House of 3 » Tips & Tricks

Digital Brushes

rhonna — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:52:28 +0000

The world of digital brushes will change your life. Really!

They are amazing.

We offer tons of digital brushes in our Digital Warehouse.

**note: Not all kits will have the ABR brush files in them, so be sure to read the kit description carefully!**

There’s also a lot of to learn about them.

I don’t overwhelm you, so I’ll start out with the FAQs I’ve been asked many times:

Q: “I downloaded a brush kit & it has both .abr files & .png files?

What’s the difference?”

A: .ABR files are the actual brushes. Adobe Photoshop (PS) & Photoshop Elements (PSE) can support .ABR files. You load them in PS or PSE (more on that later). You can change colors in the Color Box, rotate, space, etc. all in the Brushes Palette.

Not all programs can support the actual .ABR files, so, at House of 3, I offer the image sets as .PNG files.

.PNG files can be dragged & dropped over something because they retain their transparent qualities. You can re-color them, too.(another tutorial will follow on that info) You can not load them as .ABR files, so don’t try it!

But, you can create your own brushes. I.e. You can create your own brushes in older versions of PS or PSE and in Paintshop Pro (PSP), you can create a ‘stamp’ out of the .PNG files.

Notice: If you load the .ABR files, & they say ‘not compatible’, it is because the brushes were created in a newer version of PS and most likely, you are using an older version of PS or PSE. So, you would just need to open up your .PNG files & create your own brushes.(more on that later)

Note: PNG files can work with any program that will support & open PNG files. (word processing programs, photo editing programs, etc.) House of 3 ABR brush files are ONLY compatible with PSE6+ & PSCS+. Not compatible with older versions of PSE & PS, hence, the PNG files so you can make your own brushes out of the PNG files.

Q: “I still don’t get it. What are brushes?”

A: Think of the brushes as stamps. You ‘dip’ your brush/stamp into a color & then brush/stamp/click it onto your digital canvas. All brushes are different designs…some of my brush creations are borders, frames, swirls, alphabets, designs, pictures, shapes, words, etc.

Q: “How do I load my brushes?”

A: Once you’ve downloaded & unzipped your kit, double click/right click on your ABR brush file & voila! they appear in your Brush Palette at the bottom!

If that doesn’t work:

Select the brush tool on your toolbar in PS or PSE.

Select the arrow on the drop-down Brushes Menu and then select LOAD BRUSHES.

Find your downloaded ABR brush file, then click LOAD.

The new brushes will appear at the bottom of your Brush Palette.

Q: “How can I change colors? “

A: If you have the ABR brush file loaded, you can simply click on the color box & change the color of your brush/stamp.

If you are using the PNG files, there are various ways to change color. For a black PNG file, you’ll need to change the black PNG file to a Layer Style/color overlay & you can choose any color you want!

In PS to create a Layer Style:

1. Open your PNG file.

2. Go to LAYER>LAYER STYLE>>COLOR OVERLAY.

Select the Color desired.

Note:This method will give a flat color. You will lose all texture or patterns, unless you use the Light Modes to Blend the color.

Q: “What can I do with Brushes?”

A: Design, create, explore. Let’s say you have a swirl that you want to stamp onto your Christmas card, or photo, or blog banner. You choose blue, but you may want it to be subtle underneath the greeting/photo/text. So, you create a New Layer, then click/stamp the brush in blue. You can adjust the Opacity to make it appear like vellum…a soft look. Then, on another New Layer, you’d click/stamp the brush in blue, pink or another color on top of it & you’d have a very interesting look!

This is how I create most of my art. All the brush work you see in my art is done on separate layers, colors & adjusting the Opacity to make it interesting!

Q: “How can I make my own brush?”

A: This is another amazing part of the world of brushes! You can make a brush out of anything you want! …a photo you’ve taken, your signature, a drawing you’ve made…etc! This also works for those that use an older version of PS of PSE that is not ‘compatible” with the brushes I sell. ( I create in PSCS3 & so the brush files are only compatible with PSE6+ or PSCS+ as noted above.)

Creating Brushes:

Open your image to create your brush. (photos, PNG, whatever) Go to SELECT>ALL.

Go to EDIT>DEFINE BRUSH. Name your brush when the box prompts you. Voila! You’ve created a brush! **This doesn’t mean your brush is saved. You may still lose it unless you save it.

Saving Brushes:

1. Select your Brush Palette. Notice the arrow.

Select the arrow & you will see the drop down menu.

2. Here, you will see where you can Reset, Load, Save, & Replace your brushes.

Hit Save & you’ve saved your brush.

There’s tons more to the world of brushes, but this is a start.

**for a little video tutorial; check this out!

Happy Mother’s Day!

rhonna — Thu, 07 May 2009 23:35:41 +0000

Mother’s Day starts the season of gift giving. Here, at House of 3, we are ramping up for a whole season of Creative Gifting!

From Mother’s Day to weddings. Or graduations to teacher appreciation. And don’t forget Father’s Day, birthdays & all sorts of gift occasions! Be watching as we share ideas, new kits & photos to help with that Creative Gifting!

First off! Mother’s Day is coming up on Sunday! We just released a bunch of french inspired papers, tags & word art that will give just that right touch to your Mother’s Day card or gifts! Oo La La!

First I printed out my supplies. **that’s the fab thing about these kits!**

________

A. I printed out a bunch of the papers on both sides. Two great things about this
new kit of papers is:

1. There are tons of coordinating papers that look so good together.

and

2. You can print them out as many times as you want!

______

B. I printed out the Colored Tags onto white sticker paper & cut them out.

_________

C. I printed out the Word art & Tag brushes onto clear inkjet acetate & cut out.

__________

D. I printed out photos: some on photo paper & some on the inkjet transparency. oo la la!

_______

Then, I cut the papers, manilla tags & photos the size I needed them for the 7Gypsies ATC holder.

Added photos, tulle, tags & journaling.

Voila! A Mother’s Day gfit from the heart. I just gave it to my mom today, since she’ll be out of town, & she loved it! I *love* Creative Gifting!

Here are some more shots of the project!

The green paper is in the collection.**You can see the detail with the old french text burned into the Medallion print! Love it! ** On the other side of the card, I have a small doily folded in half going off the edges to add some *interest*.

You can see more detail of the French Oo La La papers! I love this blue designer paper! Check out the delicious florals, subtle ledger print & the old French words burned into the background for a subtle effect!

Another one of my fave papers in this collection. It’s super Springy & then in the corner it has these old French labels & words in it. I used Rub ons for a little message on this card.

The “Love” tag is one of the colored Ledger tags printed off on white sticker paper. I cut it out, folded part on one side & continues on the other side. Love these!

The ‘thank you’ is the continuation of that same tag up above. Then, I added some of the other tags onto this manilla tag.

Hope this inspiRes you this weekend as YOU create goodies for the women in YOUR life!

Let’s celebRate! Here’s to Creative Gifting!

p.s. You can see more photos here. I think I got carried away with the photos! they wouldn’t all fit here! LOL!

Happy April 3rd….

rhonna — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 08:58:43 +0000

….today let’s talk about the Easter Scripture Countdown kits! We offer 2 different kinds: 1 is a PDF printable.

This kit includes a sheet of numbers 1-12 that are super handy for the countdown. And then, there are 2 scriptures (4×6 each) per 8×10 printable PDF page. All come in black so you can just pop some colored paper, cardstock, or patterned paper into your printer, hit PRINT & voila! You’ve got your countdown to work with! *tip: If you want these to be smaller, simply select a smaller % to print out…experiment: try 75% or 50%!

**Bonus: black PNG files, too! These are offered for anyone that needs to just drag & drop over something…or recolor! Super easy!

and the other is an ABR brush kit.

This kit offers 1 ABR brush file that you can load into Photoshop CS /or newer or Photoshop Elements 5/ or newer. **Great thing about brushes is you can resize them & simply select your desired color & stamp onto a blank canvas for printing, digital scrapbooks, over photos or on blogs. Also comes in black PNG files as mentioned above. Each scripture is included as are all the numbers!

So, I wanted to share some ideas here. These scriptures are all from the Bible & cover Jesus’ last week before He was resurrected. We have done this countdown as a tradition as a family since our oldest was about 1 1/2. We all look forward to it. It just really brings the true meaning of Easter into our home & we love it!

Since our earlier version of this countdown is ‘well loved’ it was time to make a new one! This year, I used the Brush kit & resized them to about 2.5″ x 4″ to fit onto a plain manila tag. I embellished them with the Easter Brushes & printed them on clear sticker paper. I cut them out, stuck them on the tags & then added doilies, flowers, jewels, & some of the Easter papers cut out with a scalloped punch! I chose the manila tags this year so I could hang them on our chalkboard wall dangling from blossom branches!

We start on the Sunday before Easter- Palm Sunday & this is #8. Each day we countdown to Day 1…Easter Sunday. We choose the number coordinating with the scripture, read it together & enjoy the celebRation that takes place in our home as we are thinking about what Christ was doing the last week leading up to His miraculous resurrection.

There are so many different things you can do with this kit!

I love what Heidi did with this project! It’s so creative! Notice all of the fabulous details to really celebRate this countdown! …..printing on the Easter papers, sanding edges, using transparency for the numbers, jewels, butterfies, ribbons, flowers…all in a fantastic frame! Sheer genius…again! Love it, Heidi!

So, here’s to day 3….create your own Easter Scripture Countdown! Try it with your own spin on it…We can’t wait to see your projects! enjoy your process!

Happy April 2nd!

janet — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 12:35:33 +0000

We hope that you are enjoying the celebration so far and today I want to share with you the blog couture. What’s that you say??? You already know all about the fabulous blog couture that Rhonna creates…well I would like to show you a super fun way to use it in a project you might not have thought of. Rhonna hinted at it yesterday, but they are perfect for party, shower, birthday invitations….the list goes on and on. But today, obviously I want to show you two I made using the easter blog couture.

On both of these I have used the blog couture which can be found here and I have added a definition brush, some of the words from the invited brush kit, as well as the celebrate easter brush. But if you don’t want to make your own and would just like to print these out (minus my info of course) we have you covered. You can do that here! We have made each one into a 5×7 printable invitation that is ready for you to fill in for your own Easter celebration….it doesn’t get much easier than that now does it?

Think about how cute this one would be for a sweet 16 party:

Or this one for an anniversary dinner or wedding shower:

Or this one for a bridal/wedding shower or a little girls birthday:

The possibilities are really limitless since there are so many fabulous choices, so go and try this out. I would love to see what you come up with…..Enjoy!

House of 3 Frames Kit:: Tips n Tricks

rhonna — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 18:49:42 +0000

This kit is as easy as 1,2,3!

It comes with 1 ABR brush file. (If you need a brush up *no pun intended* LOOK HERE) This brush set includes 4 frames: 1 outlined oval. 1 filled in oval. 1 outlined rectangle & 1 filled in rectangle. **Remember, with a brush you can stamp any color you’d like. So the design possibilities are endless. Imagine lots of different color combinations! Try: red/brown or orange & blue! Get creative!

And, then, as it says above: the kit comes with 16 PNG files. This just means that they are transparent files. So you can use your Move Tool to drag & drop the various colors of outlined & filled in frames. Mix & match! So many possibilities! You can use to print out…over & over. Or use for frames on your blogs! How about print out on acetate transparency & put a photo underneath it? This kit will keep you busy! Have fun!

How do I get my blog background to look right?

stewart — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 23:15:20 +0000

PROBLEM: You just purchased a blog background and can’t get it to look right, well use one of the snippets below and paste it into the custom CSS area in your blogging platform: (Replace www.example.com/… with your link)

THIS CODE WILL MAKE IT APPEAR BUT WILL NOT CENTER IT OR REPEAT THE BACKGROUND:

body {
background: url(http://www.example.com/background.jpg);
}

IF YOU WANT IT TO REPEAT VERTICALLY AND HORIZONTALLY PASTE THIS:

body {
background: url(http://www.example.com/background.jpg) repeat top center;
}

IF YOU WANT IT TO BE FIXED PASTE THIS:
body {
background: url(http://www.example.com/background.jpg) fixed top center;
}

Hope this helps!