Article written using Photoshop CS4 and Windows 7
Occasionally, life slows down a little bit, and I have some time to reflect on where I am going and what I’ve been doing. I evaluate my goals, and sometimes I adjust them. One of the goals I had set for myself this year was to keep in better contact with my friends and family. How is it possible in the age of instant communication that I haven’t had contact with some of them in more than six months? I’m sure I don’t know how my life got so busy that I can’t carve enough time out of my daily schedule to touch base with the people I love!
I had a quiet weekend ahead, and it was the ideal time to take action. I wanted to reach out and touch some people, and I wanted to be effective, efficient, and personal all at the same time.
Then I had an ah-ha moment! This was a job for my digital scrapbooking hobby to kick into gear! It was the ideal time to shop in the Scrap Girls Boutique, to reach into my stash of digital scrapbooking collections and to make a just because card. I headed straight to the Boutique and picked out a set of greeting card templates and a collection that I thought would suit my needs. The Scrap Girls Boutique is a source of never-ending inspiration to me, and my creative juices were flowing as I checked out and downloaded my new supplies.
ScrapSimple Card Templates are versatile, and they make it super easy to create a greeting card because they already have all the elements of the card in place for you. You just need to color them to suit your desires.
I was using Jo Corne’s ScrapSimple Card Templates: Cardiology 6×4 Vertical, so I opened up the PSD of the card I had chosen, and then I immediately saved it under another name so that I wouldn’t write over the original. I chose to use the Zoomba Collection Biggie by Brandy Murry because I liked the bright and saturated colors.
Although there are several ways to color ScrapSimple Templates, I chose to use clipping masks to achieve the look I wanted. Clipping masks are the digital equivalent of cutting and pasting paper.
To create a clipping mask, look to your Layers Palette and position the paper layer above the layer you want it to be clipped to (to take the shape of). With the colored paper layer active, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+G. (In Photoshop Elements on a PC, use Ctrl+G; on a Mac with Photoshop CS, use Cmd+Opt+G, and with Photoshop ELements, use Opt+G).
In the screenshot below, you can see that when I dragged my paper into the layout and positioned the paper layer over (above) the layer where I wanted it, it covered everything underneath it. When I created the clipping mask, the 12×12 digital paper was “cut” to the exact shape of the paper strip below it.
Here’s a look at the Layers Palette before the clipping mask:
And here is how it looks after I applied the clipping mask:
I continued positioning my digital papers and applying clipping masks until all of the pieces of the template were the way I wanted them. Then I replaced the words “Thank You” with “Just Because…” and added a style to the words and the flower embellishment. I added some butterfly embellishments that I made using the Custom Shape Tool and thePaint Sheers Embellishments from the Scrap Girls Boutique. Then I printed it on 8.5×11-inch white cardstock, trimmed it, and folded it.
Now I had a beautiful, custom-made card to let my family and friends know that they’re special to me “Just Because.” Thanks to ScrapSimple Card Templates, it was a fun and easy project to make in the time I had available.
Here’s a picture of the completed 4×6-inch card:
The next time you want to send a greeting card, give ScrapSimple Card Templates a try. When you do, be sure to post your creation in the Scrap Girls Gallery so we can share your joy and admire what you’ve done!
Digital scrapbooking products used:
Commercial license versions of ScrapSimple Tools – Styles: Resin 6401 Super Biggie are also available.