BRUSH VARIANCES psp 8 and 9
The Brush variance pallete can be made visible by clicking on the brush variance pallete under palletes in the view menu there is a good introductory tutorial description of the various brush variance settings by JB Kabala at http://home.earthlink.net/~jkabala/brushvariance.html to help you get started.
The brush Variance settings are one of the most wonderful features of PSP8 and PSP 9 you can create amazing custom brushes and preset effects. You can have control over color blends and paint effect. You can use the hue variance to paint rainbow colored strokes the rotation variance alters the form of the brush imprint, position jitter more variance.
This is such an exciting part of the program and it seems to me that most people have not looked at it yet. The sample attached was done with the abolone pattern used as the background color with a color blend variance setting of about 160 and pink or blue as the foreground color
I have some PSP 8 brushes and presets you can download at http://pjentoft.com/PJs-psp8stuff.html which make use of the variances you can then look at the brush variance pallette and play with the settings to see what they do the second attachment shows the basic brush and a wheel preset and a fade out effect as well as hue variance all done with the brush variances
Here is the abolone shell tile
and the abalone tile as the background 
these
are all made with the same brush using different brush variances
