Photoshop Elements Themes Part 2

Part two of the video series showing you how to create a scrapbook layout using Photoshop Elements themes.

Now, to complete this layout, I want to add some embellishments and some journaling to it. First of all, I am going to go under the artworks and effects palette and click on the first icon here, and that’s going to take me to my artwork. I’m going to select graphics, and on the right here, I’m going to select flowers.

There are several flowers to choose from. I like this one, so I’m going to double-click on it, and it will land right on the center of my layout. So I’m going to take it and move it up here to the top in this empty space, and then – using some key commands, I’m going to click on Alt, Shift, and then I’m going to drag it over to the side.

I’m going to do that again and it’s going to make another copy. As you can see over here on the right, in the layers palette, each flower has its own separate layer. I’m going to scale them down and kinda rotate them a bit, just so they are not identical. Do the same with this one, rotate that one this way. Click okay.

Now, at this point, I could add a drop shadow to these as well, by clicking on the special effects icon up here and under layer styles, selecting drop shadows. Click on soft edge. Select each one, and do the same for each.

At this point, the shadow’s a little dark, so when you look over here on your layer tablet, there’s a new little icon on the layer that specifies if there’s a style attached to that layer. Now, if you click on that, a style setting is going to appear. Here, you can adjust the angle of your drop shadow and specify the size. I’m going to keep it lower. You can specify the distance, and the opacity. I’m going to drop the opacity down to about 25. And then do the same for each one.

I like to keep my drop shadows light because it adds and gives definition, but it’s more subtle, and it goes nicely with this layout here.

Next, I’m going to add my journaling, and create a new layer. I’m going to click on the top layer, click on the icon, so that way, it drops my new layer way at the top. Next select the marquis tool. I’m going to make sure the rectangle marquis is selected. And I’m going to click and drag in this area. Then I’m going to fill it with white, which is my background color. I can do that by clicking Control, background key.

Next, I’m going to drop the opacity quite a bit, probably 35 percent, that way it will keep the effect of the flowers behind, subtly showing through, I can then write journaling on top and it won’t compete so much.

Now that I’ve typed my journaling in, I’m going to center it in here so it looks really nice on that vellum paper. Then I’m going to zoom in just a bit here.

The next thing that I’m going to do is add small brads to the corners of the vellum paper to anchor it. I’m going to create a new layer at the top. Select the marquis, elliptical marquis tool. While holding down the Shift key, I’m going to click and drag to make a perfect circle, then I’m going to fill it with my foreground color by selecting Alt and the Backspace key at the same time.

Next, I’m going to choose bevels under layer styles. Select simple inner and click apply. That’s all you have to do to create a very simple brad for your layouts.

Then I’m going to click on the move tool. Next, while holding down the Alt key and the Shift key, click and drag all the way over to the corner. This makes a copy of your layer, while moving it horizontally or vertically, without moving it out of alignment.

Now, I’m going to do that for all of my corners. The last one, I’m going to have to eyeball, Zoom back out and look at it overall, and there you go. A very simple layout using just the elements in Photoshop Elements 5.