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We’re going to create a simple Valentine’s Day e-card for your special someone - as a plan B, just in case you forget that present. In the process, you will learn how to create a brush of your own and edit some of its more advanced settings.

Besides your own “heart” brush, we’re going to use some starry brushes (download them here) and a stock image for the background. Good and more importantly, free stock images can be found at sxc. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s begin.

Step 1

Create a new document. It can be any size really, depending on the size you want the e-card to be. I made it 800x600. Create a new layer and name it “Background”. Select #ff0000 as your foreground color and press Alt+Backspace to fill it up.

Step 2

Create a new layer and fill it with the color #330000. Name this layer “Radial Gradient”. Add a Layer Mask to it, then select the mask itself in the Layers window. Select the Gradient Tool and select Radial gradient. Press the D key to make sure you have Black and White as your foreground and background colors and draw a straight gradient line at 90° holding Shift, starting from the middle of the document all the way to the edge. If you have to, draw it even beyond the edge for a lighter effect. Play with this until you get it right.

Step 3

We’re going to create a vignette effect and texturize our background.

Create new layer (Ctrl+Shift+N) and fill it up with Black #000000. Name this layer “Vignette”. Grab the Rectangular Marquee tool and draw a rectangle in the very center of your black layer. Make sure your rectangle is at about the same distance from all the document edges, say 80px. Press Delete to remove the selection leaving only a black 80px border on your layer. Now go to the Filter menu › Blur › Gaussian Blur and apply a blur of 45 pixels. Turn the layer opacity down to about 50% by pressing 5 on the keyboard (this is an easy way to play with the layer opacity).

Time to texturize!

Grab a picture of a piece of cloth (or anything else that you think would work) and paste it just above your bottom layer. Name this layer “Texture”. Hold down Ctrl and click the mask of the “Radial gradient” layer above it. You should now have what looks like a circular marquee. Press M to select the Marquee tool, right-click inside the document and in the menu that appears click Select Inverse. Yup, this does exactly what you think That is, it inverts the selection. Now, click the Add layer mask button in the Layers window. Select this layer’s Blending Mode to be Linear Burn. You should now have something that looks like the picture below.

Step 4

Time to create our brush! Select the Custom Shape tool and select the Heart Card shape.

Draw the heart shape anywhere in the document, about 40px wide, black color and rename its layer to “Heart”. Hide all your other layers before you continue! This makes sure your brush has a transparent background and doesn’t contain anything but your shape. Rasterize the layer, then Ctrl+click it in the Layers window to select the shape’s pixels, then go to the menu Edit › Define Brush Preset. Give your brush a name, let’s say “Heart”, and voilà! You have created your own brush. Now select the Brush tool and open the Brush Preset picker, scroll all the way down to the bottom of the brush list and select the brush you’ve created.