I {heart} Vignettes - scrapping tut

OK so even though I (Sprauncey1 aka Kim) have been digiscrapping for over 5 years now, I still feel like I am still constantly learning new things. And as I was scrapping a page the other day, I discovered this cool technique and wanted to share it with you all. I scrap mainly in Photoshop CS2, but I know that these same things can be done in Elements as well. The other programs...I have no clue, but they are basic commands so I would imagine you could do them too. Anyway...vignettes...

I started out wanting to do a valentines day LO with a heart on it. A heart like so:And well, as I am a big fan of Jennifer's patterned papers (like from her I {heart} U kit at Polka Dot Plum) I used one of them and clipped it to my heart (shown above). But whenever I do this I feel like I "lose" the edge of the paper. You know the part of it that is just a little darker and shows where the paper ends. Well as I was using a vignette action on one of my photos, I realized that I could do the same thing with my patterned paper shapes. So here's what I did:
1. Select shape (control-click on the image thumbnail)
2. Contract the selection by 100 (Select - Modify- Contract - 100) Adjust number as needed.3. Feather the selection (Select - Feather - 80) feel free to play around with the number!4. Inverse the selection (Select - Inverse)5. Copy the selection from the original patterned paper layer. (Click on patterned paper layer in layers palette, Layer - New - Layer via copy)6. Clip this to the heart layer (Layer - Create Clipping Mask) It will look just like the original initially until you change the layer blend mode to multiply. Then it looks like this:
7. Now you can play around with the opacity of the layer and even the blend mode to get it the way you like it. I usually lower mine until the point I'm not sure I added it, then I hide that layer and see how much of a difference it makes. Usually it makes a huge difference even when I don't think I can "see" it anymore. Here's what mine looks like at 40% opacity:8. And here is my LO with the heart featured on it.

I also added a vignette on the background paper using the heart shape as a guide (by expanding the heart selection and then feathering, etc), which I think really enhances the theme of the LO. This can be done with just about any shape or text or whatever. Its more subtle than an inked edge but it also shows the eye where the edge is. Anyway...that's my tutorial, hoped you learned something! Don't forget to check out Jennifer's store for awesome patterned papers like the ones in this kit to play around with!