Using Custom Styles to Add Bling to your Digital Layouts!

In this quick tutorial we will show you how to use some of the custom Photoshop styles you can find in the SG Design Shop. These handy little tools allow you to overlay color, sparkle, glitter, water droplets, a metallic look and almost anything else you can imagine onto your embellishments, papers and photos!

I love the holidays! The smells, the decorations, and the family time are all wonderful, but the photos are what really warms my little scrapper’s heart! Photo opportunities abound at the holiday season; they are everywhere you turn – in the kitchen baking cookies, at the mall on Santa’s lap, opening gifts at Grandma’s, just to name a few. One of my favorite aspects of taking pictures during the holiday season is that I can be assured that at least once during the year, my children will all be clean and dressed neatly in new and, hopefully, matching clothes … all at the same time! And you better believe I will be there with my camera focused and my flash on!

So, I have my beautiful photo of my beautiful children, or if I am really lucky, the whole family, and now it’s time to make a layout. Well, you can bet that I am not going to let this wonderful opportunity go to waste. This will be no ordinary layout; this is a great moment to use all that bling I have been buying during the year. All those wonderful styles that add shimmer and shine and a little something extra that says, “This is an extra-special layout!” (This doesn’t mean that I don’t add a little bling here and there to most of my layouts, because I do. I just can’t seem to stay away from the glitter!) Holiday layouts, however, are a perfect time to pull out all the stops with the sparkle and pizzazz!

We have some wonderful styles in the SG Design Shop to help you add that special touch to your layouts – glitters, metals, jewels, epoxy, foils, and glass. They can be found here: PS & PSE Tools: Styles.

A couple of tips to keep in mind when using styles are:

– Some styles are made to be translucent, like glass. Sometimes, however, you may want a more opaque look to your style. To do this, apply the style to the layer, then type Ctrl+J, which copies the layer and gives the style a more opaque look.

Notice how much brighter and less translucent the red glass in Amanda Fraijo-Tobin’s ScrapSimple Tools – Styles: Pitted Glass 6401 Biggie looks after copying it?

– Most styles in the shop allow you to make adjustments to get the look you prefer. Here’s an easy way to do it: Go to the menu bar at the top of your screen, click on Layer> Layer Style> Scale Effects. You will get a new window with a slider in it. Use the slider bar to increase or decrease your style setting to change the look of your style.

By adjusting the style setting, I was able to get a more faceted look from Syndee Nuckles’s ScrapSimple Tools – Styles: Jeweled 6301 Biggie, which was what I wanted on these small jewels on my frame. Don’t be afraid to play around with your styles because you will be amazed at the different looks you can achieve.

Using styles on a layout can really pump up the “Wow” factor. I use some kind of style on almost all of my layouts, but I really love the holiday photos when I can break out the bling and make my layouts look extra special. Don’t be afraid of styles; mixing and matching them and customizing them to your preferences are all part of the fun of digi-scrapping with styles, so join us in the Scrap Girls Gallery and show us your bling!