Baby announcement

In this tutorial I will show you how to create a simple 4x6 inch announcement that can be Emailed and or printed and mailed.

1-Preliminary design
First, I recommend doing something with this that I did not do: (especially if you are new to scrap booking.) Look at designs, patterns, announcements etc. to get ideas. Once you have done this get out a clean sheet of paper and begin sketching and coloring your own ideas for a baby announcement. Doing preliminary research and design in the real world almost always pays off with a better design when you hop on the computer.

2- create a pattern
Open Gimp. Create a new image (cntl-N) Set up the following parameters:

3- Pattern background
Now change your foreground color to a nice light pink. Change your Background color to an even lighter pink. In the paint brush options select the 'jitter' and 'paint from gradient' options. also select the random option for size in the brush dynamics. Using a fuzzy brush paint something similar to what I did below. This will create a nice random background for our pattern



4- draw a butterfly
Now create a butterfly on a new transparent layer. To do the one below I used a pen tablet, and the ink tool. An alternative to this would be to draw this on paper scan into the computer or take a digital image of your drawing.


5- Color the butterfly
The drawing I did already had transparency. But if you scanned a drawing in you will need to select all the white areas using the magic wand, then type the 'delete' button. It is highly recommended you ink your drawing so as to create the most contrast when you select the white areas to delete.
Now de-select jitter, color from gradient and the random size option in the Brush options. Create a new layer under your butterfly sketch. Paint your butterfly whatever color you wish. Then merge the sketch and paint layers.


6-Duplicate and swirl
Now duplicate your butterfly layer. Use Hue and Saturation in the 'color' menu. Use the 'hue' slider bar to change the color of your duplicated butterfly. Now Move ,re-size and rotate the new butterfly layer similar to what you see below. Also draw some swirls using the ink tool and a slightly darker hue of pink.

7-Save your pattern
Flatten your image. Follow the folder path (Starting from your 'C' hard drive) highlighted in the image below until you find the patterns folder. This is where patterns need to be saved in order to show up in the patterns palette. Save your image using the .pat file name extension. (Hint: click the patterns folder in the save dialogue, then click the 'add' button to create a shortcut to the patterns folder whenever you create a new pattern)

8-Test pattern
Close your pattern image. Click the refresh button in the patterns palette. Your new pattern should show up as some kind of pink square. Select your pattern.
Create a new image at 4x6 inches, 300dpi. activate the Fill bucket tool. Select the 'pattern fill' option in the Bucket fill options. Click on the canvas, your canvas is filled with your new pattern.
I felt this was too large for what I wanted. So I right clicked on my pattern and selected 'open pattern as image'. This opens the original pattern file. I re-sized to 128x128 pixels, saved, closed and refreshed the palette. I re-filled my canvas with the new pattern after deleting the old. You can see the results of both fills below



9-Design continued
I decided I wanted some sort of box to contain the photo of my baby. In this I created a new layer, created a rectangular selection, filled that selection white, reduced the opacity of my fill to 20% and filled again with my butterfly pattern. Then I applied a zoom filter to create the affect you are seeing below. After this I created a drop shadow. This filter creates a new shadow layer.
When I off-set this layer just the way I want I merged this with the white box above it



10-Filler photo box
At the time I didn't have my babies photo so I created a new layer and box selection filled it gray and draw a quick baby face. This will be where the real photo will go.


11-Create Photo corners
I decided to create old vintage style photo corners for holding a photo. To to this I filled black a triangular selection on a new layer. I then used the dodge/burn tool and a very small brush to create the highlights. Then I duplicated the layer three times. Rotate and reposition according to the size of your photo. merge your four corner layers.


12-New Gradient
After a while the color scheme for the background layer was really bothering me. I decided to fundamentally change the color scheme of the background pattern. To do this I desaturated the background layer. In the gradient palette I clicked the 'new gradient icon' at the bottom and created the following gradient. then I went to Color>map>gradient map. When selected it recreates the colors of the background based off the currently selected gradient. As you can see below I wanted a choco/pink look.

13-Info card
Now I want to create an info card to place all the basic info of my new baby. I decided I wanted a box with inverted corners. To do this I created a rectangular selection. In the menus: Select>rounded rectangle. In the dialogue select 'concave' then click OK. I filled with a light goldish gradient then stroked the edge of the selection with a fuzzy brush.
Using the eraser tool I cut two slim notches on either side of the box. On a new layer I paint ribbon going off the edge of the canvas on either side. Using a small brush and dodge/burn I created the highlights. Merge the layers and create a shadow similar to the photo box above.


14-Add photo and text
At this point I added my baby's photo by opening the image I want as a new layer. I crop and re size this as necessary.
Then I added the text I wanted as you can see below. I made the text a chocolate color to match the brown in the background.

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial. As always experiment and have fun. Until next time live long and prosper and God bless.