Using Transparent Overlays

Using Transparent Overlays to Make Your Own Digital Papers

Have you ever opened a folder of transparent overlays, looked at all that black ink and busy texture, and thought, “Now what am I supposed to do with these?” You’re not alone — I had the very same thought while I was making the preview for my Mixed Media Transparent Overlays. They really can look intimidating at first glance. So I sat down and made 14 background papers in just a few minutes to show you how I use them.

How Do You Use Transparent Overlays in Digital Scrapbooking?

Transparent overlays work best when you layer them over a background paper and then fill them with color or pattern — not when you use them straight out of the folder. My favorite trick is to apply one of my own papers to the overlay as a pattern overlay. The overlay supplies the texture and shape, your paper supplies the color, and the result is a brand-new background that coordinates with the rest of your kit.

The video below walks through a handful of my examples. It’s an overview of the technique rather than a click-by-click tutorial, so you can watch, pick up ideas, and then play.

• Technique Level: Intermediate
• Application Used: Photoshop CC, but it will also work in older versions and in Photoshop Elements

What You’ll See in the Video

If you want to jump straight to a specific example, here’s where to find it:

• 0:00 — Why overlays can look intimidating (and the 14 backgrounds I made)
• 0:36 — My “paper making” folder and how I use it
• 1:20 — A tip for designers who want to extend a kit’s paper set
• 1:45 — Colorizing a Vintage Ephemera overlay to match a background
• 2:12 — Moving a pattern around, plus a caution about scaling
• 2:45 — Two overlays on a watercolor paper
• 3:17 — Masking away parts of an overlay
• 3:42 — Swapping in a different paper to change the whole look
• 4:04 — The background that looks floral but really isn’t
• 4:44 — Toning down a bold, inky overlay
• 5:11 — Rotating and transforming for even more variety
• 5:28 — How I intend these overlays to be used

What Are Transparent Overlays, Anyway?

If you’re newer to digital scrapbooking, a transparent overlay is a PNG file where only the design itself has pixels — the ink, paint, text, or texture — and everything else is see-through. That’s what lets you lay it on top of a paper without hiding what’s underneath.

Most overlays arrive in black, gray, or white so they’re easy to recolor. That’s also why they can look so stark in a product preview. On their own they’re a little like a coloring book page — the real magic happens when you add color and pattern to them.

Transparent overlays aren’t the same as texture overlays, which are full-page JPGs that work through blend modes instead of transparency. If you’d like to explore those too, here are 5 easy ways to use texture overlays in digital scrapbooking.

My Favorite Trick: Save the Papers You Love

Here’s the secret behind how quickly I made those backgrounds. I keep a “paper making” folder that holds two kinds of files:

• Scans of my mixed media backgrounds — every painted, stamped, or printed background I make gets scanned and saved.
• Copies of papers from my own kits that I fell in love with while I was designing them.

You know how it goes — you make a paper that turns out beautiful, and it feels like a shame to use it only once. Saving those papers means I can turn them into Photoshop patterns and use them again and again. When I apply one of those patterns to a transparent overlay, the overlay takes on all the color and texture of that paper.

This is “use what you have” in action. The papers you already love become the raw material for something completely new.

Choosing Papers That Work Well as Patterns

Not every paper makes a great pattern, so here’s what to look for:

• Color variation. Papers with several colors or soft color shifts give the overlay more depth than a flat solid ever could.
• Texture. Painted, inky, or watercolor papers carry their texture right into the overlay.
• Full size. A full 12 x 12 paper at 300 ppi is large enough to cover your whole page, so the pattern never has to repeat.

A Tip for Designers

If you design your own kits, this is also a great way to stretch a paper set. Take a few of your busier papers, turn them into patterns, and apply them to overlays on a calmer background. You’ll end up with lighter, less busy papers that still coordinate perfectly with everything else in the kit.

Ways to Get More Variety from Every Overlay

Once you’ve applied a pattern, keep playing! These are the things I did to get so many different looks from just a few overlays:

• Stack more than one overlay. Most of my examples use just two overlays on a watercolor paper — try rearranging the layer order to see what changes.
• Colorize instead of patterning. On one background, I simply colorized the text in a Vintage Ephemera overlay so it matched the colors in my mixed media background.
• Move the pattern around. If one area of your paper’s colors appeals to you more than the rest, drag the pattern until that area shows through. It can completely change the effect.
• Mask away what’s too much. If part of an overlay feels too heavy for the paper you’re working with, mask it away so only the parts you like remain.
• Rotate and transform. One of my backgrounds looks floral, but it actually started as a single edge overlay that I turned on its side and paired with a watercolor overlay.
• Swap the pattern. Applying a different paper to the same overlay gives you an entirely new result — I switched one to a watercolor background and loved how different it looked.

A Word of Caution About Scaling

You can scale a pattern, but unless the original paper was made to repeat seamlessly, you’ll likely see odd lines where the pattern tiles. That’s exactly why full-size papers work so well — they don’t need to tile at all. I’ve scaled a pattern once or twice when it happened to work, but in general I don’t recommend it.

Taming the Boldest Overlays

This technique really shines with overlays that feel a bit “in your face.” My Art Paper Overlays are very inky and black, but when I applied one of my mixed media backgrounds as a pattern, it toned the whole thing down into something soft and usable. Then I rotated that same overlay a couple of times and ended up with two more completely different backgrounds.

That’s really the whole point. When you mix and match your overlays and fill them with your own papers, you’ll have far more variety in your backgrounds than any single kit could give you.

Why This Is Worth Trying

It’s easy to buy a set of overlays, feel unsure what to do with them, and let them sit untouched in your stash. This technique gives them a job. Every overlay you own can become dozens of backgrounds, and every paper you’ve ever loved gets a second life. Best of all, you don’t need to be an expert to try it — start with one overlay and one favorite paper, and see where it takes you.

Products Used in This Vide

You can find all of my transparent overlays, texture overlays and background papers (that work well as patterns) in my shop. All are licensed for personal use and many include a Digital Scrapbooking Designer Commercial Use license as well.

Share What You Make

If you try this technique, I’d love to see what you come up with! Post it in my Designer Gallery at Oscraps, and leave a comment below if you have any questions — I’d love to hear from you.

Where to Go from Here

Feeling stuck before you even open your software? Begin Anywhere is my free 7-day email series of gentle prompts to help you get your creative mojo back — one small step at a time.

Want to know more about the philosophy behind it all? Visit Start Where You Are to see how I think about creativity, permission, and using what you already have.