Brushing up on my skills (get it? oh, lame jokes.)

I am no good at the technical aspects of being a designer. Why? I have no patience. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

There is this lovely blog, Pugly Pixel, that has wonderful tutorials that I do not have the patience to follow.

But today, I'm going to put on my big girl pants and do it.

So, I present to you, The Photoshop Tinsel Brush.

If you want to know how to do this, she gives a better tutorial than I ever will, but here's how you make the brush:

Create a document that is 200px by 10px. Fill the background with black.
Edit>Define Brush Preset (I named it Fake Christmas.)

Open up the brushes palate (Window>brushes) and select the brush you just made (Fake Christmas.)
Set the diameter to whatever you want and the spacing to 125 percent.
Click on Shape Dynamics. Your settings should be:
Size Jitter: 50%
Minimum Diameter: 50%
Angle Jitter: 100% (control off)
Roundness Jitter: 50%
Minimum Roundness: 100%

Click Scattering. Your settings should be:
Scatter (both Axes): 50%
Count: 3-5 (eyeball it)
Count Jitter: 100%

Now, you should probably save it. And start playing.

Here was my first attempt:

Pretty great, right?

All I did to make this, was type something, then create a work path (right click on the text layer to select this option.) Then, I created a layer on top of that where I selected my brush, then right clicked on the work path and selected stroke path. That created the brush around the text. Then, I wanted it to be glittery so I placed a layer of that glitter I made the other week on top, then right clicked on that layer to create a clipping mask. And...YOU'RE PRETTY!

I like this. The tutorial was short, but still pretty difficult. This was solely due to my lack of patience and natural aversion to using Photoshop for a purpose other than editing photos (I'm a lame purist punk.) But, I did it. AND, I liked it. AND I just might try another tutorial tomorrow.

These technical exercises are really boosting my ego. Right now I feel like my capabilities are somewhere between a first grader that successfully colored a dinosaur inside the lines, and a third grader that got to use oil pastels for the first time (and boy, did they make a mess.) Last week, I was at play-dough spaghetti, so I'm doing pretty well. 

Totes making tons of tinsel cards right now....