Tips & Tricks ~ Word strips

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Hello, fellow scrapbooking friends!  Lego here, with a blog post for the DIY fans.  You might have noticed that I’m rather keen on adjusting material according to my layout needs.  And today I’m gonna share another one of my all-time faves with you: paper strips.

Of course, we are lucky to be able to lay our hands on the ones already made.  Let’s be honest, these are unbeatable for they are an artist’s job: SP at her best!

But you might want something personalized from time to time.  You can then create your own individual word strips.  They are oh-so versatile.  Especially if you just want to add a few keywords in place of extensive journaling or you need cool captions for your photos.

Today I’m going to show you two possibilities: the BASIC ones and the FANCY ones aka PIMPED BASIC ONES.

Here is my version of making basic word strips.

1. Mark, copy and insert a rectangle (“cmd+j” or “ctrl + j”) from any paper layer you have on your layout, approximately the size you want your word strip to be like.  No need for accuracy here.

2. Activate it, by holding “cmd” and clicking the icon in the layer panel.  Then press “cmd” + “u” and make it white.

3. Then put a text layer on top and start typing.  Adjust font and font size according to your liking.

4. If your strip is too short or too long, too narrow or too wide: no problem!  Just pull the strip layer into the shape you want it (“cmd” + “t” is the shortest way for me ;-).  Leave the text layer as it is.

5. Add a shadow.  You are almost finished!

6. Now save it as a PSD-file.  You’ve just created your strip template that is to be used again and again!  Open it whenever you want to add one or more strips to your layout.

 SECOND

The fancy ones (= altering the basic strip files):

•  Colour it if you don’t want a white strip: in your layer styles, choose “colour overlay” and the colour you want it to be.

•  Take a paper instead of the colour overlay: open a paper file and place this layer between the strip and the text layers.  Next move your little arrow exactly between these two layers, press the “alt”-key and click.  You’ve just married them off – how sweet is that =) – and you got yourself a nice little papered word strip.

• Frame it!  Want a white frame around your strip?  That’s easy!  Look:

1. First duplicate your white strip layer:

2. Change the colour of the upper layer.  (e.g. colour overlay or paper overlay)

3. Make the lower layer a little bit bigger.  (use transformation tool or “cmd”+ “t”)

4. Add a shadow to the lower strip layer.

5.  And you’re done!

 And to finish it off, a few more tips:

• Combine all layers involved, or group them.  Then drag them on the layout you are working on.  (By combining the layers you can move them around, resize them etc. and the proportions will not go woozy.)  You may also merge them on one layer, but then you cannot change anything any longer!  So for that, you gotta be sure, sure, sure ;-)

• You can duplicate/triplicate… your strip layer groups/combinations, adding more strips to your page.  And of course they can then easily being altered: change font, change colour, change text, change shadow, change background…  as you wish!

 When you have done this a couple of times, you might just get your rectangle from the layout you’re presently working on.  No need to open an extra file.  But then again, if you want to do more than one, the strip template does come in handy.

• And you can combine your strips with SP’s gorgeous word art, of course!

I’ve just completed my december daily book where I used them on every single page ;-))  You might have noticed … I’ve uploaded quite a few lately.  Here is the last one: the cover of the book.

The next layout makes use of the word strips with a brainstorming kind of journalling.  I just typed all the words that came to my mind when thinking of this fun weekend with friends and used the photo colours for the strip colours and text colors.  The little ones had hummus for the first time in their lives and just loved it!

I hope you liked this little post of mine.  It is my last one.  I really enjoyed working on SP’s blog.  It has been a thoroughly pleasant and wonderful experience being in this with these super-special teammates.  Now I can’t wait to see what the others will come up with!  Don’t forget to come round here again tomorrow for Shabby Princess herself will be back with the Project Scrap December edition.  Don’t miss it!

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