Create a Valentine

Just got my desktop computer back but it is not up and running. Chore for tomorrow. Today I wanted to share with you a really cool Valentine tutorial that showed up this week on the internet. It is called “How to create elegant Valentine’s Day card with ornamental heart in Photoshop CS5” at Adobe Tutorials. Not only do they give a really nice step-by-step process but they also provide the PSD file to help you out. The brush download is a very nice addition to have. Just follow their link. As I got halfway through the tutorial, I found I created a pretty nice card already that an image would look nice in. Attached is the base image and then one with a young couple added.  I used the brushes from the tutorial for the background effect.

I then worked some more on the Valentine and came up with the one below. I used several other resources including: Flowers in lower left is a free brush from Chelshire-Angel. Many nice brushes in this grouping.  Hearts on the lower right are a free download from GraphicXtras sampler shapes (no longer available).   The background is the Worn Love Texture from Coffeeshop Valentines that I used in the previous blog.  The beautiful texture in the middle of the heart is a free one from Victorian Dreams Texture Pack.

Make a lacy edge around the Valentine using No. 13 brush at size 201 pixels from the tutorial download (Florar_and_Enchanting_II_by_Coby17.abr).  I ran down the left side of the image with just the stem part of the brush.  Then I duplicated it and CTRL+T and flipped horizontally to line up on the right side.  Do the same for the top and bottom edges, group all four layers, and name the group Edges.  Next I created the heart using the Shape Tool from the referenced tutorial.  I created a New Layer and added a Layer Mask which will have the heart design in it.  I filled the heart is with pink.  Next move the Shape Layer above this layer, set Fill to 0% and add a Layer style using a white Drop Shadow, an Inner Glow with a Ring-Double contour, and a Dark Purple 24 pixel Stroke.  Then I brought the Victorian texture in over the regular heart layer and clipped it to the heart layer so only the middle was filled up with texture.  I used texture 8 which is blue so I changed the Blend Mode of the texture to Pin Light that brought out the pink color instead.  The font for “Be” and “My” is free and is called MC Sweetie Heart from dafont.   The word “Valentine” uses Cosmi Font 31, a font package I bought many years ago but has some great fonts – the only reference I could find on Cosmi was from Amazon.   The cupid was the small b key and is also a font downloaded for free from dafont called Gabriel’s Angels.   I put white drop shadows on the text layers for Valentine and the Cupid to lighten and emphasize them a little more.

That pretty much sums up how I put this one together. I really liked the final results. The original tutorial uses shapes very creatively and is also a lot of fun to do if you want to play around some. I hope these Valentines gave your creative side a shove. Have fun and experiment!…..Digital Lady Syd