Hello everyone and Happy August! I’m just popping in today with a quick and super cool trick to make stamped elements look like they are made from melted wax. Take a look at the School Rules title on this page:
Those alphas did not come with the kit I used on this page – I made them with a stamped alpha set and a quick bevel adjustment which can be done in either Photoshop or PSE. (BTW – the kit I used is Favorite Teacher from Etc. by Danyale and is in today’s SOSN sale for 50% off.)
I followed these steps to make the melted wax effect:
1. Place or stamp the alphas to arrange your title. Once you have it aligned to your liking, merge all the letters together onto one layer by selecting them all in the layers palette, right clicking and choosing “merge layers” in the pop up menu. Repeat this step for each word in your title.
2. Add a color fill layer above the title word by activating the word layer and clicking on the create new fill or adjustment layer icon (half filled circle) and choosing Solid Color in the pop up menu. Make your color choice in the Color Fill pop up box and click OK. Now clip the Color Fill layer to the word layer (shortcut Ctrl/Alt/G).
3. Now activate the word layer again and add a bevel effect. In Photoshop you can do this by clicking on the Layer Style (fx) button and choosing Bevel Emboss from the pop up menu. A dialogue box will appear where you can choose your settings. These are the settings I used on my title:
In PSE, you can find bevels in the Styles menu. Click on the Styles button at the bottom of the layers palette and then choose Bevels from the drop down menu at the top of the styles palette. This will bring up several different beveled effects. Try them out by clicking on a bevel choices until you find the one you like the best. The styles that most closely resemble the effect on my page are “scalloped edge” and “simple sharp inner.” Once you have applied the bevel style, you can adjust it by clicking on the fx located on the right side of the word layer and then adjusting the size of the bevel in the pop up box. I found that the simple sharp inner bevel with the settings below was the closest to the effect in Photoshop:
4. As a final step, you can add a very slight drop shadow to the word to add a little depth. The drop shadow settings on my layout were Distance: 3 | Spread: 0 | Size: 3.
And that is it! You can use this effect on any stamped element to give it the look of melted wax. I hope you have fun playing with this technique. :)
Until next time ~
Judie
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