Tutorials

Hi Everyone…. it’s been a hectic week for me, and I noted the wrong date for my post this week! My apologies that I’m late! This is Jenn, jk703, chattering away, lol! We are going to take a look at some Tips: Dress Up That Font! By that, I mean to show you a few ways how you can change the font and add some texture, color or ideas which you can use on your layouts. There are oodles of things you can do, so these are just a few tips for you to try!

For my posts and images I’ve used the font called KG The Last Time, which is the chunky one, and KG Miss Kindergarten, which is the thin font noting information. The papers are from Chelle’s kit – At The Beach.

Note: Most of these Tips: Dress Up That Font! can be used with Alphas also. Make your stash go further!

Let’s start easy, and go from there.

Clip a Paper.

Just put a paper above your font in the Layers Pallette. Then right click and choose Create Clipping Mask… and Viola! For this example, I clipped a wood grained paper.

Cut It Out

For this one, Rasterize your font first. Then press the Command key, and click on the thumbnail in the Layers Palette for the words. You will get marching ants. Choose the paper in the Layers Palette that you want to cut the font out of, and then press Delete. Easy Peasy!

Add Some Glitter

Chelle has these cool glitter styles in the store…. CU Iridescent Glitter Styles. They are awesome, and can be added to a font just like adding a shadow or any other style. Cool, right?!

Epoxy Style

Chelle has another style that can be used with fonts.. CU Transparent Epoxy Styles {primary}. Another quick click and you’ve added some fun to that font!

Add a Bevel Style

Bevels can be fun, and you just have to play with the Structure and Shading options to find the look that you are going for. Adding a Contour can change the shape, and how bumpy the font may look. This option can be found by double clicking on the font layer, and clicking on the Bevel and Emboss options, with a sub category of Contour and Texture. There is so much that you can play with here!

Add a Stroke, “Stickerize”

This is a simple and fun idea to add some oomph to your fonts. Press D to have your foreground and background colors revert to the default. Just have your font selected in the Layers Palette, and then rasterize it. Then press the Command key, and click on the thumbnail in the Layers Palette for the words to get the marching ants. In the Menu Bar, choose Select > Modify > Expand, and choose a thickness for the white part of your “sticker.” Create a layer below the font, and the press Command and Delete. Your new layer should have a white filled in copy of the word… and the colored part on top, so it now looks like a sticker.

Add a Gradient Overlay

Another easy one… but with a must do step! First, rasterize your text. Then double click on the layer in the Layers Palette. Click on Gradient Overlay… and then you must try out and find a Blend Mode that looks right with your font/color. This step is important or your gradient will be the stock color that you chose first, most lily black and white.

Use the Gelli Tool Kit

Chelle has these amazing and versatile tooklits in the shop – CU Gelli Toolkit!  For this, I used one of the overlays and clipped it to the font. After clipping, I changed the Blend Mode of the overlay. This one looks speckled. The toolkit has so many different patterns and you can mix and match them. So many possibilities!

How about that for Dress Up? I love fonts, and this just gives me more reason to use them and add some fun to them for my layouts! Hope you’ve gotten some ideas for your favorite font! We’d love to see them in the ScrapPin gallery too! Here is what the CT made:

Karen, (zippoh), created this wonderful layout. She gave me directions as to how she dressed up her font in PSE 11! She said she added the title with the text tool, using WM[squared] font Wendy Fancy. She set the color of the text to brown to match the brown in the kit. After she typed the word, she right-clicked on the text layer in the layer palette and selected “simplify layer.” After that, she then went to Edit > stroke (outline) selection and my settings were as follows:

Width: 6px
Color: She picked a cream color
Location: outside
Blend Mode: normal
Opacity: 100%
Leave “preserve transparency” box unchecked.

Jennifer, jmljensen, created her layouts and has a super fun title, and dressed up her font! She used Batter Up, Chunk Five font, clipped a paper to it and applied a chipboard style. Then she added the baseball to replace to letter O.

Super easy, and fun ways to dress up your font! Hope you enjoyed the post! Have a great week and thanks for visiting.

Hello, hello! Hope you are all doing well this week! It is now October, and I’m in denial that summer has ended, fall has arrived, and this year is flying by! Things go SO fast! It’s Jenn, jk703, here today to bring you another fast tutorial and east technique! You will learn how to go from Stripes to Plaid in 60 Seconds or less! 😛

Ready, Set, oh wait… I’ve grabbed a striped paper from Chelle’s Toil and Trouble Kit. Such a versatile kit, even with the strong colors!

Open a striped paper in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.

Next, create a duplicate striped layer paper. Right click, choose Duplicate Layer. You can rename if you want, but that step doesn’t need to be done.

With the duplicate striped paper layer selected, choose Edit > Transform > Rotate 90* CW or CCW. This will turn the paper once to one of the sides, so the stripes will now go opposite the original paper.

Here is what my paper layers look like in the Layers Palette.

Now, again with the duplicate striped paper layer selected, try out all the different Blend Modes. Here is what you might see:

Now, that is like pressing the “That was easy” button. lol! Here is what the CT came up with… and their awesome pages! Christine (CarolinaScrapper) created this page using Toil and Trouble, and made the plaid paper. Looks like a lighter opacity of the Multiply Blend Mode.

Kimberly (enjoyyourpix) created a wonderful winter wonderland page! Look at those mountains! She used Chelle’s ledger paper to make her plaid paper, as well as the Northern Magic Bundle for her page!. She blended it to the solid purple paper in the kit and rotated it 45 degrees. Cool right? You can always use any grid or ledger paper to make plaids.

Super easy to go from Stripes to Plaid in 60 Seconds! What do you think?

Thanks for stopping by!

Have you every wanted to make something appear as if you cut out a section and the bottom layer was showing through? Drop shadows are great for adding realism to your page but for the cut out look, a drop shadow just wouldn’t work. Chelle of Chelle’s Creations has a video tutorial that demonstrates how to use internal shadows to achieve the cut out look without having to cut anything out.

Now let’s take a look at how Chelle’s creative team used this technique on their own pages.

Christine (Carolina Scrapper) added the internal shadows to both of the monster’s mouth as well as her title. Isn’t her page just too cute? She used Street Smarts {reloaded} and Make-a-Monster to create her page.

I love how Helen (winipeg1) combined Mickey Mouse Club March {Sampler} and Movie Night along with the Make-a-Monster pieces to create her page. The color combination of these kits are perfect for her Elmo loving little one.

Here is a page that I (Sagediva2) created. I used the Street Smarts {bundle} with a template by Fiddle-Dee-Dee Designs.

Chelle’s video tutorial uses the Make-a-Monster pieces. Head over to her store to check it out and see what other fabulous goodies she has.

Aren’t those monsters just so cute? Be sure to try this technique with them the next time you use them.

Hi Everyone! This is Jenn, jk703, here to make a favorite technique super duper easy for you to add to your layouts. I’ve seen watercoloring around and there are so many steps and it takes me too long. When that happens, I don’t want to add that technique to my pages, it ends up being too much work! So… I’ve found another way to watercolor – The Way Too Easy Watercolor Painting Tutorial! 😛

My layout uses the kit that Chelle created for The Daily Digi: Roller Coasters & Cotton Candy.  For the brushes, I’ve used Chelle’s CU Watercolor Brushes.  These brushes are perfect for also adding a painted spot on busy patterns for journaling.
First things first. Open a paper that you plan to watercolor your image onto. Then on top of that paper place a copy of a photo.

Here is what my layers look like:

With the photo selected, click on Layer > Layer Mask > Hide All.

A mask will appear next to your photo in the Layers Palette. Change the Blend mode to Multiply – or whatever works well with your photo to allow a little texture of the paper to come through, and help it blend a little with the paper.

Next, choose the brush tool from the Tools. I’ve got Chelle’s watercolor brushes loaded and I’m ready to paint. If you need to load a brush, you can click on the little circle with the arrow pointing right and choose Load Brushes. Otherwise, you can use any type of brushes that you have or that come with Photoshop.

You will want to use a few different brushes, and different sizes. All of the brushes that I used were a 0% hardness. When painting on the mask, paint with white, and I change the opacity of the brushwork as you paint. If it is too light, you can re-do, but we can also try to fix it in the end. Keep reading!

After I’ve played around and brushed my mask, this is what my page looks like so far. Not bad with a few brushstrokes!

Next, if your painted image is too light, just duplicate with image/mask layer. Then you can lower the opacity based on the look of your image.

Here is my darkened, double photo/mask.

That’s it. Really, only a handful of steps for a great watercolored look!

Here’s my final layout:

Here is what the CT came up with… some fantastic pages! Jenn (jennschultz) created a lovely waterside page. She used Anchor’s Away and Chelle’s Watercolor Brushes.

Melissa (pretty peaches) created this cool page of her son. She used CU Watercolor Brushes and Hard Hat.

Krista also made a super beautiful fall page for this tutorial! She used Falling 4 You.

Hoping you guys find this tutorial as easy as I did! We would love to see your pages i the ScrapPin Gallery! Thanks for stopping by!!

Hi Everyone! This is Jenn, jk703. I’ll be honest. I started this post way differently.  I had planned on showing you the tutorial and I was going to create layouts using photos from our recent day trip to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum. The photos that I was allowed to take were beautiful, sad, touching and at the same time, hard to take. While it has been 13 years, it is still a tough subject for me, so I opted to scrap about a fun family adventure. September 11 will be a day to remind me to live each day as it a gift.

Black and white photography can make photos more dramatic, enhance details, lend to a certain emotion, as well as remove the distraction that color can sometimes bring to a photo. Here we go: Easy Black and White Photo Tutorial!

My layouts use Chelle’s Toil & Trouble, and Zoo Crew {Arctic}. Template is Scrapping with Liz’s Daily Life Templates 9. Font is KG What The Teacher Wants.

Here is my beginning image. We are on a submarine, yes, a submarine, lol! We were on an excursion from our cruise, and it was nothing like we had ever done before, and not like any Caribbean beach outing that we had been on, lol! Colors were a little off, and they really weren’t matching well with my other photos.

With your photo selected, click to add an Adjustment Layer, and choose Black & White.

You will see a new layer populate above your photo with a mask (the white box).  Below that, is the first shot of the photo changed to black and white. Pretty easy?! Let’s go a little further.

The Adjustment Palette may also open on your screen. If not, you can find it under Window > Adjustments. It will show the sliders for all colors, and have a drop down of different features.

If you click on “Default” there are a number of different options. Play with them, and see what looks best with your photo. Once you have one chosen, then play with the sliders to change the grayscale coloring.

Here is what I ended up with. I chose the “Lighter” option, and changed the sliders on every color. I went by the photos look to determine what was best. The photo with these options is below.

My husbands face isn’t so dark, and the boys are a little paler. I also lightened up the photo a little to get more detail of everyone. The background people are blurry enough that it doesn’t bother me too much! 😛

Once I have a black and white photos, I want to crisp it up a little. Here is where the Unsharp Mask works great! Go to Filters > Sharpen > Unsharpen Mask.

Play with the pop up. Mine is set to 100%, 3.5 Radius, and Threshold is set to 6. It just adds a little sharpness, and crispness to the photo.

Here is my layout…. I put the black and white photo on the second page toward the bottom.

Jan (QuiltyMom) also created a layout using black and white photos. It was funny that we used the same kit! She used Zoo Crew {Arctic}, Zoo Crew {Arctic} Alphas and Gimme Layers Vol 69 by Cluster Queen Creations.

There it is a super easy black and white tutorial! Hope this helped you learn a new easy way! Thanks for visiting and stopping by Chelle’s blog!