Going Creative with the Stitch Technique

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Today I’m going to build on the stitch tutorial from a few weeks ago. I have three more ways to add stitching to your layouts that go beyond vanilla. I’ve played around quite a bit to be sure the instructions are accurate, and you’ll be surprised how easy these new options are. Let’s start out by making sure we have room to work. I opened up a new 12×12 workspace and dropped a paper on it so the stitches – I’ll use white – will be easy to see.

Again we’ll use the Text Tool because it has so many options. I’m using Elements 2021; if your version is much older you may not have all of these Tool Options. The option we’re starting with is Text on Shape and we’ll be using the Ellipse to create a circle. My screenshot font is Lumberjack Regular and I’ve used it for two of my samples today. If you have a font with a dash symbol that has a rounded look to it, it’ll work beautifully. Set the font size to at least 40 points.

Drag out a circle on your paper. You can make it as big as you want. It can always be resized later to fit your layout. This outline will tell Elements where to put the dashes and how to position them.

Move your mouse until you see the Text Tool cursor. It’ll become visible when you intersect with the edge of the circle and it looks like a swoosh with an I-beam crossing it. Click to set it in play then using the dash and the space bar, type out a long string of stitches. They will move and bend to the shape you’ve created; the dash sits above the baseline, but that won’t really matter.

Here you can see what I mean. You can stop when you’ve only gone part way around if you like, or keep going to enclose the circle.

Your spaces may or may not uniformly proceed around your circle when you reach the finish line. If this is a concern for you there are a couple of options – start over, adjusting the size of the circle or the font until it’s perfect, or you can accept it and just cover it with a flower or a brad on your layout. If you resize the stitched circle to a smaller version, it’ll be less noticeable.

Now to give the stitches some dimension. By using a Bevel Style, you won’t have to add a shadow later! Click the Styles button at the bottom right of the Layers Panel, choose Bevels from the dropdown menu and then choose Simple Emboss.

These are the default settings for Simple Emboss. You may find them to be too strong. Styles can be adjusted by double-clicking on the fx icon on the layer.

You can see how just shifting the Size slider to the left makes each stitch a bit flatter.

You could stop at this step and have some very nice stitches. But if you’re interested in a bit more realism, that’s pretty easy. First Simplify the text layer by right-clicking on the layer then choosing Simplify Layer.

To make the stitches look a bit more like they’re made of thread and not paint, we can apply a Filter. It needs to go on its own layer though, so click on the sheet-of-paper icon at the top left of the Layers Panel. Then click Filter>Render>Fibers…

Make sure your foreground colour on the Color Picker is set to a light gray – the filter will be whatever colour you have in the foreground, and red isn’t pleasing! The Filter Options look like this. For the most thready look possible, push those sliders all the way to the right and click Randomize.

This is what is supposed to happen! Don’t worry. It’ll be fine!! Right-click on that Filter Layer and choose Create Clipping Mask from the menu.

Then all that’s left is to adjust the Opacity so that you have the thread effect but not so strongly that it’s distracting.

To be sure the stitches and the thready filter stay together, click>SHIFT>click on the layers then right-click and choose Merge Layers. Or use the keyboard shortcut CTRL/CMD>E.

If you look closely now that I’ve shrunk my circle, you might be able to see the slightly bigger gap between my first and last stitches. Maybe.

Okay, now let’s try something a bit more out there. This time, I chose Text on Path from the Text Tool Options. See the Draw icon? It turns the cursor into a pen, a fountain pen… and you’re only limited by your wrist’s flexibility and the size of your mousepad!

I clicked on my paper to tell the cursor to get to work, then drew a simple swirl. It looks pretty smooth, so I don’t need to Modify it. But if I did, the Modify icon will give me the necessary tools.

To get the stitches to conform to the swirl and extend from one end of the line to the other, I discovered I needed to click my cursor as close to the center of the line as possible.

This time I went ahead and Simplified before adding the Bevel.

You may not have ever explored the More button down there at the bottom of the Layers Panel. I just happen to know there’s a Simple Emboss under the Favorites tab.

This time I changed the Lighting Angle as well as the Size. Always make sure your Lighting Angle matches your shadows; there might be a visible incongruence that will bother you otherwise.

On to the thready Filter… but only if you want to!

This time I left the Filter a little darker.

The last sample looks like it’s the most complicated, but it’s not. Let’s use the Custom Shape Tool and drag out a nice 5 pointed star. Don’t forget to Simplify, because you won’t be able to manipulate it otherwise.

Next, I chose Text on Selection. I made sure it was set to Add – meaning wherever the cursor was dragged would be part of the Selection. It doesn’t have to be precise, just click inside the shape and drag the cursor to the edges. The marching ants will snap to the edges automatically.

Once you’ve got the edges Selected, Commit the Action.

Choose a logical starting point, like the inner angle of one of the points. Click to activate the Type Tool and start typing. I switched the font to Impact Regular and used the period instead of the dash. As I typed, the stitches moved along both sides of the star until they met at the top.

Don’t forget to Simplify the text layer!

I tried all the Bevel Styles to see which one worked best with the period-style stitches. It turned out to be Simple Scallop.

If you squint, these look almost like cross stitch!

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I hope you’ll give one or more of these a try. If there’s something you’d like me to build a tutorial for, you can leave me a comment here on the Blog, or send me a Private Message through the Forum – user name is ObiJanKenobi. Next Tuesday I’ll be doing a Challenge Spotlight. Stay tuned!

Creased Paper Cut-Out Word Art

PDF Version: https://bit.ly/3bowWBc

I had a request in my PMs from glee, who thought I could magick up an Elements version of the Photoshop technique shown on this fabulous layout by physioscrapper. (Hey Nancy!!) So with some trepidation, I embarked on turning a 7 1/2 minute YouTube video into a 46-screenshot tutorial. [I know, only I could do that!] There are quite a few steps, but many of them are repeated a few times so it’s really not that horrible. And, as with some other things that I’ve made up as I was going along, I took a couple of missteps that resulted in more work for myself that I only figured out AFTER I’d gotten there. So I’ll let you know when we get to those!

This is where I began. I used a big, bold sans serif font and only upper case letters. Font selection is super-important for this – it just wouldn’t work as well with an embellished font. You can use more than one word if you like. The inspiration layout only has a single word so I emulated that.

Next I made a Copy layer of the word. As you might recall, I like to use keyboard shortcuts, but there’s a learning curve with that. I’ll always show you an alternate method of doing something then give you the keyboard shortcut for that action where one exists. CTRL is a Windows key, CMD is for Mac. To create a Copy layer, right-click on the layer then choose Duplicate Layer… and OK. Shortcut: CTRL/CMD>J.

In order to take the next number of steps, this Copy layer must be Simplified. Right-click and choose Simplify.

To make keeping the two word layers straight in my mind, I changed the colour of the Copy layer to coral. Using the Paint Bucket would work, but I’d have to pour paint into each letter and the edges might not be sharp with that method. So instead I clicked Layer>New Fill Layer>Solid Color.

To put the Fill Layer right over the letters, tick that Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask box.

If you’ve never used the Color Picker you may not know how to choose a colour you like. Start by clicking on the colour family you like over there in the rainbow strip. Then fine-tune your choice by clicking inside the big swatch. The Preview box between the swatch and the OK button will show you how the spot you’ve selected in the swatch compares to the previously selected colour.

To keep things manageable, click>SHIFT>click on the Fill layer and the text layer then right-click, choosing Merge Layers. Shortcut: CTRL/CMD>E.

Now, go back and activate the original text layer, the one we didn’t Simplify. It’ll be the cut-out part of the word art. There are some techniques in Photoshop that don’t have an Elements equivalent. This is one of those. We want a shadow under the cut-out, but using an Inner Shadow layer Style only applies it to two edges, while in Photoshop, it’s possible to have all four edges shadowed and adjustable. So here’s a work-around. It’s not quite perfect, but it’s good in a pinch! Click the Styles button at the bottom of the Layers Panel then choose Glass Buttons. From the Glass Buttons menu, choose Translucent Glass as shown.

It looks like garbage, but don’t worry! We’ll fix it!!

Double-click on that fx icon on the text layer to access the Styles adjustment menu. These are the default settings for the Style we chose.

Untick the Bevel setting. Then play with the Inner Glow sliders to find a look that you like. These are my choices: Lighting Angle 90° Size 20 Pixels Opacity 60%. It’s possible to change the colour of the Inner Glow here too, but for now we’ll leave it until we see how it all looks later.

Now go back and activate the coloured version of the word. To create the fold, we’ll need to divide the word into two halves. Using the Rectangle Marquee tool, drag out a box around the top half of the letters. Having a capital R there helped. But if your word doesn’t have an obvious halfway part to it, you can turn on the Grid and use it to line things up. View>Grid or CTRL/CMD>’ will turn it on and off.

Edit>Cut or CTRL/CMD>X will Cut the top half off and make it disappear. It’s not really gone, just hiding.

To bring it back into view, Edit>Paste or CTRL/CMD>V. Now you’ll have two separate layers, each with half the word on it.

You may need to use the arrow keys to nudge the two halves back into alignment.

Moving to the layer that has the bottom half of the word on it, activate the Move tool then push the bottom edge upward toward the centre of the word, just a bit.

Still on the bottom, click Image>Transform>Perspective.

Grab that centre “handle” and move it horizontally to the right. A dialogue box will appear telling you how much you’ve shifted it in degrees. Aim for about 11°.

Move back to the top half of the word and activate the Move tool again, only this time stretch it upward about the same amount you shrunk the bottom. You can toggle the layers’ visibility on and off if it helps you keep track of where you are.

Repeat the Image>Transform>Perspective step.

Moving to the right the same amount as for the bottom, about 11° will keep it symmetrical.

Here we go… it looks like the letters are creased away from the background. There are still some things we need to do to get a realistic look though.

A drop shadow Style isn’t gonna cut it for this so we’ll create a custom shadow. First, select the layers for both halves of the word by click>SHIFT>clicking on them, then right-click and choose Duplicate Layers>OK or CTRL/CMD>J.

This is an optional step: Rename the layers to help remember what they’re doing for you. Double-click on the name Elements gives the layer and change it. Here I’ve labeled the new copies as Top SHADOW and Bottom SHADOW.

Now we’ll add Layer>New Fill Layer>Solid Color to each of those shadow layers. Make sure you tick the Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask box. For simplicity’s sake we’ll use black for the shadows.

I sometimes just type in a value in the Color Picker‘s # box. Pure black is 000000. White is ffffff… easy enough to remember. Some designers like to use an umber colour, like 2c1902.

With both halves of the shadow layers filled with black, we’re on the way to a nice custom shadow!

Move the two shadow layers so they’re underneath the folded letters. Click>SHIFT>click on the two layers and drag them down the Layers Panel, or use CTRL/CMD>[ to get them into their proper spots.

Yep, you guessed it… we’re going to pull them off kilter too, one at a time. In the screenshot I’m working with the top half of the shadow. Image>Transform>Perspective.

Don’t go too far! 4 to 4.5° is plenty. You just want it to peek out from under the letter above it.

When you’ve got both top and bottom shadows peeking out a little, it should look like this.

Next, Merge the two shadow layers together. Click>SHIFT>click, right-click>Merge Layers / CTRL/CMD>E.

Now to soften that shadow up a bit so it doesn’t look like it could cut glass… Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur.

The Filter menu opens up. Move the Radius slider until you think the shadow looks realistic. I went to 13.9 Pixels.

But it’s still too harsh, so adjust the Opacity. 70% looks good.

Here’s one of those missteps I referred to at the beginning. **If you’re going to Clip papers to your letters do it now!** That way, the next couple of steps will be visible on your paper rather than the letters you’re using as a template. Merge the papers with the word halves so you don’t get mixed up. Then you can move on to this next step. Activate the layer with the TOP half of the word.

Add a new blank layer above the top half of the word by clicking on the sheet-of-paper icon at the upper left of the Layers Panel and make it your active layer. Then CTRL/CMD>click inside the Layer Thumbnail for the TOP half of the word to Select the edges.

OMG… we’re trying something NEW!! Layer>New Fill Layer>Gradient…

Make sure that Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask box is ticked. We want the effect to apply to just the top half of the word. The marching ants will tell it where to stop.

Choose the black-to-transparent gradient option. Of course it looks horrible. Tick the Reverse box, then we’ll make it pretty.

Now the effect is at the top of the letters and by decreasing the Opacity to 15%, it just adds a hint of shadowing where the light couldn’t quite reach the paper.

This step is another optional one, but I think it’s actually essential. Using the Burn tool let’s add some deeper shadowing where the paper creases. (You want to take this step AFTER you’ve clipped your paper to your letters.) The Burn tool icon looks like an “OK” hand signal. Use a small diameter, 15-20 Pixels, and don’t go too heavy, maybe 10-15% on the Opacity. To create a straight crease, click your cursor where the two halves of the word intersect then hold down the SHIFT key and move over to the other end of the word. Click the cursor at that intersection point and voilà, you have a straight crease.

So you can see how it looks with some papers in place, here you go.

If you think your cut-out shadows aren’t quite dark enough, this is how to fix it. Go back to the original text layer, double-click on the fx icon and use the swatch to change the Inner Glow to black.

Because I wasn’t thinking and waited to Clip my papers until after I’d Burned the crease and added the Gradient, I went back and fixed that.

There… a reasonable facsimile of Nancy‘s word art!

PDF Version: https://bit.ly/3bowWBc

I’ll be back in a day or two with the August 2022 Designer Spotlight. See you then!

Creating Your Own Stitching [Part One]

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Karen Hampton asked for some guidance on creating her own stitches. Today I’ll talk about stitching in a straight line, which I’ll build on in another tutorial for creating stitched shapes. These are the basics. (Spoiler alert: I learned something while I was playing with this one!)

This tutorial will use the Text Tool; it’s readily available and easy to use. My stitches have been created using the underscore key [ _ ], the space bar and white. The hyphen and the period will work too. The font I went with is a default font on Windows machines, Impact Regular set to 30 points. _SPACE_SPACE_SPACE_ to the desired length. This gives 3 1/3 stitches per inch.

This step, I’ve discovered, may not be necessary, at least with Elements 2021. But we’ll go ahead and do it anyway. Right-click on the text layer then choose Simplify Layer from the drop-down menu. Some manipulations to text can’t be performed unless this step has been taken.

This is an optional step. If you’d like your stitches to be thicker, the easiest way to do it is to Edit>Stroke (outline) Selection. That will add to both length and width.

Obviously, I’m using the same colour as for my text layer. I decided on 6 pixels centered on the stitches, which will give nice heft but won’t obliterate the spaces between the stitches.

This is another optional step. I’m a bit of a perfectionist, so when I go for realism, I’m all in. I want to add some texture to my stitches. Turns out the best way to do that is to use a Filter, placed on its own layer. (I tried to apply the Filter to the stitches layer and it didn’t work.) So pop a blank layer on top of the stitch layer by clicking on the sheet-of-paper icon at the top left of the Layers Panel.

I remember using this Filter for another tutorial but not in quite this way. Filter>Render>Fibers…

Thread and yarn are composed of multiple fine strands of fibers twisted together to make a single strand. There’s some visible variation in the thread, and I wanted to capture that look. The settings that worked best are shown here. Variance 3, Strength 64 and Randomize.

The twists in the thread fibers are usually on the bias, or somewhat diagonal. So I decided to Rotate the Filter layer on a center anchor to -35°.

I’ve been having some glitchy things with my Elements lately. Some keyboard shortcuts have failed to work when I try to use them. (Probably time for some system maintenance.) To get the striations onto the stitches, right-click on the Filter layer and choose Create Clipping Mask or use the keyboard shortcut CTRL/CMD>G for versions prior to PSE15 or CTRL/CMD>ALT/OPT>G for PSE15 and later.

The effect is quite subtle. If you don’t want to add it, skip ahead! For more optional steps, read on. Do you think you’re particular enough to want holes in your paper where the stitches go through it? This step’s for you. Add another blank layer above the stitch layer. Don’t want holes? Keep on scrolling…

This step gave me some trouble. I played with it for quite some time before all these key points came together. The stitches are in a straight line so the holes should also be in a straight line. I pulled down a Guide line by moving my cursor into the ruler at the top of the canvas and holding down the left mouse button, pulled down to the bottom of the stitches. The needle creating the holes is bigger than the thread, so the hole has to be wider than the stitch. I settled on a 16 pixel hard, round brush for this. Next came figuring out how to position the holes correctly. I found that putting the tip of the horizontal crosshair in my brush cursor right on the edge of the stitch while lining the same horizontal crosshair up with the horizontal middle of the stitch was perfect.

Of course, the holes need to be under the stitches and I tried doing the brush thing with the blank layer under the stitches but it wasn’t as easy lining up placement that way. So because the holes layer the holes layer is above, it needs to be moved down under the stitches. You can drag it down by clicking on the layer, holding down the left mouse key and just dragging it. Or you can use CTRL/CMD>] to go down. (Going up uses CTRL/CMD>[.)

When you see this part, you’ll ask me why I didn’t use a soft brush to start with. I tried it. I didn’t have enough control of it for my liking. So we’ll soften up the edges with a Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur.

I love it that Elements lets me see what’s happening to my creation while I’m making adjustments. That makes fine-tuning so much easier. I like a Radius of 2.0 pixels for these holes.

It’s starting to look pretty realistic.

This part could have been done sooner, like before the whole hole bit began. I Merged the Filter layer with the stitch layer by clicking on the Filter layer, holding down the Shift key and clicking on the stitch layer to Select both, then right-clicked and chose Merge Layers from the drop-down menu. Keyboard shortcut: CTRL/CMD>E

Let’s have a look. The holes aren’t in your face, but visible to the discerning eye. You might see I’ve added a custom shadow layer to the stitches, but I’m not going to take you through that. Turns out it really isn’t needed.

Rather than adding shadows, let’s give the stitches a bit more dimension by adding a Bevel. Click on the Styles button at the bottom of the Layers Panel and choose Bevels. The one I decided works best is the Simple Inner one, as shown here. These Bevels are integrated in the software, so you don’t need to buy and install them.

The default settings are a bit much. And you can see why I realized the holes and shadows aren’t really required.

To adjust a Style, double-click on the fx icon on the layer in question. This menu opens. I adjusted the settings as shown.

Once more, with feeling…

But what else can we do with this besides a straight line of horizontal stitches? Some of the other characters can be turned into fancy stitches. Here I’ve made a row of 10 slashes and 10 backslashes on separate layers.

By moving one of the rows toward the other, I created a zig zag.

If I overlap the rows, I end up with a narrow cross-stitch.

When creating composite stitches this way, keep the layers separate so you can add the Fiber Filter and Bevel to each layer before you Merge them.

Just for fun, I made a row of really fancy stitches using the ASCII symbol for Yen/Yuan. How did I do that? The keystrokes are ALT/OPT>0165. (I use a lot of ASCII characters in my genealogy research since I have Irish, French and Swedish ancestry in the family.) I bet the < and > symbols on the standard keyboard could be used for stitching, as well as *, + turned 45° then duplicated a few times, =, 8 turned 90° and duplicated, and x in some sans serif fonts. There are so many options!

Part Two of this tutorial will look at stitching around a shape, which involves some additional steps. I may even do a Part Three using brushes instead of text.

If you have an idea for a tutorial, don’t be shy! I love the challenge!! You can easily reach my via Private Message (click on it, there’s a link!) in the GingerScraps Forum. My handle is ObiJanKenobi. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

PDF Version: https://bit.ly/3ckOJcE

Quick Trick: Anchor Points Revisited

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June is rapidly running out here… on Friday we’ll be at the halfway point of 2022. Time for a Quick Trick! In a previous tutorial I showed you how to change the anchor point of an object in Elements, and I thought that was genius. Then I saw THIS tip and knew it could be very useful. Let’s review the basics first.

For my demos, I’m using a journaling blank from Karen Schulz‘s Backyard Party kit. I think this could be a great tip for things like word strips, photos, journal cards and so many others. For those of you still finding your way around your software, you may not have noticed that when you activate the Move Tool by clicking on one of the handles on the Bounding Box to reposition an object on your layout, you also activate the Transform options in your Tool Box. This is different from using Image>Transform or the keyboard shortcut CTRL/CMD>T. The shortcut only opens up the Free Transform option so we’re not using it. (And it’s an extra step…) The default anchor point is the centre of the object. In the Transform control panel you can see that the centre circle in the tic-tac-toe icon is darkened. That’s how you know where the anchor point is.

I’ve rotated the journaling blank on that centre anchor point in this image. You can see in the Tool Box that the angle of rotation is displayed.

In this demo, I’ve chosen the upper centre as my anchor point. First I clicked on one of the Bounding Box handles to activate the Move Tool and open up the Transform options. Then I clicked on the upper centre circle to lock in the anchor point and gave the blank a spin.

Here’s one more demo of the basic tip using the lower left as the anchor.

Now, I want to show you what to do if none of the predetermined anchor points will work for you. YES! You CAN choose a random spot as your anchor. And it’s simple. Really simple. Just hold down the ALT/OPT key and click your cursor where you want to anchor your object. Then give it a whirl. Notice that there’s no darkened dot in the tic-tac-toe. In this demo I’ve selected a spot along the upper edge where two of my grid lines intersect. ( The grid was just useful to help me find where I put the anchor points when it was time to edit the screenshots. It may or may not be helpful when you’re scrapping.)

I really DID mean ANYWHERE. ALT/OPT>click where you want to anchor and go.

You can even have the anchor point OUTSIDE the object’s bounding box. How handy is that?

I’ve gotten some great new topics for future tuts via Private Message. Keep them coming! (My handle is ObiJanKenobi.)

PDF Version : https://bit.ly/3R3tSdC