tutorial: circle accents

Today's tutorial is a quick one -- but it's a simple technique that I  use ALL the time. I love circle-shaped accents -- flair, buttons, round labels or tags -- and I love to include them on my scrapbook pages. They provide a nice bit of contrast against all the straight lines of a design, and they're always a great way to add dimension or an extra bit of information (like dates, names, etc.)

One of my favorite things to do is to create a basic grid-type layout, and then cut out a space for my circle accent to fit, like I did on the layout below:

I could just have easily have placed the circle tab on top of the patterned papers, but I like the extra touch that the cut-out shape provides, particularly on a paper-type layout. 

Here's how you can achieve this same look on your layouts:
(Note: I'm using PSE 5.0, so your program may differ slightly from mine. Still, the general steps should remain the same.) 

1. Build your base. You'll want to do all the preliminary design work first -- placing your patterned papers and your photos where you want them to go. In the example, I'm just working with patterned papers.

2. Right-click on the Rectangular Marquee Tool in your toolbar on the left side of your page. Change it to the Elliptical Marquee Tool.

3. Place your circle accent on your page. This will help you to determine how large you need to make your cut-out shape.

4. With the Elliptical Marquee Tool selected, hold down your left mouse button and drag the cursor to draw a circular shape. To keep the dimensions of the circle correctly proportioned, also hold down the SHIFT key. Once the circle is the desired size, you can move it around on the page by clicking inside the dotted circle, holding your left mouse button down, and moving the shape to the position where you want it.

5. Select the layer of paper that you want to cut in the Layers palette in the lower right corner of your screen. In the example below, you can see that I have selected the layer with the striped paper, because this is the layer that I want to cut. With the layer active, just hit the DELETE button on your keyboard. The portion of the patterned paper within your dotted circle has now been deleted, leaving a "punched" area where your circle accent will fit perfectly.

6. If you have more than one layer that needs punching, simply select the next layer to delete (make sure you don't change the dotted circle or anything else) to make it active, and then hit DELETE again. You can repeat this with as many layers as you'd like. In the example below, I've shown this step with two pieces of patterned paper that are spaced out, but you can also do it with papers that are stacked on top of each other.

Like I said, it's a simple technique, but it adds to the paper-scrapped feel of your layout, and it can create a real visual punch on a page.

Comments

[Melanie C]

I'm definitely going to try this around my flair. Thank you!