{"id":59780,"date":"2026-02-24T14:23:20","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T22:23:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/?p=59780"},"modified":"2026-02-24T14:23:20","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T22:23:20","slug":"tutorial-tuesday-potpourri-42","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/2026\/02\/tutorial-tuesday-potpourri-42\/","title":{"rendered":"Tutorial Tuesday (Potpourri)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Greatest Hits: Templates with a Twist<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In addition to my Olympics hangover, I haven’t slept properly in nearly a week, so my head is pretty fuzzy. Since we were recently talking about how to add photo spots to templates, I thought maybe I’d replay this one:<\/p>\n

Did you know that you can combine two (or more) templates into a single layout? Are you shocked? Remember, templates are amazingly versatile tools. You don\u2019t have to slavishly follow the design for them to help you create fabulous layouts. They\u2019re intended as inspirational guides, with symbols as placeholders. With templates, your creativity is only limited by your imagination. I\u2019m going to show you how to do a template mashup right here, right now. Let me begin by saying I probably wouldn\u2019t have chosen this bundle for this technique, but the opportunity presented itself and I ran with it. To have the best results with your template mashup, you should choose two templates with clusters, photo spots, masks or combinations of those that you really like, with a good amount of white space, so you\u2019ll have lots of options.<\/p>\n

I used a JB Studios<\/strong> template shown below as my base template. I like the row of circles with the small cluster, and I really like the little word strip cluster in the corner. I made a mental note of what the file was named so I could find it later\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Then I chose this\u00a0Tinci Designs<\/strong> template (SO sad to see her retire!) for my second one. I had 2 photos I wanted to use. Now, I could have resized the centre cluster, which would have actually worked beautifully, but I wanted my photos to be really visible.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I had to make room for the section of\u00a0Tinci\u2019s<\/strong>\u00a0template that I was going to move onto the\u00a0JBS<\/strong>\u00a0template so I selected all the layers but the background and the little wordstrip cluster then moved them up almost to the top of the canvas.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

See how that gave me a lot of room?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The next step is to go to my second template and select all the layers I want to add to the first one. If you don\u2019t have the\u00a0Bounding Box<\/strong>\u00a0turned on, you might want to do that. It will help you move only the layers you want by including the shapes you\u2019ve selected inside it. You can see my\u00a0Bounding Box<\/strong>\u00a0in the screenshot below.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Once you\u2019ve selected only the layers you want to copy onto your other template,\u00a0right click<\/strong>\u00a0on the\u00a0Layers panel<\/strong>\u00a0to open the\u00a0Layers menu<\/strong>. Then click on\u00a0Duplicate Layers\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A new menu opens with everything you have in your\u00a0Photo Bin<\/strong>\u00a0included. Look down the list until you find your first template. If you can\u2019t remember the file name, look for the\u00a0.psd<\/strong>\u00a0suffix. When you\u2019ve found it, click on it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Your dialog box will look like this. You can rename the group of layers if you want, but you don\u2019t have to. When you\u2019ve got the correct file selected, click\u00a0OK<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

PSE automatically centres everything on the canvas, so this is what the new mashed-up template looked like right after I added the\u00a0Tinci<\/strong>\u00a0pieces to the\u00a0JBS<\/strong>\u00a0base template. Time to fine-tune!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I moved all the\u00a0Tinci<\/strong>\u00a0pieces down so the\u00a0JBS<\/strong> pieces peeked out above them. \u00a0Then I had to figure out what to do with that little word strip cluster that HAD to be in there.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Once I was happy with how it all looked, I could get my\u00a0layout<\/strong>\u00a0rolling. There were some layers from the original template that were completely concealed, so when I came to them in the\u00a0Layers panel<\/strong>, I just deleted them. (I always work with copies of everything, never the original. That way I don\u2019t have to worry about losing something I might want again later!)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

If you decide to try this out, remember that you don\u2019t HAVE to copy everything from one template onto the other. Choose the parts you LOVE. Forget about the rest. I could have copied just one of the photo clusters. I could have only copied the word strip cluster. It\u2019s all about what you like most! Have fun!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Greatest Hits: Templates with a Twist In addition to my Olympics hangover, I haven’t slept properly in nearly a week, so my head is pretty fuzzy. Since we were recently talking about how to add photo spots to templates, I thought maybe I’d replay this one: Did you know that you can combine two (or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[229,102,284,92,58,62],"tags":[373],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 01:55:45","action":"change-status","newStatus":"private","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59780"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59780"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59782,"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59780\/revisions\/59782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}