Digital Scrapping - Shapes

In the past couple of weeks, I've started using custom shapes in Photoshop a lot.

How did I not know these existed?

Here's where you find them (I use Photoshop 7). You can access the Shape menu by hitting the U key.

Photoshop already has some custom shapes loaded, but if you Google "Photoshop shapes," you'll find links to all sorts of free shapes. I found this site that has a good selection:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/12/11/the-ultimate-collection-of-photoshop-custom-shapes/

Be aware that you need to credit some authors, and others you don't. Always check the author's terms of use to see if they require credit if you use their work. I personally don't use freebies that require credit, because it's a lot of work to remember which freebies came from where. Now, if I paid for a resource, then yes, I'll credit.

Of course, being self-taught in Photoshop, I had to muddle through learning to use the shapes. I'm sure there's a better way to do this, but I select my shape, then, in a new document, click and drag the shape until it's the size that I want. Then I ctrl+click on the shape layer to select it, and create a new layer. I fill the shape in on the new layer, then delete the shape layer. It's clumsy, but it works.

Here's an example of a shape that I used for my Fire Bling kit:

I created the shape and filled it with a basic color, and then ran a style. Voila! In fact, I think this particular shape came from one of the freebie kits in the above link.

Here's the Fire Bling promo where you can see everything included in the kit: