Hey all, Polly Jewelle here with a quick hybrid tutorial. I’ve been slowly trying clear out my craft closet of all unfinished projects. Tell me I’m not the only one with a closet filled with unfinished projects?! One project that has been in there for a long time is some wood letters. Each letter is the first initial of my daughters names. I’ve wanted to find a pretty piece of scrapbook paper to cover them, but my local scrapbook store never seems to have anything that would work. The letters continued to sit in the closet and gather dust. That is until I realized I have 1000’s of papers right at my fingertips. Digi papers to the rescue! I browsed through the store at The LilyPad and discovered Gina Miller’s Colorless papers. I knew these would be perfect for the job so I grabbed them and got to work. Before using these beautiful papers I needed to create a template of my letters. Here is a quick overview of how I did that.
First, I took my wooden letter and scanned it at 300 dpi on my scanner flatbed. Use 300 dpi because the output of your scan needs to be at the same dpi as what your patterned paper will be. Open up your scan in Photoshop.
Next we are basically going to “extract” our letter. There are many ways to do this but I love to use the magic eraser because it is so fast and easy! To do this go over to the eraser tool and toggle through your options until you come to the magic eraser tool. It looks like an eraser with a star on it. Go over to the background of your scan and click once. After clicking once most of my background was gone.
Continue clicking on parts of the scan that you don’t want. The magic eraser tool can be finicky and will try to eraser your whole letter sometimes. Go slow with your clicks and if it does erase your letter just use the undo tool! After about two minutes or less of using the magic eraser tool I was left with this.
I finished off my “extraction” by using the normal eraser tool on the remaining spots. If you notice that the eraser tool took small chunks out of the side of your letter use a brush to fill them back in. I didn’t have that problem with this letter or I would show you a screen shot. With my extraction complete I went ahead and dragged it over to a new 8.5 x 11 document. I recolored one Gina’s fabulous papers and clipped it to my letter extraction. Leaving me with this lovely letter!
From here you just need to print and cut out your letter. Adhere your paper letter down to your wooden letter and embellish to your hearts content. I kept mine simple so my daughters wouldn’t be tempted to pick at it. Just a little ribbon and some Stickels to add some interest.
Can I let you in on a little secret? This technique can be used for lots of other projects! Use it to re-purpose a banner, or how about those shaped mini albums that are gathering dust in the closet too? The possibilities are endless! Ready to give this a whirl? Go ahead and show us in the Hybrid gallery what you come up with!
mirjam says
That’s so cute Jewelle!