Text ribbons

[vawitt]

Not sure what else to call these...a ribbon similar to the one shown below was included with one of the free scrapping kits I downloaded recently. I thought it looked cool, so I decided to see if I could make one...



Here's how!

1. Select the paper you wish to use for a ribbon
2. Activate the Type tool.
3. Select a font to use for your word art. I chose a nice, swirly font – Scriptina available free from www.dafont.com
4. Select a text color that contrasts with the paper that will be used for a ribbon.
5. Type the word you wish to use as your art. Depending on your font selection, you may wish to make the font bold to give it a little more weight.
6. Deselect the text layer. (CTRL+D)
7. CTRL+Click on the text layer thumbnail. This puts marching ants around the letters themselves.
8. Select the rectangular marquee tool. Use the options bar to set the behavior to Add to Selection.
9. With the ants still marching on your text layer, draw a rectangular selection the width of the paper. Make the selection tall enough to capture the lower-case letters, but short enough to leave some of the tops and bottoms of the upper case letters, or letters with tails, hanging above and/or below the selection.
10. Select > Modify > Expand. Try 25 px.
11. Click on the paper layer. Ants should still be marching. CTRL+J to make a copy of the selection.
12. Turn off the eyeball on your paper and view the results.
13. When you are satisfied, hold down your CTRL key and select the ribbon layer and the text layer and merge them Layer > Merge layers.
14. Save the file in PNG format to preserve the transparency.

Have fun!

~Val in steamy IL

[kImages]

Love it! Thanks for the tut Val.

[efarnstrom]

Thanks, I'm off to try this out now!

[Abby]

I was just working on a layout and wanted to make the text standout from the background better. This will work great for that! Thanks a lot!

[Bayla]

Val,

Thanks for that. I just tried it out. Nice and easy to do.

Bayla

[Newtome]

That was great! Thank you,
Elaine

[vawitt]

Wow! Nice one!!

~Val

[Newtome]

Thank you, it was fun and it was the first time I was confident enough to post.
Elaine

[Martha]

Thanks so much for sharing this great technique! I love it! Here is the front of a card I made using it.
Martha

[Newtome]

Beautiful card Martha and I love your gallery.
Elaine