A Bit of Bubbly for the New Year

Sometimes I just get carried away with the awesome tools at my disposal on the computer. Today I got to fiddling in Photoshop with some brushes of bubble wrap I had made from stamping the wrap itself on glossy paper with Ranger's Archival black ink. So in honor of the New Year and my soon-to-be-consumed champagne, while waiting for midnight and the fireworks on the Space Needle, I thought I would share some of my fun.

Here are three of the sizes of bubble wrap I stamped. I made Photoshop brushes out of them and several others, chose a background, and went to town. I made 31 iterations of bubble paper. I started with a background of Kim Klassen's paper texture, because it was a nice, neutral color. Kim probably had used many many layers to make the texture, and it saved me having to do that myself. Thanks, Kim!

Then I made a base layer of various sizes of bubble brushes, coloring them with the tones my color picker collected from Kim's paper. Normally I would have made many individual layers, one for each color I used, but I was anxious to see what my new brushes would do. So I put them all over my first layer. Then I remembered about putting them on individual layers, so I began to do that. Here is the first paper I made:

I was really happy with what the brushes looked like. I didn't resize them for this project--just used them all at the size I made them.

So here are some more. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

For this one, number 4, I played with the color balance on a couple of the layers, adding the green.

This one is number 8, and I used the Invert command to change the colors. Love the contrast of colors.

This one, number 14, used one of the distort filters, Spherize.

Number 15 uses the Twirl filter.

Now, I am a purple person, so I had to make some purple changes. This is number 22.

For this one, number 25, I added a red base layer and a couple of more layers of bubbles in red.

I altered the color on some of the layers, using the Invert command. This is number 28.

Did I mention I was a purple person? Number 30. There are also some drop shadows added.

Playing with the Twirl filer and the invert command. Latest, (number 31) but probably not last, attempt at bubble paper. I made them all 12 by 12 inches. The next lot will probably include resizing the brushes, and using the hexagonal bubble wrap I used in the virtual art journal awhile back.

Happy New Year! --Nan