Hi all, Silke here.

Let’s create a vase filled with flowers.
I will teach you how to add a long-stemmed flower to a vase, giving the impression that the flower is placed inside the vase. Like in my example here below.

Everything from Flower Fields collection.

We will:

  • create a selection with Polygonal Lasso Tool
  • create a Layer Mask from this Selection
  • edit details of the Layer Mask
  • add Shadow to the Flower

First open a new document in Photoshop with any background of your preference.
Then use a vase from your stash. For this technique you have to see the upper edge of the vase completely so that you can “put” the flower stalk into it.
Open a long-stemmed flower. Put this flower in a layer above the vase and set it in front of the vase. Position it like you would add a flower to a vase in real life!

Selection with Polygonal Lasso Tool

Click on the flower layer and use the Polygonal Lasso tool to select the part of the flower that you want to appear above the vase. Leave a little from the stem, because we will erase this detail later!

Set the Layer Mask from this Selection

Click on the layer panel bottom > Add Layer Mask. Now part of your flower is hidden by the layer mask.

Editing the Layer Mask

Choose the Brush tool – hard round, sized to more or less 200 – and paint on the layer mask thumbnail to erase the details of the flower stem until it looks like it is coming out from the vase inside.
Important: if you want to put details back, choose the white foreground color and paint it back. That’s the great advantage of using layer mask. We call this “working in a non-destructive way”.

See my flower stem in the vase here:

Add Shadow to the flower stem

Double click on the flower layer to open the Layer Style panel. Choose Drop Shadow.
I like to add a very slight shadow to the flowers in the vase! See it here:

Continue adding more flowers using the same steps above. Here is my layout that I created with Flower Fields.

And my dear Creative Girl Elly created a free flower filled vase using flowers from my newest Bougainvillea kit and vases from the extra pack painted Flower Vases!

Freebie created by Elly using PapierStudio’s Bougainvillea:

Click to Download!

Happy creations!

Silke