2.12.08 Butterfly Garden Tiny Sewing Kit & a Tut to change the colors!

Ok, I'm going to TRY and make this a quick one tonight k ladies! Thanks as always for your continued support and wonderful words of kindness! Keep 'em comin!!

So today's freebie is perfect for ALL of you as you all already own my Butterfly Garden Kit WHAT? You all DON'T own my wonderful, fabulous, most popular and overall bestest kit ever??!!? Well, I'll be honest with you, I'm simply SHOCKED!! (he he he...sometimes I crack myself up!) Ok so maybe SOME of you don't own it yet (shame on you by the way, I though you gals loved me!) well then what the heck are you waiting for!?!?! Hurry up to Digital Candy and buy it so that you can use todays freebie! NO? you DON'T want to my my kit???! OK FINE THEN...just download my freebie (sob) read my tut, (sniffle) and then take your REAL favorite kit (choke, sob) and change all the colors of my freebie to match it....(insert the sound of me blowing my nose in the background HERE).

So to my LOYAL, TREASURED, (kit buying) blog readers (and you guys who just come by to snag my freebies and leave me some love... he he he) here's the tut on Color Overlays!

First of all, if you haven't already done so, try and finish the past two days of tutorials, this tut sort of builds on things from both days and I'm going to assume you already know some of the stuff so I don't repeat myself. (don't forget, if you want these tuts sent to you via email, just subscribe to my feed via email and then they're easy to save for later use - the sign up box should be on your right and side of the blog below my Kit Previews...you know the ones that SOME of you are CLEARLY IGNORING! LOL)

Ok, so you PSE users, it just recently (like 5 minutes ago when I opened up my rarely used PSE 4.0 to write this tut for you) came to my attention that you don't have a color overlay option (ooops!) I was certain that you did, and frankly, you might if you have a later version or if I've just missed it. But in looking around a bit I did find a cool little thing that is SOMEWHAT similar...I'll share it at the end of this tut!

So, PS users the 3rd way to change the color of elements etc. is by using a layer style called a COLOR OVERLAY. I really think, if you can, that the Color Replacement Tool tends to give better results, especially if your item isn't all one color - perhaps it has shadows etc.) but sometimes either because of certain color problems, or because it's just plain faster, I will use the color overlay method.

So first of all, you'll get the best results if you start out with a good "desaturated" black and white element with a shade of grey appropriate for the color you want to change your item to. (Sunday's TUT). It is an OVERLAY so it will show through both the details of the item beneath it as well as some of the color, so for good results you might have to play with the Brightness/Contrast (Sunday's TUT as well).

Once you have a good grey image, simply double click on the layer that your element is on in your layers pallet. This will bring up the Layers Style Blending Options Box. Look on the left hand side of the options box and you will see a list of options available to you. Click on the COLOR OVERLAY box (don't just check the box, really click on the WORDS color overlay. This will apply the style to your object AND bring up the COLOR OVERLAY OPTIONS box (options specific for this particular layer style) it should look something like this:


Click on the pictures to enlarge them!

Now don't freak out, because right now your ribbon or bow or whatever is completely covered with a pretty ugly bright red color, but we're going to change that by double clicking on the little red box next to the word NORMAL (not under the word Preview). This will bring up the "select overlay color" color picker box (below)



Again, if you JUST checked the box next to color overlay, you won't see this...you have to click on the words COLOR OVERLAY when you first open your layers style box.

Ok so now you'll see a bunch of red (the default color apparently is red) just use your EYEDROPPER TOOL (Sunday's TUT) to select the color that you want, either from your Swatches Pallet ( Menu Bar WINDOW>SWATCHES if you don't see it) or from a photo or papers or elements from the kit you are trying to match (hello! wouldn't this have all been easier if you had just bought my darn Butterfly Garden kit? you'd be using this freebie like crazy by now! he he he!) Whatever way you choose just sample it with your eyedropper tool and it will appear in the small (formerly) red box next to the word NORMAL.

Now your bow or ribbon is...TA DA...totally and completely covered in the color of your choice...of course it still looks awful because we haven't changed the blending mode yet.

NOW... remember the word NORMAL that I keep referring to? Click on the small drop down box arrow next to it and choose OVERLAY... like magic your color will appear over your element, but show through the details that you want to keep. If it's not exactly the color you want...play around with the blending mode...soft light, hard light etc.) or play with your Brightness/Contrast (Sunday's tut again.)

That's pretty much it I think... don't forget to email if you have questions!

NOW...quickly...you PSE users... In looking for your color overlay option I came across something somewhat similar and kind of nice. It's called "Photographic Effects" I think that it was created for adding a slight hue to your photos, but it works great on grey elements!

So get your grey ribbon or bow...click on your STYLES AND EFFECTS tab in your pallet and in the left drop down box have LAYER STYLES chosen, then from the right drop down box choose PHOTOGRAPHIC EFFECTS. This will give you some color options (see below)



when you click on one of those it automatically changes the color of your element to one of those colors. You can get some different shades simply by using your Brightness/Contrast option (Sunday's TUT) BUT if you take the extra step of saving your bow or ribbon (say with a purple tone photo effect overlay as a .png file. NOW you can re-open the now purple bow or ribbon and then use the HUE/SATURATION option (Sunday's TUT) to get a bunch more colors...

It's an extra step or two, but honestly the color of the "overlay" is much better this way!!

Ok...off to bed (again 1:30 am here)

Enjoy the freebie and the tut and for goodness sake just buy my darn kit and get it over with ok?? You KNOW you want to! (oh...and did I mention that the designer with the most items sold on DC this month TOTALLY gets a cash bonus incentive!) NOT that that has ANYTHING to do with me hawking my kit!! How DARE you even INFER that! HA HA HA HA HA HA! smiling all the way to bed... night all!

Click HERE to download your freebie "Tiny Sewing Kit" (I really do like the word "tiny" it makes everything sound so cute!

Click HERE to check out my Butterfly Garden Kit (have I mentioned that I have a kit that matches these ribbons???)

Feel free to leave a comment telling me to shut up already about the darn kit!!!

Love you all!

Shauna

p.s I'm not even taking the time to check my post for spelling/grammar errors tonight...so feel free to leave those comment/corrections too!