Pin Tutorial

Today's tutorial is on how to create the illusion that a pin is going through paper or fabric. This tutorial features a ribbon and safety pin but the same technique can be used with any kind of pin and any fabric or paper type element.

Open your pin and ribbon. Drag your pin onto the same canvas as your bow and position it as desired.



If it is not already, set the the pin layer as your active layer by clicking on it once in the layers palette. Select your eraser tool and use a round brush to erase the portions of the pin that you want to be going 'through' the fabric.



Set your foreground color to black. Select your brush tool and choose a soft round brush of a diameter slightler larger than the diameter of your pin. I will be using a 9px soft round brush.



Create a new empty layer (Shift+Ctrl+N). In the layers palette, click and drag your new layer below the pin layer. Your layer order from top to bottom should be pin, empty layer, fabric layer. Set the empty layer as your active layer by clicking on it once in the layers palette.

On your canvas click once with your brush at each point where the pin 'goes through' the fabric to create subtle holes at the insertion points. Depending upon the lightness of your fabric you may want to lower the opacity of the holes layer. The opacity slider is located near the top of the layers palette.



Next select your burn tool from the layers palette. The burn tool is housed with the sponge and dodge tools and looks like hand in a loose fist position.



Select a soft brush tip of 10-25 px depending upon the size of your pin. I will be using a15 px soft round brush. In the options bar at the top of the work space set the Range to "Highlights" if your fabric is very light, "Shadows" if it is very dark and "Midtones" for anything in between. Set the Exposure to 10% (this is an approximation, feel free to adjust based on color of fabric and preference).



Set your fabric layer as the active layer by clicking on it once in the layers palette. Click and drag on your canvas to burn the fabric just below the erased portion of pin.



Select the dodge tool from the tools palette. The dodge tool is housed with the burn and sponge tools and looks like a puff ball on a stick.



Select a brush tip similar to the one you chose for the burn tool. In the options bar at the top of the work space set the Range to "Highlights" if your fabric is very light, "Shadows" if it is very dark and "Midtones" for anything in between. Set the Exposure to 10% (this is an approximation, feel free to adjust based on color of fabric and preference).



Click and drag on your canvas to draw a highlight on the fabric just above the erased portion of pin.



If desired, you can continue to add and refine shadows and highlights using the dodge and burn tools. Once you are done hold down the control key and click once on each of the pin, hole and fabric layers in the layers palette. Right click on any of the three layers in the layers palette and select 'merge down' to combine them all into one object and you are done.