ELLE-INSPIRED ROSE EMBELLISHMENTS

To my surprise and delight, I received a free copy of the August, 2013 edition of Elle Canada magazine in the mail last week.  I'll never turn down a free magazine!  The first thing that struck me about the cover was the use of colourful rose embellishments around the cover model.  They rarely seem to use clip art or graphics on their covers, so it struck me as something really unique.

Roses were all the rage on the Fall 2013 Winter 2014 runways.  Lanvin, Thom Browne and Erdem all used rose printed fabrics or rose embellishments on their garments.  The roses on the Elle Canada cover, painted by Toronto artist Melinda Josie, were actually inspired by this Thom Browne rose print jacket.  And, if you can even believe it, the roses were actually painted with nail polish!  Since I am nowhere near talented enough to draw pretty roses with nail polish I went in search of some other roses that I might be able to use in my blog post layouts.
 
Luckily I hit the jackpot - A FREE font called Janda Flower Doodles on Font Space.  The font character map shows you which key to press for the flower doodle you want, and the capital "V" is almost a perfect match for the Elle magazine cover flowers.  You can download Janda Flower Doodles for free from Font Space to use it in your own blog designs and graphics.  (Please review the terms of use on the Font Space website, as it appears it is for personal use only.)  The nice thing about using a font in your designs in Photoshop is that you can just increase or decrease the font size to make the rose any size you want!  This way you won't loose the sharpness or clarity of the rose no matter how big or small you make them.  And you can make them any colour you want too - There are so many possible ways to use them!  Just make sure you use the Type Tool in Photoshop to type your roses onto your canvas first.  Then copy & paste or create the rest of your image in layers ABOVE the roses, so that way the roses will appear to be in the background.  You can always go back into the rose layer to adjust the font size, if need be. 

I'd love to see if you use the rose embellishments in your designs on your blogs or websites - Leave a comment and let me know as I'd love to hear from you!   ▲

△ △ △
Photo: Rag & Bone Lillian Dress from Ssense