Make an Embossed Beginners Button or Scrapbooking Brad in Gimp

If you have not yet installed Gimp, please do, it is FREE.
Once installation is completed, open Gimp.
Create a New Image 700 x 700 in size, 72 ppi. Click on Advanced Options, and choose Fill with Transparency. Click OK.
With the Ellipse selection make a circle, and choose the following settings:
Position: 166 x 12
Size: 373 x 373
Go to the Toolbox and change your Foreground color to 99686B (a gray) and leave your Background as White.
Click on the Gradient tool, choose Linear, 100% Opacity, also click on Dithering and Adaptive Supersampling.
Stroke with your mouse from top to bottom to make the gradient, making sure the top is darker than the bottom.
Go to Layer, New Layer. Go to Select, Shrink and Shrink the new selection by 15 pixels, click OK.
Change the Foreground color to 1E1B12 and the Background color to CEBCBC. Select the Gradient tool again and leaving everything as before,
make another gradient.
Go to Script-Fu, Layer Effects, Inner Glow. When the little menu opens, select opacity 75.0
Contour: Linear, Size: 10.0 and leave the rest as is. Click OK.
Go to Layer, New Layer. Then to Select, Shrink and shrink by 20 pxls.
Change the Foreground color to 8F0401, and the Background color to f20000 and make another gradient.
Go to Layer, New Layer and shrink it also by 20. Change color to f20000. Change Gradient to Foreground to Transparent and make the new
gradient fill. Go to Script-Fu, Layer Effects, Bevel and Emboss and choose Pillow Emboss and click OK.
Make a new layer, shrink selection by 10 px, change gradient to FG to BG (RGB)and fill new selection.
Go to Layer, new Layer, then go to Script-Fu, Bevel and Emboss, and choose Inner Bevel. Click Ok.
Change the Foregorund color to ffffff. Go to Brush, and choose Circule Fuzzy 19, move the scale lever to 10.0, Opacity 50.5 and click twice at the bottom
of the button.
Go to Filters, Blur Gaussian Blur and choose 10.0 px, and click OK.

Save your button as a PNG by choosing Save As, then Select File (By Extension and scrolling down to the PNG format.)


Done!

Experiment with your own color choices and have fun!



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Bible Universe

Inter-Connected Button or Scrapbooking Brad Fun

I like to make things my own way. And since I have Paint.Net, Gimp and also Inkscape, why not combine them?
My forte is not drawing with a mouse, so I when I realized that I could make shapes in Inkscape, cut and paste them in Paint. Net or Gimp
(or in one after the other) to embellish them, I thought that soved a great problem for me!

Let me share with you this simple tutorial,it might solve a problem or two for you and you might find it fun also.

First of all, download the three softwares to your computer, they are all FREE.
Once you have them, open up Inkscape and Paint.Net.

Now go to Inkscape. Choose the Polygon drawing tool (it's the one that is seen together with a star shape), and at the top of the page, go to Corners, and write the number 12,
spoke ratio: 0.638, leave the rest as is and leave stroke unset. Choose a color you like. Stroke with your mouse to create the polygon, the size you
want. Once made, click it to select it and go to Edit, copy or cut.

Move to Paint.Net. Click on Edit, Paste in to New Image.
Once the Polygon appears in your working space. Make sure the colors chosen on your toolbox are Foreground Teal, which is Hex #008080, Backgroung White.
Click on the Paint Bucket, then at the top of the page, click where it says Fill, scroll down to Wide Downward Diagonal pattern, and fill the polygon with teal and White diagonal lines.

Go back to Inkscape and make another polygon, smaller than the first. Copy.
Return to Paint.Net, Click on Layers, Add New Layer, then paste your new Polygon, making sure you center it well. Make the color for this one Hex #008080, a nice teal.
Click on Layers, Merge Layers down.

Now to to Effects and blur. I have downloaded many effects for my Paint.Net (there are tons of free ones!) you can use Average Blur, but do not set it to more than 2 (Gaussian Blur would "delete" your stripes by blurring them too much).
Save as an Optimized PNG. If it tells you that the image will be flattened, click OK.


For the rest of the button, you will need a texture. there are hundreds you can get online that can be used both by Gimp and Photoshop. Download a texture package that you like.
Save it to your desktop. Then go to My Computer, Program Files, and look for Gimp, open folders until you find Textures, open your download and simply copy and paste the texture (or textures) you want into that
folder. This hast to be done with Gimp closed. Now that you have your texture in place. Close Program Files, My computer and go to Gimp.

For my texture I chose my own thing, a polka dot pattern photographed from a fabric. You can do that too. You can buy swatches (they call them Fat Quarters) used for quilting, and you can use them as backgrounds.

Go to Gimp, open your PNG image in Gimp.

Once the image opens, click on the Ellipse Selection tool and draw a selection. The Position should be 158 x 158, the Size: 449 x 444, Fixed Aspect Ration should be selected, also Antialiasing
should be selected.
Now, in the Toolbox, click ont he Foreground color, (it is usually Black) Change your Foreground color to Hex # 00f9f9, which is a light aqua. Leave your Background color white.
Go to Layer, New Layer. Choose the Bucket Fill tool and go to Pattern Fill and click it, scroll down to the pattern you want and Fill the selection with your image. Mine was pink and white so I clicked on it
with the Bucket Fill tool and made it that light aqua. If you need to do that, do it. It's okay if the color contrasts, also. Yellow would look lovely.
Now go to Select, Border, and make it a bit wide, and select feather border. Click OK. Then go to Select, None.

I went back to Paint.Net and Added a Drop Shadow. To be able to do that, you need to download the Effects package and install it as you did for your Gimp textures, in Paint.Net's Effects folder.
Then you will find it under Effects, Object, Drop Shadow. To finish, go to Effects, Blur, Gaussian Blur and choose only 2. Click Ok. Save and your done!

Warning: Color bleeds a little bit from the stripes, but this is only to show you how you can make up for any clumsiness in mouse drawing by going back and forth between software programs.

Inter-connecting software packages to get the most out of them as you learn to use them is fun. Try to see what you can come up with!

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Do You Feel Mistreated?

Easy Pink Brad or Button in Gimp

This is a pretty nice button or scrapbooking brad for a beginner. It looks really well, which will encourage you to experiment more with the wonderful software.

Open up Gimp.
Create a new image 269 x 272 pixels, background color Transparency, Resolution 96.00. For your Foreground color, choose # A22828, for your Background color, choose # FF8770.

Click on the ellipse or round select tool and from the top corner of the canvas, drag a selection down to cover almost the entire canvas.Click on the blend or gradient tool and make sure
the arrows of the gradient are such that will give you a gradient that is darker at the top than at the bottom. Gradient Shape should be Linear, Opacity should be 100%, click on Dithering and also on Adaptive Supersampling, to make the gradient smoother. Pull the mouse on a straight line across your selection to fill it with the
gradient. Go to Select Shrink. Shrink it to 15 pixels. Click OK. Now go to Script-Fu, Inner Shadow and choose the following settings: Opacity 26.0, Contour: Linear; Blending Mode: Normal.
Source: Edge. Choke: 0.0; Size 5.0; Offset Angle: -90.0;Offset Distance: 2.0. Click OK. Create a new layer and name it Center. Shrink it as before but this time by 10 pixels. Click on the arrows of the
gradient tool so that the colors will run in opposite direction as before and fill the new selection, lighter on top and darker at the bottom.
Go to Script-Fu, Inner Glow, then choose the following settings: Opacity 54.0 and leave the rest as is. Click Ok.
That's it! Simple, isn't it?
Practice and add whatever changes you like best.

Here's a sample page using this brad or button to give you ideas:



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Bible Universe