Happy Friday. We had our first real frost/freeze of the season overnight. I think our summer is gone for this year.
Remember, any $10 spent in the store gets you this awesome kit for free.
Let’s see what our designers have special for us this week.
Have you gotten a jump on your challenges? I love the colors in this reward kit. Only 10 completed challenges gets you this kit as a reward.
Navigating the Wide World of GingerScraps Digital Scrapbooking
Greetings GingerScrappers! I know you were all waiting patiently for a new tutorial today, but I’m sorry to report the tutorial technique I was creating for you didn’t work! I’ve been playing with it for 2 solid days, can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong and have run out of ideas for getting the thing to run properly. I hate when that happens! Rather than leaving y’all hanging. I thought I’d revisit a previous tutorial about navigating the world of digital scrapbooking websites for our ever-growing family of new members. It’s from May 2018, so it may be a bit dated…
Pickymom is a new member of the GingerScraps family (well, she WAS, in May 2018! She’s a pro now!). She posted a request for help with navigating the various features in the Forum in the Help!! thread and when I read it, I was immediately thrown back nearly a decade to my first feeble attempts at establishing my own online digiscrapping presence. I remembered how it seemed like I was never going to understand how to do things in online forums, despite having been a moderator of an online community for several years already. So, with her permission, I decided it might be a good use of this space to help the new members of our family get their feet wet and start reaping the benefits of our amazing site.
You’ll want to have at least two browser tabs open to GingerScraps so you can move between them as we work through the lesson.
My Profile has a series of options for telling others who you are, and it’s pretty straight-forward so I’m going to skip that part. First I’d like to show you the quickest, easiest and least taxing method of adding a photo to your profile. Since I already have a profile photo, the steps show how to change the photo, but they’re exactly the same for getting one out there for the first time, there just won’t be an image there for you to change. Make sure you’re on the Forum page and click on the Settings button.
On the left side of the Settings page is the menu that allows you to customize to your heart’s content.
Under the My Profile heading, click on the Edit Profile Picture button.
I’m going to pretend that the photos you’re seeing are recent. (They’re REALLY not. 🙁 ) As I said, I already had a profile photo so I changed it to allow you to see how easy it is. You can use photos from a website by using the first box, labeled Option 1. So if you have a photo you like posted to Flickr, (or Facebook, Instagram etc) for example, you could copy the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) where the photo is and paste it into that first box. To do that you would open a browser tab to the place where your photo is, highlight the text in the address box at the top of your browser screen then right-click and select Copy (CTRL/CMD>C); then go back to the tab with your Settings menu open, put the cursor in the first box (If you have a photo online…), right-click and select Paste (CTRL/CMD>V). Alternatively, if you have a photo on your computer that you’d like to use, then you’d use Option 2. Click on Choose File next to that second box (If you’re uploading a photo…), then find the photo on your computer.
I’m giving you a peek into my cluttered mind and messy desktop here. Yep, I have LOTS of browser tabs open, all the time, and I have a long list of links on my Toolbar. I’ve found the folder with my photo in it, then chose the photo I want to use. As the screenshot says, SIZE MATTERS. For profile photos, which are the ones people will see when they look at your PROFILE, not your Forum posts, your photo must be no larger than 300 x 300 pixels or 976.6 kilobytes, whichever is smaller. You can hover your cursor over the image in your folder to see the dimensions of your photo so you won’t make the mistake of choosing a photo that will be rejected.
After you’ve clicked on the thumbnail image of your photo, click on Open.
Once you’ve opened your photo you can see how it’ll appear on your profile. I decided I didn’t like this one after all. But if I had liked it, I would have clicked on Save Changes and carried on.
I just followed that first step again to choose a different photo, Opened it and Saved the Changes.
Yes, that’s what I like!
Now we can work on the photo people see in the Forum when you post questions, comments or layouts. This photo is called an Avatar. It doesn’t have to be a photo of you, it can be anything you want it to be. I’m rather partial to Bitmojis myself.
In the same Settings menu, click on Edit Avatar. Here again, you can use an online image, say from Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest. The steps to do this are exactly the same as for the Profile Picture… with one significant difference.
As you can see in the screenshot, I have photos of me, flowers from my garden and memes I found online and saved for later. The photo I chose to use for my Avatar for this lesson is one that was taken at a wedding in Jamaica 3 years ago. I checked to make sure it would work as an avatar by hovering my cursor over it.
Here’s where that significant difference comes in. The MAXIMUM size for avatars is 150 x 150 pixels, or 1.91 megabytes, whichever is smaller. Since I’d already checked that out, I knew this photo would be fine and I clicked Save Changes.
Let’s do a Signature now. A while back I wrote a tut about creating original signatures for the Forum; you can find it here. I always save my signature files as .pngs so if I have rounded corners, elements extending out from the main part of the siggie or I want a transparent background, it’ll look the way I want it to when I use it. I also save them slightly smaller than the maximum size allowed because I want it to be a footnote, not the focus! For this feature, you will need to post your signature image to the Gallery, where you’ll get the image location data to put it into your profile. Have that Gallery tab open to your siggie. The screenshot below shows the existing signature and the Editor.
I like my signature to be centered at the bottom of my posts, so I click on the icon shown below. To remove my old siggie from March’s Signature Challenge, I clicked on the image that is now blue in the screenshot. Then I hit the Delete button on my keyboard and it went away.
Then I went to my Gallery tab and right-clicked on my May Signature Challenge signature itself. This option box opened up, where I chose Copy Image Address.
Moving back to the Settings menu browser tab, I clicked on the Insert Image link as I’m showing you below.
Then I pasted the data I copied from my Gallery image into the box and clicked OK.
In the screenshot, you can see both the old siggie and the new one. You have the choice of Previewing it or just Saving it.
Here’s a Forum post with both my new Avatar and my new Signature on it.
These methods work identically when you want to post a layout to a Challenge thread in the Forum. I highly recommend having two GingerScraps tabs open in your browser and simply moving back and forth between them, Working Smart, Not Hard. Go to your layout in the Gallery, right-click the image, Copy Image Address then navigate back to the Challenge thread. Select that Insert Image icon, paste the Image Address into the box and click OK. It doesn’t matter if you’re on the first page of a thread or the last, you can compose your post at the bottom of the screen and the site will automatically move it to the end of the thread.
These Tutorial Tuesday Blog posts are all tagged with Tutorial Tuesday. If you don’t want to bookmark them (or aren’t sure how) for future reference, you can always just type Tutorial Tuesday into the search bar up in the right corner of the main Blog screen and the site will find them all for you, in reverse order. If you know a key word that appeared somewhere in the post, you can also use that to find the post again. As with everything else in life, the more you do a task, the easier it becomes and the less thought you have to put into it. But… update for late 2021… Ginger has been converting each new tutorial into PDF files that can be downloaded and saved to your computer for posterity! Those of us who’ve been here for a long time sometimes forget how lost we felt in the beginning; as Pickymom said in her initial post, technology is still a challenge for people who grew up without it. But the best part of the GingerScraps community is that help is always a couple of clicks away!
PDF Version : https://bit.ly/3k7B9dn
Jumpstart Designs!
How the heck is it November already? Before we know it, Christmas will be here… and Jan won’t be ready. Given! New month, new Designer Spotlight. This month I’m chatting with Sheri, the creative mind behind Jumpstart Designs. Sheri is a relative newcomer to GingerScraps, but I’ve known her for years and was so happy when she joined our little digi-family. (She might not remember, but once upon a time I was on her creative team.) Our chat went sort of like this…
J: Sheri, let’s get the business part of this out of the way first. Tell me how long you’ve been designing.
S: Ten years this last July!
J: Wow, you’ve done a TON of designing in that time. Your (amazing) portfolio is HUGE! Where do you do your best work?
S: Our main family room is kind of long so I use one end of it for my office because I have windows on two sides that keeps this beautiful fall sunshine coming in. I have a desk with three large monitors because I’ve always got Photoshop, Illustrator, multiple folders, and several different browsers and tabs open all the time. I generally have music or television streaming in the background. I just recently purchased a new PC system and a stand-alone disk station. My “techie” son keeps my system in optimal working order, and I have no idea how I would do this without his help because it seems like something is always needing to be fixed or tweaked. I also have a tablet and just recently got an iPad so I can play around in Procreate. I keep my work area very organized because my brain is already in chaos mode, and I need all the structure I can get. Oh look! A shining thing! Or in my case… another email, memo, new event to add to the design calendar, or another deadline I’m running close to. I’m a great planner, but not nearly as good about keeping on top of it.
J: I think you do a brilliant job of keeping all those balls in the air. We’ve got the where, now let’s talk about the why. What inspires and motivates you?
S: Color, and spending time on Pinterest and similar sites. I always have a bunch of ideas of what I’d like to design and do differently but finding the extra time to play around with new ideas doesn’t seem to happen very often.
J: The way you use colour has always drawn me to your designs… which explains why I have a gigantic folder of your stuff. I won’t get into the whole Pinterest rabbit hole! Which of your current collections is your favourite and why?
S: EARLY AUTUMN WHISPERS. Fall is my favorite time of year and I wish it could stay autumn all year long! I try to enjoy every minute of this season before the cold and snow sets in.
J: Ooh, that’s a beautiful one! Oh look… it’s in my Downloads folder. How did that get there? 😉 Tell me, what one word would your family and friends use to describe you?
S: Probably “smart ass”. LOL (oops, that’s two words)
J: Right… okay! So what would you do if you won the lottery?
S: Probably buy just enough property in the mountains to build a few little homes so my kids and grandkids could all live with me forever. If I had my way, they’d be with me no matter how old they get! Oh yeah…. And I guess saving for retirement might also be good idea so I don’t have earn a living until my last dying breath.
J: We did something like that after my mother-in-law passed away. Except that our grandkids don’t live anywhere nearby and we haven’t seen them in a long time. But we have the mountains! And we’re both retired, so there’s that. Next up, a really odd question that I found on a human resources website: Are you more likely to sing, or to dance, in the shower?
S: Neither! I’d probably trip and fall over the edge of the tub, and God help anyone who’d have to hear my voice! That’s one talent I did NOT inherit from my parents. They were both musical and had a country-western band for many years. They were even good enough to play for President Ronald Reagan when he came through town back in the day, but it’s better for everyone if I don’t attempt singing myself! LOL
J: Wow! How cool is that? I love country music. But can you play a musical instrument?
S: I played the piano for many years but haven’t touched one in a long time. I also bang on our bongo drums now and then and have always thought it would be fun to be a drummer.
J: A minute ago you mentioned your parents and your grandkids. Speaking of both previous and succeeding generations, if you could travel through time, would you go forward, or back? Why?
S: BACK IN TIME for sure! I’m not too thrilled with society these days. I think we’ve lost our collective minds and I fear for how things will be for my children and grandchildren. I miss the good old days when most people valued self-reliance, integrity, and knew how to be respectful of others.
J: I hear you. We’ve really lost the best part of our society, where we all looked out for each other. There was a lot to be said for how much more respectful the world was a few decades ago. What has been the best compliment you’ve ever received?
S: That I must be a good mother because my children are awesome! Some days I question my parenting, but I’ll take that compliment any day!
J: Yes! I ‘ve always said our jobs as parents is to raise responsible, independent and genuine adults, with a good helping of courtesy and caring for others. What would your dream car be?
S: I’m an SUV sort of gal but ultimately I’d just like one that’s paid for, haha.
J: Hahaha! No car payment is a good place to be. If you could only eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would you choose?
S: Homemade tacos! Actually, anything Mexican with lots of cheese!
J: YUM!! Too bad I took pork chops out for supper tonight. Now, if you could have one superpower which one would you choose?
S: Being able to make time stand still.
J: Just think how much more we could get done in a day! (Or not. I’d probably just curl up with a book!) Aside from necessities, what one thing could you not go a day without?
S: Hugs from my grandkids!
J: I adore kids. All kids. If you came with a warning label, what would it say? Mine would say “Harmless old woman who WILL talk to your children in the grocery store”.
S: WARNING: Subject prone to sarcasm!
J: Maybe that’s why we get along! Last question, maybe the most difficult. Who would you want to play you in a movie about your life?
S: No clue but several years ago I was told that I looked like Jaime Pressly so many times that I finally had to watch that sitcom called “My Name Is Earl” just to see who she was. I think the only resemblance was in the “dumb blonde ponytail” I did sometimes. LOL
I don’t know anything about her, but I’d love to have her figure!
J: I can see the resemblance! I love the role she plays in “Mom“.
So ladies, Sheri’s entire store will be 50% off for the month, on top of her free Daily Download and Jumpstart Your Layout Challenge kit (and I can’t wait for them!!), maybe with some minor adjustments around Black Friday. She has given me permission to share a bunch of links with you, too. She has a highly-talented creative team, and you can see their work in Sheri’s Gallery. [Remember, whenever you see coloured text in my posts and it’s not someone’s name, there’s a hyperlink attached – just click and go!]
Facebook (and TWO freebies!! Here and here.)
Thanks for chatting with me, Sheri! Enjoy your time in the Spotlight!!
We made it to November. We’re getting closer to the holiday season. We’ll start seeing Thanksgiving and Christmas kits popping up soon.
Don’t forget to check out the Buffet Bundles. One easy click to add bundles of Buffet goodies to your cart.
Look at these colors. These are so deep and rich.
Remember any $10 spent in the store gets you this great collab. We are all [Be-YOU-tiful}.
This new Monthly Mix kit is perfect for the {autumn breeze].
Now to the November Daily Download Sneak Peek. This month’s Daily Download is from Jumpstart Digi Designs.
We have TWO Guest Designers for November!
Bio:
I have loved art and photography since my high school days. I stumbled into digital scrapbooking over 10 years ago when looking for a way to design custom photo books. I quickly fell in love with the endless possibilities of creating digitally and the joy of telling the stories of everyday life. Recently, after taking several classes in pattern design, I decided to venture into the world of scrapbook kit designing. It’s my hope with Karen Chrisman Designs, to create digital products that allow you to quickly and beautiful record and treasure all those wonderful, everyday moments of life. Please feel free to subscribe to my newsletter at karenchrisman.com. Thank you so much and I’m really looking forward to my time at Gingerscraps!
Bio:
Hi, I’m Jill. I’m a scrapper turned designer from southwest Ohio. I started paper scrapping in high school, then turned digital and now into designing, with a special spot in my heart for templates. I’m mom to 4 kids, grandma to 5, and very much in love with my boyfriend of seven years Nate. I can’t wait to share my designs with you! I would love to see what you create with them.
Take a look at the new challenge reward kit. If you complete any 10 challenges this month, you get this gorgeous collab as a reward!
Let’s see some of the sample layouts provided by our amazing store Creative Team.
Well friends, we’ve made it to the end of October. That means Christmas is less than two weeks away. YIKES. I haven’t even thought about Christmas shopping. Two months is a long time, but with the way 2021 has been flying, it will be here tomorrow. Good thing we still have a bunch of new fall goodies in the store.
Remember, any $10 spent in the store gets you this awesome fall kit for free.
Let’s see what the designers have for us this week. I see fall and Halloween and other random topics.
How are those challenges going? You still have a few days to get them completed. Any 10 completed challenges gets you this great collab as a reward.
Use It All! Challenge Spotlight
The response to my Jumpstart Your Layout Challenge post showcasing YOUR layouts and YOUR individual style was so good, I’m going to choose one Challenge each month and shine a Spotlight on it. It’ll be the last post of the month and I think it’ll be really a lot of fun! This month I’ve chosen another Challenge that includes a FREE mini-kit, the Use It All Challenge with Karen Schulz.
Each month Karen provides a mini kit – shown above – but for this Challenge, ALL the items in the mini MUST be included in your layout. Karen’s Challenge minis are add-ons to larger kits she has in her store, so if you like the mini you’ll LOVE the full collection! (Find Trick or Treat here!) [Pssst… Karen has a little surprise in the download, but I’m not going to include it in the upcoming layout showcase. Only those layouts using the 6 papers, 5 elements and 1 word art in the preview are shown.] Let’s have a look at how YOU have been inspired by this mini!!
In this layout, willow has given us a layout that isn’t about Hallowe’en. I had to really look to see how she blended the arty background paper with the much brighter orange-and-plaid paper, so skillfully was it done. Her beaded flower clusters frame her masked photo and the graffiti piece grounds it.
Sweetpea2020 has used a variety of paper shapes to mat her photos. The pops of orange draw the eye and the curly ribbon provides a frame for them.
Here, Flighty-188 has also blended the arty paper with the brighter orange-plaid paper but in reverse, and she’s given the graffiti the look of an actual piece of screen. Add in the raffia bow in the upper left corner of her photo and the cluster in the opposite corner, and she’s made great use of a visual triangle to create movement around the layout.
AlyciaIN‘s layout made me smile. Her little Hermione looks like she’s levitating! The basics of her layout are similar to Flighty-188‘s but with the paper borders’ straight edges, it looks quite different. Can you see a visual triangle here?
This simple layout isn’t as simple as it looks! khoskins has stacked the papers in a pleasing arrangement, and turned the graffiti into a pretty anchor for her photos. I like how she framed her photos with black paper to bring them into focus. She also created her own custom tag using the brighter orange paper and word art very creatively.
By clipping the lighter-coloured paper to a mask on a black background, KatL has cleverly drawn the eye right to that grinning Jack. Placing the beaded flower off-centre on the raffia bow adds interest to the cluster and tilting the word art is a nice, informal touch.
The way galaviktor has spread out the sheets of paper form a pattern that frames her photos nicely. Creating a brushed border for the word art, she’s pulled the colour variations from the arty paper into focus.
Isn’t Zelda just the cutest girl on four legs? For all its simplicity, NHSoxGirl‘s layout is very eye-catching, and the heart paper behind the word art has a lot to do with it.
The interlocking paper-strip squares AJRandom has created here both ground and highlight her photos. I like how she’s tucked the ribbon between the photos and then anchored them with the beaded flowers. I just noticed that she’s positioned the paper with all the eyes on it so that only one set of eyes is peeking at us. LOVE it!!
What can I say about greenfiend27‘s layout? It’s genius! Her paper borders are shadowed beautifully to give the appearance of papers overlying each other. Blending the graffiti into the paper behind it and using it to anchor her cluster shows her creativity. Having the ribbon dangle adds focus to her cat’s beautiful eyes and her clever alterations to the word art is just the right whimsical touch. A+!
Can you believe that October will be over the next time we meet? There’s snow on the mountains already but none here in the valley yet. It’s crazy how quickly time flies. Considering how awful this year has been for so many people, I’m thinking the sooner 2021 is in the rearview mirror, the better.
PDF Version : https://bit.ly/2ZZoWAO
Welcome to another Friday!! They just seem to come faster and faster don’t they? We are almost at the end of October and the fall temperatures have become more prevalent and we’re starting to see some of the leaves change colors.
Don’t forget, any $10 spent in the store gets you this kit for free.
Let’s see what new items our fabulous designers have for us this week.
Have you picked up the October Monthly Mix? I love those little gnomes.
And remember. Any 10 completed challenges gets you this great kit as a reward!
Giving Credit where Credit is Due
Or: Editing your Gallery images
Hi again ladies! Today I want to talk about something a bit more serious than usual. I’m going to do a Featured Challenge post next week, and have been perusing the Gallery to check out the layouts I want to include. I noticed that there are quite a few layouts that don’t include any credits; whether it’s an oversight or intentional, I don’t know. But I do know this. The Terms of Service at pretty much EVERY digiscrapping website that hosts a Gallery, and the Terms of Use included by every designer in every kit include a requirement for providing proper credit to the designer(s) of the content the scrapper uses. I know that when I see a layout that’s exquisitely created, I’m going to look at credits to see which kit(s) the scrapper used so I can go shopping! If we think about it, giving credit to someone whose products inspire us and help us improve our skills should be automatic, as a courtesy if nothing else. And really, who wants to be accused of theft of intellectual property? Those who are new to our hobby may not realize they’re missing a step. And then there’s the well-known GingerScraps Gallery glitch that deletes some of the things we add to the first Upload screen that’s easy to overlook. (I think that might have been fixed, it hasn’t happened to me in a while.) But what can you do if your layout posts to the Gallery without that important information? Let me show you!
Here’s the layout I created for the Jumpstart Your Layout Challenge this month. At the bottom of the layout inside the red oval, the only detail that appears is the title I gave my layout. OOPS!
A quick word about titles… if you use a special character like a # or a @ or a ? for example, the Gallery uploader will lose everything you’ve typed AFTER the first of those characters. It’s going to mess up your Member Gallery but if you know ahead of time that will happen you can remember to follow these steps to fix it. Other things that may need to be changed in your layout’s details could be typos, omitted information, or an error on the layout itself that you’ve corrected already but the image you’re seeing is still the one with the mistake. When you click on My Photos and then choose the layout you need to fix, scroll down past the image until you see your avatar on the left, as shown. In that User Options box, click on Edit Photo.
When you upload a Challenge layout, if you want it to count for the Challenge Reward, it must be posted in the current month’s (and year’s!) Challenge Gallery. The website’s uploader default is to place uploaded images in the Member Gallery, which is fine, but not for being rewarded! (It’ll also sometimes default to the last Gallery you chose, or some other random Gallery, so check and see where it’s going!) This first change I’m making is to put my layout in the Jumpstart Your Layouts October 2021 album.
This next (optional) step is especially useful for people who create for designers on their Creative Teams. The layout can be Copied to other Galleries just by making a selection in the second dropdown. There’s also another advantage to using this Edit part of the uploader. If you put your layout into multiple albums when you first upload them, EACH of those copies will count as one of your 8 permitted daily uploads, but if you Copy them with the Edit feature, they only count once! Yeah, it’s an extra step and it’s a bit of a drag, but it’s a lot better than getting told you’ve already used up all your uploads for the day on only 2 or 3 layouts.
Okay, so let’s pretend you spotted a glaring typo in your title – maybe I spelled my title OTCBREO because I was tired, in a hurry and wanted to get my layout into the Gallery so I could go to bed. I get up this morning to several comments on my layout, all of them politely ignoring OTCBREO, but I’m still upset with myself that I didn’t notice it. So I open up my saved PSD version of my layout, fix my title, save it with a slightly different file name (more about that in a second) and now I want to post the corrected version instead of the trashed one. I can click on the Choose File button and select the corrected version to replace the other one. [If I didn’t Save my corrected layout with a slightly different file name, the uploader won’t know the image has been changed, and it’ll use the original one. So if you end up having to do this kind of big correction, add a number to the end of your file name and the uploader won’t be confused.] I can also fix the title if I notice it’s missing some special characters, or if in my addled, sleep-deprived state, I used the mis-spelled title here too. I also have the ability to add my credits here too, in the Photo Description section. Last, if I’ve changed my mind and don’t want to share my layout with the world after all, I can Delete it. It and everything I’ve typed about it will disappear forever. There’s no way to UNDO this step, so be really sure you can’t Edit it before you take this drastic step. When all the needed adjustments have been made, Submit changes.
Now everybody can see which kit and template I’ve used for my layout. The only time it’s not necessary to include credits is if you’re using Commercial Use products. Oh darn… I just realized I forgot one very important credit! Back to the Edit screen…
I neglected to give credit to my dear friend Sandy, the photographer who rescued Beau so that Beau could rescue her. She has graciously given me permission to use her photos for scrapping and deserves to be recognized for her talents too!
Now, which of this month’s Challenges should I Feature next week?
PDF Version : https://bit.ly/3xD8rqw
Hello Scrappers! We have a packed newsletter for you today! Our Weekly Fresh Baked goodies, The $1.00 Bake Sale is OPEN and we have a new designer!
Remember when you spend $10 in the store, you get this great kit for free.
First up, lets look at this weeks New Releases!
I’m so excited to announce that Dagilicious has come out of retirement and opening up shop exclusively at GingerScraps! We are so happy to have her back!
Here is a little bio from Dagi: “My name is Dagmar aka Dagi and I am a mom to two wonderful boys and quite a few of pets too! I have discovered digital scrapbook back in 2008 when my first son was born and I got addicted. I’ve always had a thing for templates, so, since 2012 I have been creating my own. My goal is to make scrapping your memories a little bit easier and faster, because, as you know, there’s always a lot of photos and none can be left behind.”
The monthly $1.00 Bake Sale is OPEN!
Remember any 10 finished challenges gets you this great kit as a reward.
Custom Word Art using Only Fonts!
Greetings and salutations! Yesterday was Thanksgiving in Canada, which isn’t quite the event our neighbours to the south have grown into, but I still spent part of the day in a food coma. Let me offer you a little tip – don’t wait too long to buy your turkeys. Demand here was significantly greater than supply; even Costco didn’t have any turkeys this weekend. If you see turkeys in your supermarket, grab one! But I digress…
As you may recall, at the end of my last tutorial (with the childish fonts and dingbats) I said I’d show you how to use fonts and dingbats to create your own word art. You might also recall my inspiration was my grand-daughter. The little girl who eats like a lumberjack… I’m using Cookie Dough, Amateur Comic Regular and MTF Sweet Dings Regular today. For more guidance on how to choose fonts that will look good together, I have a tutorial for you here.
When I’m creating things like this I always use a 12×12 canvas with a transparent background. I like the larger image so I can see better how it all works together and the extra room for tweaking. The end result can easily be resized later.
I’m going to start with Amateur Comic Regular. It doesn’t matter what colour I use, because I’m going to change it later. But I do want it centered and I want both Asian Text and Anti-aliasing on. The Asian Text control helps with kerning – spacing between individual characters. In later versions there is a kerning control, labeled Spacing but it doesn’t work quite as well as actual kerning. The Anti-aliasing control gives your fonts smooth, clean edges; it just diminishes the jaggedy pixels you’d see with larger text.
When using fonts the resulting layers need to be Simplified before you can manipulate them, so that any changes to that layer only affect that layer. If I typed out this text but didn’t Simplify the layer, then changed the font (as I’ll be doing in a minute) this layer would change to that font too. So always remember to spell-check. grammar-check then Simplify by right-clicking on the layer in the Layers Panel and choosing Simplify Layer from the dropdown menu.
I may need to make some further placement adjustments to this text, so I opted to break up the layer into two chunks of text. With the Rectangular Marquee tool, I outlined the second line.
Next, I Cut that line away from the first line: Edit>Cut [keyboard shortcut: CTRL/CMD>X]
And then without any further ado, I Pasted it back onto the canvas: Edit>Paste [CTRL/CMD>V]
Now I can move each line around, resize and reposition as needed.
I changed my font to Cookie Dough. For this word, I’m going to put each letter on its own layer for now. (If you don’t intend to make many changes to the text, you won’t need to do these steps.) So I typed a D, Committed the Operation and then carried on. You can toggle between the Move Tool and the Text Tool by clicking [V] for Move, [T] for Text.
I wanted the letters to be a little off-kilter and shifted them around until I was happy with their positions.
At this point, I’m planning to turn the letters into donuts so I’ll need to Simplify each layer. Because I was only rotating the letters before, I could wait until everybody was where I wanted them then I could Simplify in one step instead of 6. I Activated all 6 layers by clicking on the top letter layer, holding down the SHIFT key and clicking on the bottom letter layer. Then I right-clicked and chose Simplify Layer. Boom!
The layers can now be Merged into a single layer.
I added a MTF Sweet Dings Regular donut. Dingbats are drawings that correspond to the alphabet. The donut’s the letter W.
And of course, I Simplified the layer…
… made a Copy layer: right-click>Duplicate Layer>OK [CTRL/CMD>J] and used the Paint Bucket tool [K] to Fill the bare donut part with a golden brown colour. More about that step in a bit. I made some Copies of the DONUTS layer [CTRL/CMD>J] so I can separate out certain elements of the text for enhancement. I added a Layer Mask – click on the icon at the top of the Layers panel that looks like a blue square with a white circle in the centre – to the bottom DONUTS layer so I can remove parts of the image without actually deleting the pixels. This is the best way to remove parts of an image because if there’s an OOPS!, the accidentally-erased part can be painted back in. Remember, black conceals, white reveals – THE BACKGROUND. Using the Eraser tool and with white in the foreground I removed all the sprinkles. To paint back an OOPS, toggle to black in the foreground [X] and fix it.
To make the Layer Mask part of the layer just Simplify Layer. Right-click in between the mask and the image thumbnail.
Next, I just want an outline of the frosted area of each letter. With a Layer Mask, I removed the sprinkles and the cakey parts. It doesn’t have to be perfect because the other layers will conceal any wobbles.
I like to make more Copy layers than I think I’m going to need, which usually is a good idea. Here I’m going to just leave the sprinkles, but I’ve already done the hard work.
I CTRL/CMD>clicked on the layer thumbnail (the tiny image of what’s on each layer at the far left of the layer in the Layers panel) for the first DONUTS layer with no sprinkles. That Selected the edges of that layer. See the marching ants?
Then with the topmost Copy layer active, I just Deleted what I Selected. [CTRL/CMD>D or just hit Delete] and voilà! All that’s left are the sprinkles.
Now to get some colour into the picture. With the first of our DONUTS layer active, I’m going to add a Fill Layer. The reason for this is that the results are much cleaner than if I used the Paint Bucket. Layer>New Fill Layer>Solid Color.
Tick that Use Previous Layer to Create a Clipping Mask box and let Elements do the work.
The Color Picker opens and I chose a nice golden brown.
The Fill Layer and the layer it’s clipped to need to be Merged, so click>SHIFT>click on the two layers, right-click and choose Merge Layers [CTRL/CMD>E]
The frosting layer will be Filled with white using the Paint Bucket tool [K].
Make sure you’re not going to leak!
I also used a Fill Layer to make the sprinkles layer pink. I won’t show screenshots of those steps because that’s unnecessarily repetitive! But I will show you screenshots of the Fill Layer for the Amateur Comic text. I want it to be pink too.
I decided the pink text lacked a bit of presence so I’ve chosen to add a white Stroke to the outside. Edit>Stroke (Outline) Selection.
8 pixels makes a nice stroke for titles. I’ll position it to the Outside so it doesn’t hide any of the pink.
I think it looks good now.
I went on to use the Paint Bucket to frost the dingbat donuts, change some of the sprinkles to purple and position the layers so they look right. Then I Merged all the layers. To have my word art (and work!) saved for later, I’m going to Save As> [CTRL/CMD>SHIFT>S].
I have a Jan’s Elements folder on my laptop, so that’s where I’ll put it. I named the file Donuts Word Art and will save it as a PNG so the background stays transparent.
Smallest/Slow Compression and No Interlace will preserve the word art for me in the cleanest and neatest format so I can use it as the title for my layout.
I’ve been told there are a LOT of new members of the GingerScraps family, so I’m going to do a few basic tutorials in the coming weeks to help them feel more comfortable here. Stay tuned!
PDF Version: https://bit.ly/3FNtvOy