With just releasing our 10th year of calendars here at Cottage Arts, we are now having a blast playing with them for our own use for the coming year. Since I seem to have a bit of a love of nature photography and photo blends, I’m creating one calendar full of them. For the cover, I came up with this mosaic idea and wanted to share how easy it was to create.
Open Photoshop Elements (Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro follows similar steps)
Create all 12 months’ photo blends using the CD Case set (square) using the step-by-step tutorial (printing, cutting, and display info also included). Save each month without the calendar overlays (in high quality jpg format), as well, to use on the cover. For our samples we also added various word art from our shop.
Open 02 ScrapTemplate14.psd from Scrap.Templates 14
Open one of the month’s photo blends (without the calendar overlay on it as described above)
Drag one photo blend onto the ScrapTemplate
Resize and position where desired using Move Tool
Move the position of this photo blend to the layer right above the desired photo mask you want to clip to
Clip photo to photo mask (Layer>Create Clipping Mask or shortcut Ctrl+G; Mac: Cmd+G)
Repeat for remaining images
Save as layered .psd file to be able to edit in future
Flatten Image
Resize to 4.75×4.75 inches to fit the CD Case size (Image>Resize)
Open Title1 from the CD Case Calendar Set
Drag Title overlay onto mosaic
Position where desired. I decreased the opacity a touch so it was slightly transparent
Add one of the Photo Art Blends and play with the layer blend mode (I used #25 on Darken), if desired
Print directions are included in tutorial for this set
Here’s another similar version created with a collection of favorite poppy images.
And, Beth went a totally different direction and used the calendars themselves in a mosaic card.Very creative idea.
And, we couldn’t not share at least one digital layout in a mosaic style. Great for photos all from the same shoot.
Happy creating!
Michelle