CU OK Metal Wires and Style Set

Today’s freebie is a set of silver tone metal wires that I made by twisting and photographing some wire. Then I added a set of styles for Photoshop/PSE so you can recolor the wires to gold, copper, etc. with the click of a button. If you don’t have PS or PSE, you can recolor using your own program and discard the .asl file that is included in the .zip.  I’m thinking they would look cool with some beads on them and may have to buy some to photograph and extract soon. Here’s the style preview:

And here’s the wire preview and download links. (The wire .pngs and styles are all in the same .zip)

Download the CU OK Metal Wires and Style Set for PS/PSE HERE

or HERE

CU OK Brown paper Strips and Bonus Papers!

Today’s freebie is courtesy of my new camera (Canon Rebel EOS – LOVE IT!) I had this brown paper that came packed with some Christmas gifts I ordered from the internet. I folded, cut, tore, some of this paper into strips you can use similar to the torn edges I posted the other day. Then I photographed some big sheets and included them in the .zip too. Two of them are jpegs and one is a .png to maintain the transparency of the folds, etc. Here’s an example of how they can be used:

And here’s the preview and download links!

Download the CU OK Brown paper Strips HERE (Filesavr)

or HERE (4Shared)

CU OK Torn Edge Strips and bonus QP

I hope you all had a wonderful Holiday! I sure did! Santa was very good to me and brought me a Canon Rebel Digial SLR camera! It’s a wonderful gift and I hope I learn to use it beyond the “Auto Everything” setting. I’m thinking of taking a class at our local Community College to learn the basics.

I had been working for several days on these torn strips that I wanted to extract and give away as freebies. The problem is, I was not at all happy with how they turned out. There is no way you can use the pen tool and make it look right and the magic wand tool didn’t work for me either.  I tried the background eraser, magic eraser, and extract filter in Photoshop and UGH, crappy looking strips. I wanted the fibers of the tears to be visible to make the tears look realistic. FINALLY I came across an awesome Photoshop filter called Fluid Mask by Vertus. It makes extracting tricky items like hair, smoke, fur, so easy. Wow! I downloaded the free trial and can’t believe how quick the plug-in renders and how easy it was to use (I didn’t even read the instructions and had great results!) And the trial is fully functional, not like many trial plugins that place a huge ugly watermark on your image making it unusable. I am going to have to put this filter to good use for the next two weeks to be sure but so far I am really impressed.

So I extracted these torn strips and was going to write a tutorial on how to use them but in one of my many Google searches for “extracting torn strips digital scrapbook” (or something similar) I found an awesome tutorial by Illustrating Stories and learned some things too! Hop over to learn how to use the torn strips on your layout!

As I was trying to come up with an example I just kind of ran with it and made a layout using one of the first pictures from my new camera this morning! Before adding my title and picture I saved it as a Quick Page and it is included in the .zip along with the strips!

And here’s the preview and download links for the strips and QP:

Download the CU OK torn paper strips and Holiday QP HERE

or HERE

CU OK Photoshop Glitter Brushes and Styles

I’ve had these done for a couple of days but couldn’t figure out how to do the preview for them.  I’m still not happy with the preview because it doesn’t really explain what the freebie is. So here’s what it is: a set of photoshop “glitter” dynamic brushes along with some confetti “ribbons” (non-dynamic) and a set of glittery styles. Here’s how to use them: In Photoshop or PSE create a blank layer and apply one of the layer styles to the layer.  Then choose one of the glitter brushes and “paint” your glitter on your canvas. Use several layers with different glitters and alter the brush size to get the look you want. Here’s an example that took just a few seconds:

And here’s the preview and DL links:

Download the CU OK Glitter Brushes and Styles HERE

or HERE

CU OK Sticker Alpha Template

Here’s the Alpha Template I created with Ryan’s font. The .psd has 4 layers and you can color each layer however you like. I also included the .png files for those who cannot use the .psd. Also, if you don’t want the “sticker” look, you can leave off the bottom layer.

Download the CU OK Sticker Alpha Template HERE

HERE

Ryan’s Font

Today’s freebie is a font I created and named after my son Ryan. I created it by modifying Tuffy Bold, a Public Domain Font, by making an outline of Tuffy, rounding the corners, and scribbling it up a bit in Illustrator. It really does not resemble Tuffy much at all after I was finished with it! I thought it was a fun font for kids’ layouts and I am working on a sticker alpa template using this font. Here’s a sneak peek of the stickers (each color will be on it’s own layer and customizable):

And here’s the font preview and download links:

Download Ryan’s Font (ttf font CU OK) HERE

or HERE

CU OK Christmas Tree Doodle Page

Here’s the Christmas Tree doodle page I said I was going to do weeks ago to go with the Gift Doodle Page. There’s a transparent .png file and an AI file if you have Illustrator in the .zip.

Download the CU OK Christmas Tree Doodle Page HERE

or HERE

How to use my Worn/Sanded Overlays Quick Tutorial

I had a comment from a very frustrated Petra who could not figure out how to get the look I did for the previews using the Worn/Sanded Overlays. I thought I would write up a quick tutorial with some screen shots showing how I did it.  I used Photoshop but you can do the same thing in PSE and probably PSP (don’t quote me! lol). All the pictures below are clickable and you can enlarge them for detail.

First load an overlay and then create a new layer above the overlay layer and fill it with your chosen color:

Then create a clipping mask (Alt+Ctrl+G or hover between the two layers with your cursor while holding the Alt key until you get the double circles and left click your mouse)

      

Then change the blend mode on the color fill layer to Overlay or Soft Light.

You can do the same thing with a background paper instead of a color layer.

But as you can see, the pattern from the paper shows through on the “torn” part.

Just use a soft eraser and erase the pattern from the white part.

And there you have your torn/battered/sanded paper! I hope this helps Petra and anyone else who had problems with this!

CU OK Worn and Sanded Overlays II

Here’s the second set of Worn and Sanded Overlays as promised. Next up I am going to try and finish those Holiday Doodle Overlays I mentioned a couple of weeks ago.

Download the CU OK Worn and Sanded Overlay Set II HERE 

or HERE

CU OK Worn and Sanded Overlays

Today’s freebie is a set of 3 overlays that I created by tearing, folding, and sanding some textured cardstock. They are similar to the Folded Overlays that lots of people really seemd to like. They are in .png file format so the .zip is pretty hefty. I have another set that I will try to extract and get posted tomorrow (between the Christmas shopping, kids holiday party, Bears vs. Packers, and work). Things sure are crazy this time of year aren’t they?

Edit: 12/20/09 - Not sure why Digifree decided to list this so late but if you've already downloaded it has not changed. Weird.

Download the CU OK Worn/Sanded Overlay Set HERE

or HERE

CU OK Trippy Bear Layered Template

Tonight’s freebie is another “Trippy” layered template.  A goofy looking little bear.

Download the CU OK Trippy Bear Layered Template HERE 

or HERE

CU OK Simple Tags

Today’s freebie is a set of white tags I photographed and extracted. Not real happy with the tags with the strings but gave up on trying to get them to look right. Then, like an idiot, I saved one of them with a drop shadow and closed the file. I wasn’t about to go back and extract it again so I apologize for the shadow on one of the tags. Oooooops!

Download the Simple Tags HERE

or HERE

CU OK Trippy Penguin

Today’s freebie comes to you again from Florida! The weather hasn’t been great down here but much better than Illinois! This penguin is kinda trippy and was inspired by a gift bag I saw at CVS last night when we had to stop there for tooth flossers, lol.

Download the CU OK Trippy Penguin HERE

or HERE

CU OK Christmas Dog Layered Template

Well we are having a great time in Florida even  though it has rained for two days and is too cool to go to the beach. We have had some great food and drinks and awesome company! Still, I miss my kids and am ready to go home on Monday.  I had some time to finish a little holiday dog template this evening while everyone else was watching college football.

Download the CU OK Christmas Dog layered template HERE

or HERE

CU OK Gift Doodle Page

Today’s freebie is a page of gift doodles in png file format that you can color however you like! (See example) I also included the Illustrator file so that if you use Illustrator you can just use Live Paint to fill in the packages (MUCH EASIER in my opinion than the magic wand method in Photoshop). I have plans to do an ornament doodle page and Christmas Tree doodle page also but am leaving for Florida tomorrow afternoon so I’m not sure how much I will get done while on vacation! (But I’m taking the laptop and Wacom in case I have any spare time to design, LOL).

Download the CU OK Gift Doodle Page HERE

or HERE

CU OK Holiday Thumbprint Characters

As promised, here are the Christmas Thumbprint Characters! They are all individual pngs. Enjoy!

Download the CU OK Holiday Thumbprint Characters HERE

or HERE