More Ideas for Creating A Digital Kit from Scratch with freebie!

Creating a Digital Scrapbooking Kit with CS2

by Sue Kristoff, Creative Team Member

Creating a digital kit is a fun way to personalize your layouts. I've made a few digital elements, but I've never make a full kit before. So, I'm documenting my process to share with the readers of the EDS blog. For software, I use Adobe Photoshop CS2, thought the general concepts can be applied using any software package.



Step 1: Choose an Inspiration or Theme

I was inspired by a shorts/t-shirt set that belongs to my younger son. It contains a bright blue and bright orange color combination, which is very vibrant and striking. I decided to create my kit around those colors.

Step 2: Choose a Color Palette

Because my inspiration was based on a color scheme, choosing my color palette was easy. Blue and orange are complimentary colors on the color wheel, so they create a natural color combination.

Step 3: Sketch Ideas for Paper and Embellishments

I wanted to have a playful and kid-like kit, to match my two young boys. I decided to go with a hand-drawn star motif as my major design element. I digitally drew stars until I created one I liked, that wasn't too perfect, but not too messy either. I saved the basic star as a brush, so I could use it in creating additional elements.

Step 4: Creating and Saving Papers

All of my papers and elements were created at 300dpi.

I started my kit by creating the papers, since they would form the base of my layouts. I picked a vibrant blue for the base, then gave it a texture using the "Blending Options" for that layer. I then used my star brush to "stamp" stars onto my paper using a slightly lighter blue. I scattered the stars around the paper until it was uniformly filled. I then "distressed" the edges of the background layer so that the edges of the paper were slightly lighter. I did this by adding an "Inner Glow" under the "Blending Options" for that layer, then playing with the variables until I was happy with the look. I saved my paper as a .jpg, then I altered the colors to create a darker blue paper. I saved that paper also as a .jpg, and did this two more times to create two orange papers.

Step 5: Creating and Saving Embellishments

I used my star brush that I created in Step 3 to create a star element, that I saved as a .png file. Saving elements as .png files allows you to preserve the transparency of the element. I used the color picker to match the color of my stars to the papers I had created, so I had an assortment of stars in coordinating colors. I took one of the blue stars, filled it with a contrasting orange, then applied a chipboard action by Atomic Cupcake to the star so it would look like a distressed chipboard accent. Finally, I created a frame and a border using the star brush. I saved all of these elements as .png files.

Step 6: Packaging Your Kit

Once you have created a complete kit, you may want to package it to share with others! Create a terms of use file, and a preview image, then zip all the items together into one zip file. You can then upload the zip file to a free file sharing site, and share your kit with your friends! When I created my terms of use file, I looked at TOUs from other digital kits I had, then modified one to fit my own needs.

Now that you've seen how I made my kit, go out and try one of your own! If you would like to download my kit, please click this link: http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/4/23/1010244/stars_sbk_kit.zip Please leave a comment here if you download my kit!

Stay tuned later in June for a mini-album created using this kit!

Please leave feedback for Sue!