First using the pen tool draw a curved closed shape like the one below.

Select the brush and drag it to the brushes panel.

When you have dragged the shape into the brush panel a window will show with 3 options. Each option is described below.

Scatter Brush: This is a brush that will scatter your shape around. Say for example you had some pretty flowers, making them a scatter brush, you could scatter them everywhere on your image. You can mess around with the settings below including size, spacing, scatter and rotation. I always choose hue shift for colourisation options because that way you can change the brushes colour by just selecting it.

When you use the brush tool this is what shows.

Art Brush- an art brush is simply a brush that doesnt scatter or change shape, but goes along the curve of your line. In other words, when you draw a squiggly line, the brush shape (below) will follow the curve,

This is an swirly line with the artbrush applied to it.

Pattern Brush - a pattern brush is just the shape you made repeating itself in a pattern. With the shape I drew as an example it will just keep repeating that shape

This is the pattern brush used in a swirly line. It also makes great flower shapes by drawing circles.

Now we can go to the next tutorial on making fancy brushes.