Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Once upon a time Valentine

In the last two days I made Vintage Valentine greetings cards. I made vintage Valentine cards because they send a message of innocence hard to find these days. I used pictures of kids, cats, flowers, lace, frames, and few hearts on old paper. The envelope background is not my idea; I saw an image at it and I liked it, then I replicated in Photoshop, using a high resolution paper, a heart made with a shape and a stamp printed with a brush. I aged the paper and gave it those burned colors with the gradient tool. I did not use Gradients too often before but now I'm a big fun of it. They can transform the poorest photo into a piece of art and they make a green grass scene to look like an alien landscape. If you want to see a sample read this tutorial "Stylish colors effects with alpha channels" at http://www.clippingdesign.com/blog/stylish-color-effects-with-alpha-channel/ . It is really useful if you want to create nice backgrounds or manipulate photographies. I used 2 or even more Gradient layers, playing with pastels and custom Gradients, downloaded for free. Old photo Gradients that I used you can find here: http://www.brusheezy.com/Gradients/16033-Old-Photo-Gradients. I learned many things about Photoshop by mistakes or by accident. The best lesson I took is this: the more layers I use, the less are the chances to compromise my entire work. If I don't like the gradient effect on my texture, for example, I simply delete the layer, create a new one, and apply other gradient without damaging my hard worked piece.
In the case that you are interested in all kind of PS stuff and want to see what others have created, I can give you a good resource: visit http://lordofdesign.com/ . I could spend hours there, like a kid in a candy shop. I hope you like my VintageValentine candies too.

1 comment: