Thumbprint Characters

I finally finished some more thumbprint characters and I have to say the police man is my favorite. :-) I decided to just make them individual .png files and if you want to recolor you can. I am going to also create a Photoshop brush file so you can play with creating your own characters if you like. I actually created these in Illustrator by using Live Trace of some of my own fingerprint images I photographed. If people really like these I will probably make more soon. I was thinking of making different professions (like the police officer). What do you think? Suggestions?

Download the Thumbprint Characters HERE

or HERE

More Grunge Overlays

This is the last of the grunge overlays I think, and I’m really going to start working on those thumbprint characters.  (hopefully!)

Download the third set of Grunge Overlays HERE

or HERE

Dynamic Grunge Brushes, Overlays and Video Tutorial

I’m sidetracked again. I found another cool filter “Henious” in the Filter Forge library and started playing with it. I made some overlays from the filter and am going to post them tomorrow. Today’s overlays were made using some of the Photoshop brushes I created from the overlay images. I also sat down and recorded a quick video tutorial on how to make an overlay using the brush set in Photoshop. You can make your own overlays in minutes using the brush set following the tutorial. The brushes were created in CS3 but if you use PSE you should be able to create the same effect from them.

Download the Hi-Res Dynamic Grunge Brushes HERE

or HERE

and watch the video:

(if you need to see the video larger, you can watch it on YouTube HERE)

Download the CU Grunge Overlays HERE

or HERE

Super Grungy Overlays not for the Faint of Heart!

I had insomnia today after working all night. Probably worried about school starting this week and the youngest going to all-day Kindergarten. She just seems too young to put on a school bus! But she’s excited about it so I need to be also. I’m still considering those thumbprint characters but was playing around with Filter Forge today and found a very cool filter “Dotty Grunge” by Apple. I made some very grungy overlays using this filter and I hope you like em! As always, play around with the blend modes and opacities to make your own unique background papers!

Download the SuperGrungy Overlays HERE

or Here

CU Overlays from the weekend photos

Whew, another long weekend spent away from home. We went up to Elgin for DH’s softball tournament. This meant watching a BUNCH of softball games and living out of the suitcase for 3 days. We had a great time even though the teams didn’t advance to the finals on Sunday afternoon. I found a few cool textures and took some pics that I turned into overlays. I am also working on some fun characters that I will be working on this week.  Here’s a sneak peak:

 

haha. Yeah, that’s a fingerprint.. my fingerprint, and hopefully I can find some fun characters. This one was inspired by a book I bought this weekend: Ed Emberly’s Fingerprint Drawing Book.  I can’t decide if I’m going to make brush set or templates from them.  Anyway, here are the overlays and check back later this week for the fingerprint characters:

Download the Overlays from the Weekend HERE

or HERE

More CU Circle Overlays

Today’s freebie is another set of overlays created with the help of Gliftex. 

Download the second set of Circle Overlays HERE

or HERE

If you would like some of the Illustrator Brushes I used to create the overlays you can find them on my DA Account HERE

CU Vector Circle Overlays

Today’s freebie is a result of a lot of playing I have been doing in my newest program: Gliftex.  I’m not sure how I had never heard of it but I receive a weekly newsletter from Sue Chastain for About.com and last week she offered a bunch of free patterns she created with Gliftex.  You can read her review of the program HERE. 

What I especially like about the Pro version is that you can export the image into vector format. I can save the seamless image as an EPS file and open it in Illustrator to tweak it.  These three overlays are the result of just ONE of the images I made in gliftex.  I created scatter Illustrator brushes from some of the designs in the EPS and then created an image that I rasterized in Photoshop and saved as a Jpeg. I have literally spent hours playing with Gliftex because it is so fun to see what you can come up with!  Look for many more Gliftex inspired freebies in the future!

Download the set of Vector Circle Overlays HERE

or HERE

(Edit 7/13 – I uploaded the Illustrator Brushes to my DA Account and they can be downloaded HERE)

CU Artistic Borders

As you read this I’m probably on my way back from Turkey Run and will be too beat to post anything so I set the post to auto publish Sunday evening. These are the borders that I made yesterday when I made the Artistic Overlays. They are all 3600 x 3600 .pngs that you can lay over your papers or layouts and play with the blend modes, opacities, colors, layer styles, etc. to get the look you want.

Download the CU Artistic Borders HERE

or HERE

Ok, Not Digi Related AT ALL but so incredible I had to Share

I typically don't post outside content on my blog but this link was sent in a Twitter message this week and I thought it was really incredible. This young woman has told a story using sand and a lighted table that brought the audience to tears. It's long, but I hope you will watch and enjoy it:

CU Artistic Overlays

I was playing around today with Artrage and came up with some transparent .png overlays that resemble various mediums (pencil, paint, crayon, etc). You will want to play with the blend modes and you may need to duplicate the overlay layers a couple of times to get the look you want if they are too transparent for you. I made some borders too that I will hopefully get posted tomorrow but we’re headed to Turkey Run to float the river so it depends on what time I get back and how much beverage is consumed while we’re there! :-)

Download the Artistic CU Overlays HERE

or HERE

Shelby’s Font

I was playing with Illustrator and Font Creator and came up with a font called Shelby, named after my first born. I’m planning to do one for the other two kids too.

Download Shelby’s Font HERE (ttf CU Font)

or HERE

CU Ink Blot TTF Dingbat Font

I finished the preview for the dingbats and to further confuse things I called the dings “Ink Blots” instead of paint splatters. There are 38 dingbats (All caps A-Z; 0-9; – and =)  If you’d rather have the PS/PSE Custom Shapes you can find them HERE.

Download the Ink Blot Dingbats HERE

or HERE

CU Paint Splatter .csh and PNGS with Bonus Layered Template!

Today’s freebie is a set of paint splatters in .csh for Photoshop/PSE and an image pack of PNGS. My 4 year old and I had fun on the patio today dropping black acrylic paint onto white paper to make the splatters. I then photographed the papers before too much grass blew into the paint and imported these pictures into Illustrator. I then used LiveTrace in Illustrator to create vectors of the splatters. They were then brought into Photoshop to create the custom shapes. I am pretty happy with how they turned out. I have also made a dingbat font of them but I don’t have the preview finished yet so the dingbats will be up either later tonight or tomorrow.

For the preview I made 4 layers of splatters and colored each layer a different primary color. I thought maybe you all could use this for some cool back-to-school background papers so I included the layered template .psd (3600 x 3600) in the zip. (without the ScrappinCop logo of course, lol) Enjoy, and be sure to stop back for the dings!

Download the CU Paint Splatter .csh, PNGS and layered psd HERE

or HERE

CU Fancy Swirl .csh and pngs

Today’s freebie is a set of flourishes that I drew in Illustrator. There are 10 fancy swirls in a csh file for Photoshop/PSE and an image pack of 10 pngs that are all plenty large for those of you who cannot use the custom shapes.

Download the Fancy Swirl .csh and pngs HERE

or HERE