Hello all my artsy friends! I hope everyone is staying cool (or warm, depending on where you live). We are enjoying a “cooling pattern” of highs in the upper 80’s this week, but lower humidity. I seriously cannot wait for those “oh so awesome” cool fall days.
Since I have been trying to stay inside and take advantage of some creative time, I thought I would stop by and share with you a fun idea for using word strips. I don’t know about you, but I love using word strips for journaling, but sometimes there just isn’t enough space on the page to fit the ones I want to use. Another creative way to use word strips is to substitute them for other traditional elements.
For example, on this page I used a word strip for my subtitle and also used them to create a frame for my photo (click on layout for full credits):
The word strips that form the photo frame actually came as a combined set of two strips. I separated them by drawing a box around the bottom strip with the polygonal lasso tool and then right>clicked inside the box and chose the “Layer Via Cut” option in the pop up menu. This puts each word strip on its own level in the layers palette.
If the Layer Via Cut option is faded out (meaning it is not available), then rasterize the word strip layer and try it again. Rasterizing is easy, just right click on the word strip layer in the layers palette and choose “Rasterize” from the pop up menu.
Once the word strips are separated, just resize them (if necessary) and position them around the photo. Once you have them positioned, select all of the word strip layers in the layers palette, right click, and choose “Merge Layers” from the pop up menu. This will join all of the layers into one frame layer for shadowing.
And that is all there is to it! I hope you have fun experimenting with this technique. Be sure to share your creative ideas for using word strips in the comments. :) And, of course, share your pages with us in the TLP Gallery!
Until next time ~
Judie (HeyJude)
Jan Bolton says
Thank you, Judie. I love this idea of using word strips for a frame. Awesome layout!