Using Digistamps and Brushes ...Part One..digistamps as a background in PSP

 Welcome to the first of my mini tuts on using Digistamps and brushes ...in this part we will be using a Digistamp in PSP  and making a simple but pretty background paper...so open your PSP  this will work in all versions... im using psp9 here  however some of the newer ones will have the tools in a different place..


What you'll need:  Background paper:   Digistamp:  Colour Pallette

 

Download the supplies I've used 

Right click..save as : or  right click copy image and paste into PSP

To read about digistamps and how to install PS and AI brushes got to the files pages above or click here 

Open PSP and either find in your stash or make yourself a 3600 x 3600 300dpi  white background paper and add some colour by either using blot brushes or using the air brush...ive picked one i made a while back with a watercolour effect blot type brush 

Its a little dark so we will lighten it..  its a flattened image so we need to promote the background to a layer

Add a new Layer  Fill it with white and drag this layer below the background

Now lower the opacity on the backround layer till you have something quite soft and pretty i went down to 42%

do not merge any layers yet...
Add a new layer

Open your chosen Digistamp and past in onto the new top layer and place it where you want it to sit

now you can choose to recolour or to blend your digistamp in ...


to recolour .....using the manual colour correction tool    (Adjust / Colour Balance / Manual colour correction)  and making sure you are working on the Stamp layer    pick the stamp colour as your source and for the target choose a  colour from your background and darken it a bit..

 

Its pretty as it is  so you can go ahead and merge your layers and save

 

Here Ive added some texture to the background and a drop-shadow with a large blur to the stamp 

To Blend


Merge the two bottom layers so you have now just the background with the stamp layer above and make sure this top layer is active

Now using the blend mode drop down box  scroll through all the blends until you find an effect you like

these effects will differ depending on the colour in the background layer and the colour of the stamp

so recolour the stamp and go through the blends again ...still not happy recolour the stamp again and try again there are many many possibility's here

So using the stamps original colour, and the blend mode on dodge I got this...

Recolouring the stamp a dark red colour, and the blend mode on soft light I got this....

I like the first one so I'm merging my layers and that's it done...

But dont stop there

Before I merged this time I duplicated the background, mirrored and flipped it and lowered the opacity a little.  I added a another  stamp above this layer which I blended using the soft light blend....

 

Keep experimenting and see what you can come up with