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I Blend, You Blend, We Blend – Tutorial!

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Hi Everyone! Hope you are having a great day and scrapping lots of wonderful memories! This is Jenn, jk703, and I’m here today to share a fun idea for mixing up the papers in your kit! Sometimes, I love a pattern, but I need a little less of it or it to be a bit more muted! Sometimes, I’ll admit, I’m afraid of patterns. 🙂

Today’s tutorial will be based on my layout created with Renne’s Just a Moment Elements and Papers from the February BYOC.  They can be found in her shop: here!  I’m also using a Scrapping with Liz template from Recyclables 36. Here is my final layout, check out the background.

TLP_SWLRecyc36_FJOrangeHappy_MornType_ColinSmileOct2015_WEB (1)

First step is to use the Rectangular Marquee Tool. Next, you will want to create a layer above your background layer.

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I use the tool to make a rectangle on my layout – like this one below. It gives some space around my image and will almost frame it. Once you complete the rectangle, you will get the marching ants. (My ants don’t march in my screen capture, lol!)
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Next, I choose Select > Modify > Feather. A small pop up will appear. I chose to have my shaped feathered out approx. 150 pixels. Not a huge amount, but enough for a blend. A This will change the appearance of the edge on my rectangle. Be warned, you won’t see an actual change. If you do the marching ants might change to a slightly rounded shape.
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Now, this next step is a preference. You DON’T have to complete this but it will determine where your blend will be. If you remember, I put my new layer above my background paper, and my background paper is the solid blue at the moment. I am choosing to have my feathering going toward my images, by choosing Select > Inverse. This means that the pattern will fade as you get closer to my pictures. If you do not inverse, and still have the new layer above the solid, then you will have a blend of the pattern right behind the images. (Where the solid is in my final layout).

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 Above, you will see my marching ants surround my images and clusters. If you look at my screen capture below, it now outlines two outer parts of my layout, almost looking like 2 squares.

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 After I have my blend boxes where I want, I then press Option + Delete (Alt + Backspace for Windows) to fill with the foreground color (or Command + Delete/Control + Backspace for the background color). Here is what my marching ants – filled in.

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Next, I brought in a pattern paper and clipped it to the blend.

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My last step is a preference is one with Blend Modes. I made my filled blend layer a Darken Mode and lowered the opacity to have it blend into the background some more. I bit more subtle but more to my liking.  Here is my page:
TLP_SWLRecyc36_FJOrangeHappy_MornType_ColinSmileOct2015_WEB (1)
ALTERNATE OPTION: Make your shape a square and follow all the same steps, and this is what the blend would look like.

 

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I oped to leave my layout as my first example, but love both looks! Again, here is my final layout:

TLP_SWLRecyc36_FJOrangeHappy_MornType_ColinSmileOct2015_WEB

Happy Scrapping everyone! Hoping you found something useful to scrap your everyday moments in this tutorial! Thanks for stopping by!
Jenn Marione | jk703
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