Have you ever found that anything self-taught tends to stick in your head a lot better than someone else teaching you? If you spend the time figuring it out for yourself, you're likely to remember it a lot better, after all it most probably took you about 3685 failed attempts before you got it right.

Now, I've been desperately trying to find way of utilising my iPad as a poor man's graphics tablet for the past year, and whilst it's not ideal because of it's limited usage, it's definitely a good substitute until I can decide whether I can justify buying a graphics tablet.

I've successfully handwritten in the notes section of my iPad and transferred it into Photoshop, turned the text into a layer and edited the contrast/saturation to make it stand out. Okay, so it doesn't look marvellous, but the above one is my first attempt. 

All examples in this post were my first attempts, hence the random photos.

I saw an image similar to the above on Pinterest a few weeks ago and immediately I wanted to create my own version for my zine if I could make it fit. After much struggle with making anything aesthetically pleasing on Photoshop, I tried my hand at writing a quote around an image to see what it would look like. Reaction; I'm pretty impressed.

Although I most probably won't use this image, I like the look and effect of it so I'm definitely planning to produce something similar.

Going back to the above technique, I played around with the handwritten text effect again, just upping the saturation to really bring out the colour. You'll see how different it looks compared to the one below.

I'm really pleased with how this particular one turned out, as well as using the techniques already highlighted, I added a drop shadow and doesn't it look pretty neat? It stands out and gives it depth, makes it less two-dimensional and dull.

It's not yet been decided whether I'll be featuring this anywhere in my zine but at least I taught myself a new nifty little trick for the time being.

Finally I learnt how effectively use the brush effect in Photoshop, and I've reaaaaally gone to town on that one. Some may call it overkill, I call it interesting and lively. It's the perfect way to spruce up a plain white background.