Pattern Collage by Maddy

"This is a collage of all the patterns I created. They were all made by different brushes. The swirls are from the "spiky swirls" link Mrs. Miller put on her blog. The mechanical looking one and the bubbles were both sets of brushes downloaded from a website called myphotoshopbrushes.com. And the cell brushes were also from melbrushes. All were free downloadable files. I do recommend checking out that website for a lot of cool brushes." - Maddy

Holiday Card from Vectors - Victor

I  made most of this card out of vectors using the pen tool and the custom shape tool. I used many different gradients to make the ornaments look a little more round and pleasing to the eye as well as the tree. The moon, stars, an the star on top of the tree i used outer and inner glow to show light. I used different hues on the trees in the background to simulate depth. I made the pattern on the ornaments myself and used the filter spherize to make it seam like its around it. I warped the "Winter Wonderland" around the moon.

Big Wave - Victor

"I got the inspiration to make this wave from the tutorial 'Create an Explosive Color Swath' and this picture.

I used a random noise gradient and warped it in to a wave shape. I then used a paintbrush to paint three bands of color and blurred it to mix the colors. After I used different sized brushes with scatter paint out the white water. I duplicated, blurred and colorized the white water layer to have the effect of it glowing."

Liquid Soul - Thomas O.

"I saw a tutorial called Liquid Soul and thought I'd do my own spin on it with a more dramatic scene using the same ideas from the tutorial.  My Rainbow Dude had seamless shading but when I applied some filters I got a cool grungy look that highlighted the brush strokes on his face (shadows).
The orbs and rings were from the tutorial . . . they help to divulge the scene in a outlandish manner..eh?  The broken glass effect is my absolute favorite effect in Photoshop and it is one I have mastered and created a bit of a new way to do it to give some parts a more realistic see through window look. (which I love)."  - Thomas

Girl in Space - Brenda

"I used many different layer blending modes and the lens flare tool. i got the picture of the stars from a NASA website and just adjusted the layers and converted it to a smart object." - Brenda

Hunting Club - Zach O.

"In this project, i started out by adding the wooden background and then darkening the corners/ giving it a gradient overlay. Then I used Hue and Saturation to bring out different colors in the wood.  Next, I used the custom shape tool for the shield, and then gave it a drop shadow, inner shadow, and inner glow. Then i used the wood back ground again, and pressed alt. between layers to combine the shape with the wood. I then used the Ellipse tool to create rivets in the wood, also giving them drop shadows, outer glow, and a gradient overlay. After this, I repeated the process for creating the shield to create the the top board of the shield. finally, I added and edited the text, the guns, and faded an emblem into the wood to finish up the project." - Zach O.

Message in a Bottle - Jonathan

"In this picture I took a bottle and applied a few filters to create a sea-glass effect as well as warped the contents behind the bottle to make the glass seem real. everything else was just simple transformations and done to make the beach scene." - Jonathan S.