Changing Direction: Expanding Your Stash
[Link to PDF version will go here when Ginger has time to convert.]
Have you ever been cruising along, scrapping a favourite memory and wanting to use a word strip, journal blank or tag like the one shown below, but it’s pointing the wrong direction? As in, if you use it as is, you’ll have to cover up something else, the staple or other attachment will mess with your cluster or you just can’t make it fit? With the arrow tag below, you could tuck the pointy end under something else and turn it into just a word strip. But what if you could have your cake and eat it too? Let me show you what I mean.
Let’s suppose you’re creating a white space layout for the Digital Scrapbooking Day challenge hosted this year by Buzzbee Scraps. You really want to include a word strip as one of your seven elements, but the one that you like best is pointing the wrong way to work with your photo. You could just go to all the trouble of creating your own, but what if you don’t have to reinvent the wheel?
So in our hypothetical scenario, the text on the tag is perfect for your purposes. So first thing to do is make a Duplicate of the tag. You can do that in one of three ways. The one way I typically ignore is to click Layer>Duplicate Layer, which opens a dialog box asking where you want to put your Duplicate Layer. Similarly, right-clicking on the layer then choosing Duplicate Layer from the dropdown menu follows the same path. If you’d rather just be quick the keyboard shortcut is CTRL/CMD>J. That automatically adds the Copy Layer into your Layers Panel directly above the original layer. Whichever way you choose, once you have that Copy Layer in place, close the eye on it to make it invisible for now.
Make sure the original layer is active. Then use the Rectangle Marquee tool to draw a box around the text. [This is called making a Selection.] You’ll see the marching ants as you drag your cursor over the text.
Now click Edit>Fill Selection. Some would say this step and the next are unnecessary, but I like to be positive of my results. If you’re into trial-and-error, you can jump down over them.
In the dialog box, make sure Content-Aware is selected, the Blend Mode is Normal and the Opacity is 100%.
You can still see the bounding box of the Selection, which will disappear by clicking CTRL/CMD>D. [editor’s note: What if you want to change the text? Now that you’ve done these steps, you can! Just use the Text Tool to type out your new words.]
If you skipped the previous two steps, come on back in. To change direction of the arrow click Image>Rotate>Flip Layer Horizontal.
Time to go back to the Copy Layer. Open the eye to return it to view and again, using the Rectangle Marquee Tool, draw a Selection box around the text.
Click Edit>Copy or CTRL/CMD>C to Copy the Selected text. Elements will put this Cut bit on its own layer.
Drop back to the original layer and click Edit>Paste or CTRL/CMD>V to Paste the text onto the flipped tag.
Um. Yeah. Elements just drops things wherever it wants. But that’s an easy fix. I’ll use the right arrow key on my keyboard to nudge it into place.
There! It Looks like it belongs.
All that’s left is to Merge the two layers: the original (now flipped) layer and the text layer. Activate the two layers then right-click>Merge Layers, OR CTRL/CMD>E. And you’ve got a brand-new word strip. Just delete the Copy Layer and you’re good to go.
I’m probably upgrading my laptop in the next little while, which means I’ll have to adapt to Windows 11. 🙁 But this one is slowing down, and the skin on many of the most used keys has peeled off. (I know, right?) Hubby wants a new CPU, sound card and graphics card for his desktop computer so a new laptop is my quid pro quo… I’ll have to be in the right headspace to transfer all my software and folders, so it might not be all that soon. 😉
