers and save the file as a PSP file and just change the colors/backgrounds as you would like for future designs. Here are a couple more examples using different backgrounds and adding some text and elements.

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I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and I look forward to seeing all of your creations!

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