Photoshop Tips: Using Doodled Overlays

Kate is introducing “Doodled Overlays” to her product lineup. I really like overlays as they are really versatile and you can create the perfect background paper for your page with them. Sometimes you need just a little something to bring the page all together, and the answer to that is:  the doodle overlays! To get you started with it, and to celebrate Kate’s 9^th Design Anniversary, Kate is giving away the Lovestruck Overlays below.

What I am going to do is show you a little bit of how to use them. Below is a page I have made with Kate’s featured February kit: Love and Romance, Raspberry Sorbet Alphabet and the Lovestruck Overlays freebie.

How to Use the Doodle Overlays

In the past, here in the Tips & Tricks area I have written a tutorial on blending and making background paper. This is very similar on how to use overlays. Let’s get started!

Using Photo Shop (through the Creative Cloud), I first start off with a blank layer to make my own paper. I set my foreground color to hot pink #d3296b. The background color I set to apricot #f8e1a6.

I then go up to the top toolbar and select Filter > Render > Clouds . This will take the two colors and mix them together to render a cloud like flood fill.

This really is not smooth and so I applied the Gaussian Blur filter to it until I get it looking like I want it to. (Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur> use the slider until it gets where you want it.)

Now I add a little noise to give it some texture. (Filter>Noise>Add Noise>Amt 2.49 and set to Gaussian with monochromatic checked. )

Now I am adding an inner glow layer style to give it some darkening around the edges.

In the layer palette select your layer and the fx on the bottom of the layer palette. This brings up a flyout menu allowing you to choose what effect you wish to use. Select the Inner Glow. Settings are Linear Burn at 35% Noise 0 color = b05451 Softer Edge Choke= 16 Size = 62 Range = 50 Jitter = 9 [always adjust these settings to your liking.]

Now I added a Hue Saturation blend layer to get the exact color shade I wanted.

I then added an apricot #f8e1a6 fill layer on top of that setting it to Screen blend mode.

Now I am ready to use my overlay: Open Overlay and place above paper.

I then set the blend mode to Color Burn and fill amount at 53%

Now my background is ready for me and I made my page using Kate’s Love and Romance elements and the Raspberry Sorbet Alpha.

These techniques can be used with any papers as a background and then just adjust the effects created by the overlays by using different blend modes. Here are some pages made by other CT Members on Kate’s Team. Some have used masks and used the overlay just as an edge. Others used the full overlay on top of one of Kate’s sketchbook papers, some have recolored the overlays or filled them in. There are lots of different ways to experiment and create your own backgrounds using these overlays!

Creative Team Inspiration: Lovestruck Overlays

I do hope you love the overlays and enjoy using them to give your pages that extra something!