Good Morning, Afternoon and/or Evening Trixie fans! (It’s bound to be one of those where you are right?!) Welcome to a Triple T Tuesday. These are by far my favorite posts to read because I love getting new tips to help out my scrapping, but they are by far the most intimidating for me to write! So bear with me today and I hope I can pass along a little tip I have loved using lately. Being a veteran paper scrapper for nigh on 12 years, I got used to having many techniques at my disposal that I have found myself wanting to replicate in digi scrapping but find myself at a loss as to how. One of these techniques that I used daily in paper scraps was inking- I loved inking edges of papers, ellies, titles- anything and everything. So how to translate that into digi? Well, I am happy to say I found fairly quick and simple way! So, here goes, using PSE 7.

First, take your paper strip, alpha, ellie or what-have-you. I am going to ink a simple paper square for a tag or a journaling mat. Press Ctrl-and left click on the item in the layer palette. This should bring up those “marching ants” around the item. This lets you know you have selected the entire perimeter.

Next, with those marching ants still um, marching Wink, go to your menu bar and drop down the “Select” Menu. Find the “Modify” option which will further drop down into a few more choices. Choose the “Contract” option.

Here you will choose how far into the item you want to “ink.” I chose 30 pixels for the demonstration.

The marching ants should now be inside your element. Without clicking on your item, once again go into your “Select” menu and find the “feather” option. Once again, chose a pixel size. This option will make your ink blend a little more.

Next, you want to open a new, empty layer above your item. Now click Shft, Ctrl and I all at the same time. This should invert your selection ie: select the area outside your item.

In the NEW layer, choose a color you want to “ink.” I like to chose a slightly darker or lighter color of the element I am inking. Then in your brushes menu, I like to use the “faux finish” brushes that come standard with the program, but you can also use a simple soft brush if you like.

Now go ahead and start painting in the NEW LAYER around the edges of the element. With the inverse selected, this should only let you paint around the edges and not into the middle of the element. It is ok if you are a bit messy here, don’t worry about going out of the lines.

Once you are done “inking,” go into the layer palette and hover your mouse between the new layer and the element. Press your ALT key and a double circle should appear. Left click and this should attach the top layer into the bottom layer, making your element appear inked.

Now you can play with the blending mode and find a style that suits you best.

When you have it how you like it, merge the top layer onto the bottom and you have an inked element!

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