journaling

Fitting Text to Lined Journaling Mats

June 9, 2011 By Misty 7 Comments

The idea for today’s tutorial came from a blog reader. After reading the Text Path for Journaling Mats Tutorials Part 1 and 2 Amy wrote,

Can you tell me how to journal on a lined journal mat? I can’t seem to get the correct font/size so that it lines up correctly!

Sure Amy! We will start where Creating a Text Path for Journaling Mats Part 1 left off – with a bunch of text inside a fitted path.

As you can see, my text does not line up with lines on the journaling mat. We are going to fix that.

Click on the move tool and then use your arrow keys to nudge your text up or down so that the first line of text sits on a line of your journaling mat. Now click on the text tool and click and drag on your canvas to highlight all of your text.

Go to Window>Character to bring up the Character Palette.

On the right side of the palette you’ll see an icon with two letter A’s, one on top of the other. This indicates the leading setting. It’s likely set on Auto, but click on the drop down arrow to the right and you can manually set the leading.

If none of the numbers in the drop down menu gets you quite the right fit, you can type any number into the field as well (including decimals). In my case 31pt gives me the perfect fit.

DJB TweenyBopper font shown in screenshot images for this tutorial.

Filed Under: Tutorials Tagged With: digital scrapbooking, journaling, Photoshop Tutorial, typography

A Personal Touch – Handwriting Fonts

April 15, 2011 By Misty 1 Comment

I love playing with fonts. If you are anything like me, you have grungy fonts, whimsical fonts, typewriter fonts, block fonts, doodled and scribble fonts as well as novelty fonts for every possible theme. How about adding a font of your own handwriting? Scrapbook pages contain our stories, our photos why not our handwriting as well? Handwritten loving, letters from families members have long been cherished treasures. Bring a touch personal, heartfelt writing to your pages with your own handwriting (and still have the luxury of spell check).

There are several font developers around digiland that can transform your handwriting into a font, including Darcy Baldwin at Sweet Shoppe Designs. Darcy is fabulous to work with and always available to answer questions and help someone through the process (which is really quite easy – write out all the characters and scan them in).

Here are just a few pages from the Sweet Shoppe Designs gallery showcasing some fun, poignant and eye-catching ways to use personal handwriting to enhance a layout.

Splash by Sarah

Focus by Aly

Grow by Aggie Aviso

Geekazoid, My Hero by Krystal Hartley

2011 Goals by Lynnette

Why? by isaacsmom

Filed Under: Inspiration Tagged With: digital scrapbooking, handwriting font, journaling, typography

Tips for Increasing Journaling Visibility

April 7, 2011 By Misty 13 Comments

SUBJECT: Creating layer styles to increase the visibility of journaling on a digital scrapbooking layout

PROGRAM: PSCS3 (can be adapted for other versions of Photoshop)

If you’ve been digital scrapbooking for very long, you’ve been there – trying to journal on a photograph, paint stroke or other inconsistent background and your text seems to ‘disappear’ in places or gets completely lost. Here are a couple of layers styles you can try to increase the visibility of your journaling. I’ve put the samples on solid kraft backgrounds so you can see the effect clearly, but I often use one of these methods when I am trying to journal on a photo or paper of varying shades.

TIP 1: Add a Stroke

Adding a stroke places a line around the perimeter of your object. When applied to text, this style thickens the letters.

To create this effect, make sure your text is the active layer by clicking on it in the Layers Palette.

Go to Layer>Layer Style>Stroke.

Use the following settings:

Size: 1 (you can increase this as desired)

Position: Center

Blend: Normal

Opacity: 100

Fill Type: Color

Color: Choose the same color as your text

Click ‘Ok’ to apply the layer style.

TIP 2: Add an Outer Glow

Adding an outer glow creates a ‘halo’ of light around your text. This is especially effective when your text is dark.

To create this effect, make sure your text is the active layer by clicking on it in the Layers Palette.

Go to Layer>Layer Style>Outer Glow.

Use the following settings:

Blend Mode: Screen

Opacity: 100

Noise: 0 (although you can play with this as desired)

Color: I usually stick with the default pale yellow, but you can play with white or other light, soft colors

Technique: Softer

Spread: 0

Size: 250

Contour: leave at the default

Range: 50

Jitter: 0

Click ‘Ok’ to apply the layer style. If you want to make this effect subtler, lower the opacity slider. If you want to create an even bolder effect, apply the style and then duplicate the layer (Layer>Duplicate Layer).

TIP 3: Add a Color Burn

Adding a color burn drop shadow creates a darker around your text. This is especially effective when your text is a light color.

To create this effect, make sure your text is the active layer by clicking on it in the Layers Palette.

Go to Layer>Layer Style>Drop Shadow.

Use the following settings:

Blend Mode: Color Burn

Opacity: 100

Angle: any

Distance: 0

Spread: 0

Size: 250

Contour: leave at the default setting

Noise: 0 (although you can play with this as desired)

Note: The font shown in the screen shots is DJB TweenyBopper by Darcy Baldwin, Sweet Shoppe Designs

Filed Under: Tutorials Tagged With: digital scrapbooking, journaling, Photoshop Tutorial, typography

Journaling Bundle

April 2, 2011 By Misty Leave a Comment

Add stylish journaling quickly with this set of paint stroke journaling masks, journaling lines and fitted text paths. For a limited time, get both the Brushed Up Text and On the Line sets and save on the bundle. This offer ends April 30, 2011.

Each product is also available individually.
In On the Line you’ll receive 7 sets of dotty journaling lines and customized text paths for each image. The clipping masks and text paths come as a layered .psd file. Each set of lines is also provided as a .png image.

In Brushed Up Text, you’ll receive 7 brushstroke clipping masks with journaling lines already ‘cut out’ of the paint strokes. I’ve also included customized text paths for each image. The clipping masks and text paths come as a layered .psd file. Each clipping mask is also provided as a .png image.

Filed Under: Products Tagged With: digital scrapbooking, journaling, text path

Creating a Text Path for Journaling Mats Part 2

March 17, 2011 By Misty 15 Comments

SUBJECT: Create a text path for adding text to a journaling mat.

PROGRAM: PSCS3 (can be adapted for other versions of Photoshop)

PREREQUISITES: Basic understanding of the layers palette and the selection and text tools, Creating a Text Path for Journaling Mats Part 1

Last week’s tutorial Creating a Text Path for Journaling Mats covered making a path that fits inside a journaling mat, but what if you have elements around the mat? Or have ‘tucked’ the mat under a photo. This tutorials will show you how to use the selection subtraction options to further customize a text path.

My starting point below is a journal spot that I have embellished with various elements. Each item is still in it’s own layer. I’ll quickly recap the steps covered last week, see the first part of the tutorial for more detailed steps with screen shots.

1) Ctrl + click on the journaling mat icon in the layers palette. You should have marching ants around the edges of the journaling mat.

2) Go to Select>Modify>Contract, enter the number of pixels you want to contract the selection. Click OK.

3) Click on the Polygonal Lasso tool in the Tools Palette. Toward the left side of the Options Bar, you’ll see 4 icons with various square configurations. Click on the third one from the left. This is the ‘Subtract from Selection’ option.

4) Now outline the area around your elements that you want to ‘take away’ from the selection. To do this, click on your canvas to create ‘corners’ of a shape around your elements.

Continue around your elements until you are back to your starting point and click.

The shape will automatically be subtracted from the original selection.

6) Repeat this process as needed until only the area in which you want text is selected.

Note: I use the Polygonal Selection Tool because I find it works the best for creating an irregular shape around elements. However you can use the subtract setting with any selection tool (Lasso Tool, Marquee Tools, etc.)

With your selection set, all that remains is to create your text path and begin typing. These steps are covered in detail in part 1, so I’ll just give you the basic steps here.

7) Open the Paths Palette by going to Window>Paths

8) At the bottom of the Paths Palette, click on the dotted circle with two arrows to create a path from your selection.

9) Click on the text tool in the Tools Palette then click on your canvas inside of the path.

10) Begin typing your text. Your text should fill the inside of your journaling mat as you type.

Embellishments used in this tutorial are from Down in the Meadow available at Sweet Shoppe Designs.

Filed Under: Tutorials Tagged With: digital scrapbooking, digital scrapbooking tutorials, journaling, text path

Write On Journal Packs

January 28, 2011 By Misty Leave a Comment

The Write On line of journaling spots with fitted text paths are designed to help you add your story to your page without the fuss of trying to make your text ‘fit’ onto a journal spot. With the Write On packs the ‘fitting’ has been done for you.