Brushing
Always wanted to learn how to use brushes to make graphics and layouts? Now you can! :)
STEP 1
For the sake of the simplicity of this tutorial, I won't use any photos in this layout. There are other tutorials about manipulating photos on smiley helper, but this is just to make the base of the layout.
Open Adobe Photoshop (or paint shop pro, but this tutorial is for photoshop) and make the size around 500 by 400 pixels or bigger, background color white.
If you don't already have some brushes to work with, you can get some here.
Make a new layer and choose a color that's in the picture you want to put in the layout later. It should be a color that's sort of a detail on the psd, because you don't want one color to overpower the whole thing.
Slap on some grunge or halftone brushes and change the layer's opacity to something low like 30%. Don't be too precise with the placement of the brushes or it'll look strange, but make sure nothing ever goes over the edge.
STEP 2
Next pick a target brush and put them on the layout randomly, not going over the edge, at 80-100% opacity.
STEP 3
Now comes the detailing. You can add hearts, stars, flowers, pixels, grids, and more. Whatever you think looks good. Be sure to put most of the stuff on seperate layers, and you can change the blending style. Also try adding layers of just white brushes and changing the blending style to overlay. :)
Just keep going until you're happy with it.
Here's how mine turned out:
