I’ve been learning to crochet this weekend – inspired by friends, and also by looking at all the amazing craft blogs online. If you fancy giving it a go, you may want to check out these great beginners tutorials. I found these very clear and helpful videos by a lady called Beth, whose crochet website you can find here. It’s really worth following the videos carefully, step by step and in order – and if Beth tells you to practise 7 rows then do it!

The first video covers how to hold the hook, how to hold the yarn to get the right tension and how to make a slip knot. At first I found holding the yarn the trickiest bit – it just goes all baggy and slips off. Hmmm, well I need to practise..

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The second video explains how to make the chain stitch – the foundation of crochet.

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Next, in two parts, is how to make the single crochet stitch, and begin a scarf sampler to practice on.

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The second part of how to do the single crochet stitch is here

Keep reading the rest here…

Digital stamps, used in crafting, stamping, card making and scrapbooking are black and white outlined digital images printed onto paper from your printer. If you are an Adobe Illustrator user, here’s how to turn a colour vector image into a stamp.

First download the tutorial source file (Or you can use any colour vector image)

Open MakingStampsTutorial.ai in Illustrator

Select the whole image

Change the fill colour to white, and make the stroke colour black

Leave it all selected, Go to Object > Expand (uncheck expand fill but leave the stroke as it is) click ok. Leave it all selected.

Open the pathfinder tool (Window > Pathfinder (choose merge (the light square over the dark circle on the bottom row). At this stage the image will have white fills, which you can leave as they are or continue
to the next step to remove them

Deselect the image

Using the eyedropper, click on a white fill from anywhere inside the image

Go to select > same > fill colour. All the white fills will now be selected

Now delete all the white fills, and you’re done.

Brushes are great, but they only work with a single colour. If you want to add multiple colours or gradients to your brushes here are a few ways to do it.

Gradient Overlay method

First make a new layer, and place your brush design on it – the colour doesn’t matter. I used brush number 2 from my Gradient Curves set.
Go to layer > Layer Style > Gradient overlay. Choose the gradient you want or make a new one, using the settings below. make sure preview is on so that you can experiment with the setting until you’re happy with the result.

And here’s how it looks. One brush, three blended colours..

Feathered Selection method

For more complex brushes, you can use the selection tool. Again start by putting the brush on its own new layer. I used a brush from my free Swirls and Seeds set
Using the freehand Lasso Tool, select a portion of the design you’d like to change. Go to Select > Feather and choose a number from around 20 to 100 pixels, depending on the size of your design. Feathering the selection means you get nice soft blended gradations of colour – the bigger the feather, the softer and more gradual the blend.

Go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation. With the preview on, move the hue slider until you get the colour you want. You can adjust the lightness and saturation too.

If you repeat the process on different areas, you’ll end up with something like this.

Magic Wand method

Lastly and most simply, if your brush is a clean edged one you can just select all or parts of it with the magic wand tool and colour within the selection. You can use pattern fills too as shown below. I used a design from my free Cells set to create this design from just one brush. I also used a pattern to fill other sections. (You may have to flatten the image before it will allow you to select parts of the brush).

When working in Illustrator, I tend to work on a single layer – especially if it’s an illustrative piece. Sometimes I reach a point where I need the different elements (paths) in the design to be on their own separate layers. This might be so that I can export the file as a PSD to use in Photoshop, Corel painter or After Effects, or just to organise everything better.

With the easy technique outlined in this tutorial, you can avoid having to manually select elements to use the ‘Arrange> send to current layer’ method. If you can’t see the images below properly, click to view at full size.

1. So, you have your image as shown below, all bunched up on one layer. Open the layers palette and select the layer. Now click on the little arrow to open the flyout menu.

Click here to read on

A clipping mask is a simple way of trimming off parts of your artwork – like using a cookie cutter, or a crop. The beauty of clipping masks is that you can use any filled shape you like – from simple circles and rectangles to hand drawn shapes or text.

I’m using this design, created using filled rectangles for the stripes, and custom Art brush strokes for the flower. Here’s how mask it inside a circle using a clipping mask to crop away the excess.

Draw a filled circle (the colour doesn’t matter) over the area that you still want to be visible. Select all of the artwork including the circle. Then go to Object > Clipping mask > Make

The result is that you are left with your design trimmed inside a circle

So the orange circle disappears, and you are left with the cropped design. Note, the clipping mask shape HAS to be on the top of the rest of the design. Make sure by selecting it and pressing Ctrl + Shift + ] or go to Object > Arrange > Bring to front.

But Wait, It’s not really gone – It’s just kind of hidden..

What if you want to make this masked effect ‘permanent’ and use/move/re-colour the various shapes in the design? Because, right now, if you click on the design, you will still see the rectangular bounding box of the original artwork. It’s annoying. Sometimes you may want to re-use a masked element that you created with a clipping mask. Here’s how..

Select the whole design using the black arrow selection tool. Now go to Object > Expand appearance.

Next open the Pathfinder window (window > pathfinder) and click on divide.

Go to Object > Ungroup.

It’s now possible to select the individual parts of the design. You can recolour them, drag them away – use them as you want. Much better.

Finally, expanding and dividing clipping masks like this allows you to use your designs as Art brushes.

Sometimes using the pattern maker filter in Photoshop doesn’t give the results you want. Here’s how to create perfect repeating patterns using only photoshop and a brush set. This is the method we used to use at college when I was studying textile design.  Instead of slicing digital images we cut our hand drawn or painted paper designs in half and then taped them back together again. This way is much less destructive if it goes wrong!

Its pretty simple to make your own brush sets. Here a quick tutorial.

MAKING BRUSHES

1. Open a new blank image with a white or transparent background.

2. Design your brush. This can be hand-drawn, a photo, a scan -
basically anything.

I made a simple circular image

.

3. Now go to Edit > Define Brush, and click OK.4. Select the brush tool,
and click on the dropdown brush menu (across the top toolbar). Scroll
down through the brushes and you will see your brush at the bottom
ready to use.

5. Thats pretty much it, though you now have to save the brush you’ve made.

SAVING BRUSH SETS

1. You need to save the brush you’ve just made on its own. So delete all the others that you didnt make..

Hovering over a brush thumbnail, press alt and you will see a pair of scissors appear. Click to delete the brush.

2. Now you have to go through and delete all the other brushes
except the one you made.

3. Now you can save this brush on its own, ready to use next time you want it.
Just go to the little arrow on the right and select ’save brushes’. Name your file
and hit save.

4. Of course you can keep going and make more brushes to add to the set.
You just have to save over the same filename each time you add a new brush.
I find myself switching between the default photoshop brushes and loading my
brush sets in order to create new ones. Slightly fiddly but worth it so you can
keep a store of images as brushes to use regularly.

TIP

Make one brush and save it on its own ( i use my ’signature brush’ -
you’ll see it at the top of each of my brush sets). This saves you doing step 2.
above and having to delete all the other brushes every time you create a new set.