It’s coming up on that wonderful summer season soon, and I’d venture to guess that more than one of you will be taking a vacation! Well, here’s some travel brushes to help you decorate those scrapbooks, web pages, etc.

This one was a request, and was a ton of fun to do! This set includes not only travel-related objects like suitcases, tickets, airplanes, etc., but I also decided to add some “stamps” of various countries and “wonders of the world” - like the colisseum in Rome, the Eiffel Tower in France, etc. They are all drawn by hand, and are very high resolution - the average brush size is about 2100 pixels.


Did you know that all of those various windows in Photoshop can be opened and closed? You don’t need to leave them open, if you don’t really use them.

Additionally, there’s a small section where you can “stash” the windows temporarily, if you don’t want them cluttering up your working area. In the upper right, there should be a grayed out section that probably already has a few tabs worth of windows stored there. If you want to move a window there, click on the top bar of the window and drag it into that grayed out area. If you want to move a window from that area into your working space, click and drag the tab down to where you want it, and it will show up as a window again.

If you accidentally close a window you didn’t mean to, no worries! You can get it back again. Under the top menu, click on “Window” and it will show you a listing of all the available windows. A check box next to a name means that the window is currently active, or visible. Clicking on a window once will make it active/visible, and clicking on it again will hide it once again.


These brushes can be used for prints. You don't need to note me and ask.

They are available for commercial or non-commercial usage.

You may make my brushes into GIMP brushes and redistribute them. But if you do so, it is required that you provide a link back to my website (www.brushes.obsidiandawn.com), so that they may know where the original brush set came from.

If you use one of my brushes/stock, please credit me somewhere. You may do so as www.brushes.obsidiandawn.com, redheadstock, or Stephanie Shimerdla. Also, if possible, provide a link back here or to my website (www.brushes.obsidiandawn.com).

If you want to use these brushes, but don't have a way of crediting me, I have commercial licenses available for $3 per brush set. Once you purchase a license, you do not need to credit me for the brush usage for that set. Information on commercial licenses can be found here.

Please do not re-package any of the brushes contained in any of the sets and attempt to pass them off as your own!

That's it! Enjoy!

** When sending me notes about having used something, do NOT leave the message on my front page! I won't get it!

Well, dA has been giving me a helluva time with this submission! I checked the forums, and I guess they're aware that some people are having submission troubles, so I just sat and waited patiently. Then I thought to try it on my Mac laptop, and voila! Doesn't make a whole lot of sense why my PC wasn't working, though... I haven't changed anything that would be causing problems. Hopefully it's okay for next week! (The Mac is still having a bit of trouble with the preview image as I write this, so maybe the problem isn't solved quite yet!)

Been fighting off a cold all week, and it finally hit today. Ugh! Also been trying to catch up with everything since getting back from my 2 week trip. Things have been pretty hectic, so this set is coming our REALLY late this week (and even later due to submission problems here on dA). I'm way behind on notes and messages here on dA, btw. So if you asked a question I haven't answered yet, I'm not ignoring you!

This is a pretty simple set, but one that I think will be fairly popular. It is a bunch of flowery vector designs, all of which are high resolution - about 1500 pixels. Just sat down today and played around with various flower designs, and this is what came out!

These should come in handy for those last-minute mother's day designs!

No brushes tips right now, please-and-thank-you. Iím going to go curl up on the couch and watch some movies amidst a huge pile of tissues.


These brushes can be used for prints. You don't need to note me and ask.

They are available for commercial or non-commercial usage.

You may make my brushes into GIMP brushes and redistribute them. But if you do so, it is required that you provide a link back to my website (www.brushes.obsidiandawn.com), so that they may know where the original brush set came from.

If you use one of my brushes/stock, please credit me somewhere. You may do so as www.brushes.obsidiandawn.com, redheadstock, or Stephanie Shimerdla. Also, if possible, provide a link back here or to my website (www.brushes.obsidiandawn.com).

If you want to use these brushes, but don't have a way of crediting me, I have commercial licenses available for $3 per brush set. Once you purchase a license, you do not need to credit me for the brush usage for that set. Information on commercial licenses can be found here.

Please do not re-package any of the brushes contained in any of the sets and attempt to pass them off as your own!

That's it! Enjoy!

** When sending me notes about having used something, do NOT leave the message on my front page! I won't get it!

More sketches brushes! It’s Springtime, and this week's release is a set of brushes to use in your Spring designs! They're all high resolution and hand drawn.

Included are things like: a butterfly, cherry tree branches, clouds, a cloud blowing the wind, lots of flowers, some kites, mushrooms, lots of rain, a rainbow, robin, several trees, an umbrella, windy swirls, blowing leaves, etc.


Ever have trouble remembering some of Photoshop’s keyboard shortcuts for doing certain things? They can save you a TON of time, if you get good at them!

Here’s a link to some great PDFs of keyboard shortcuts that you can download and/or print out for reference. They are separated by your particular version of Photoshop, and are available for either a PC or a Mac!

Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts


These brushes can be used for prints. You don't need to note me and ask.

They are available for commercial or non-commercial usage.

You may make my brushes into GIMP brushes and redistribute them. But if you do so, it is required that you provide a link back to my website (www.brushes.obsidiandawn.com), so that they may know where the original brush set came from.

If you use one of my brushes/stock, please credit me somewhere. You may do so as www.brushes.obsidiandawn.com, redheadstock, or Stephanie Shimerdla. Also, if possible, provide a link back here or to my website (www.brushes.obsidiandawn.com). I do understand that in some commercial applications, it is not always easy to do this. Just do whatever you can.

Please do not re-package any of the brushes contained in any of the sets and attempt to pass them off as your own!

That's it! Enjoy!

** When sending me notes about having used something, do NOT leave the message on my front page! I won't get it!

My first Water Photoshop brushes set remains one of my most popular sets for photo-manipulators. But it was made back before I was taking all of my own reference photos, and so some of them are simply not the size that I would have liked. Now, I’ve been able to take all of my own photos, so all of these are high resolution and exactly what I wanted.

This Water II brush set is made up of the same kinds of brushes that were the most used in my first set. It is made up of several splashes, falling water, water spouts, some shimmers, several reflections (like those on the bottom of a pool), and much more!

Most were made to be used with a white or very light color on a darker background, by the way.


Ever tried to paint with a brush and thought that the edges didn’t seem as clean and smooth as they could be? The way that the hard-edged brushes in Photoshop’s “Basic Brushes” are set, that just may happen when you’re working at higher resolutions.

So, how do you fix that?

• Click on your brushes tab (or hit F5 to bring it up).


• Click on “Brush Tip Shape” and look at the preview image of the brush at the bottom. You’ll be able to see those bumpy edges if you set the diameter at a high size.


• Now change the “Spacing” so that it’s set to about 15% or lower. You can set it to 1% to make it perfectly smooth for those ultra-high resolutions, but if you have a slower computer, that may slow the brush down when you go to use it. So just find a nice percentage where you don’t see all the bumpy edges.

That’s it! I don’t expect many of you to need this tip, but I remember back when I was first learning to paint digitally in Photoshop, and I couldn’t figure out why the edges were coming out so bumpy sometimes. So I thought I’d share!


These brushes can be used for prints. You don't need to note me and ask.

They are available for commercial or non-commercial usage.

You may make my brushes into GIMP brushes and redistribute them. But if you do so, it is required that you provide a link back to my website (www.brushes.obsidiandawn.com), so that they may know where the original brush set came from.

If you use one of my brushes/stock, please credit me somewhere. You may do so as www.brushes.obsidiandawn.com, redheadstock, or Stephanie Shimerdla. Also, if possible, provide a link back here or to my website (www.brushes.obsidiandawn.com). I do understand that in some commercial applications, it is not always easy to do this. Just do whatever you can.

Please do not re-package any of the brushes contained in any of the sets and attempt to pass them off as your own!

That's it! Enjoy!

** When sending me notes about having used something, do NOT leave the message on my front page! I won't get it!

Another request this week! I’ve been behind on those, and trying to catch up a bit. This was a fun set to try to brainstorm ideas for! It’s a unique set… I’m pretty sure I’ll be the only site out there with Earth Friendly Vector Brushes! Hope that some of you can find some uses for it.

This set includes all kinds of images, mostly involving the earth and nature. Kind of a “green” set of brushes, if you will. Ecologically friendly, earth friendly… whatever you want to call it, these should help you represent it! These are all vector images, and the average brush size is about 2000 pixels - so they’re high resolution!

Includes: various earth images (an earth inside a giant set of hands, nestled safely in a leaf, with a heart around it, inside a flower, next to some leaves, with a tree growing out of it, etc), flowers, 2 sets of grasses, several leaves, a leaf and a water drop, 2 regular recycling images, 1 water recycling image, and some trees!

By the way... I'll be out of town the next 2 weeks, yet again. So, I won't really be reading messages/notes unless they're a question. I just won't have time. But good news... next week comes a sequel to one of my top 5 most popular brush sets here on dA! And in HIGH RESOLUTION, whoot!


Want these images to show up in several colors? Like the earth, for example.

1. Create a new layer (the button on the layers palette or Shift-Ctrl-N… CMD-SHIFT-N on a Mac).

2. Use the “earth” brush that on that new layer, using a blue color (we’re using blue because the “earth” brush will fill in the water portions of the earth).

3. Use the magic wand tool and click somewhere outside of that earth. It should select the space around the earth.

4. Choose Select > Modify > Expand, then put in 1 or 2 pixels (1 pixel if you’re working on a small scale, 2 if you’re working high-res).

5. Select > Inverse. You should now have the earth itself selected, minus a pixel or two at the edges.

6. Click on the layer beneath the one with the earth on it, and create a new layer again (Shift-Ctrl-N or Cmd-Shift-N).

7. Using the paint bucket tool, and with a green color selected, click once inside the earth to fill the rest in with green.

8. Voila! You now have a multicolored earth.

9. You could also have just painted in that green color beneath the earth, if you’re good at painting “between the lines” like you would with a coloring book!

10. When it comes to using more than 2 colors, however, I’d suggest checking out my multiple colors with photoshop brushes tutorial (with vectors like this, though, you don’t need that top, black layer - you can just erase it when you’re done).


These brushes can be used for prints. You don't need to note me and ask.

They are available for commercial or non-commercial usage.

You may make my brushes into GIMP brushes and redistribute them. But if you do so, it is required that you provide a link back to my website (www.brushes.obsidiandawn.com), so that they may know where the original brush set came from.

If you use one of my brushes/stock, please credit me somewhere. You may do so as www.brushes.obsidiandawn.com, redheadstock, or Stephanie Shimerdla. Also, if possible, provide a link back here or to my website (www.brushes.obsidiandawn.com). I do understand that in some commercial applications, it is not always easy to do this. Just do whatever you can.

Please do not re-package any of the brushes contained in any of the sets and attempt to pass them off as your own!

That's it! Enjoy!

** When sending me notes about having used something, do NOT leave the message on my front page! I won't get it!