Smash-Up Banner Tutorial with Digi Masking Technique

May 12, 2008
by Jan Barlow

I just love those little banners I've been seeing on layouts and cards lately and I thought it would be fun to make some all “smashed up” (SIStv’s coined term for “hybrid” scrapping which is the mixing of digital and “real” scrapbooking papers and elements).

                   

(See more images here)

For this little project, I used Photoshop Elements 6.0. If you don’t have PSE, did you know that you can download a free 30-day trial (full program) from the Adobe website?

You may ask, "why smash this up, Jan? Wouldn’t it be easier to just cut a triangle out of my patterned paper?” My answer is, “sure, you can. But, do you really want to cut up a whole beautiful sheet of paper for a few diamond or triangle shapes when you can just draw a PERFECT diamond shape in PSE, mask it with your choice of digi paper, and make as many copies, with as many papers, as you’d like?” I’m gonna stop with the quote marks now since it’s me that’s going to be ‘talking” to you the rest of the time anyway.

                  

(See more images here)

Okay - in ADDITION to showing you how to make a cute embellie for your projects, I do have an ulterior motive here, and that is to show you how to digitally "mask" any solid shape that you either brush or draw or type with a digi patterned paper. It's fun. It's magical. It's addicting!

For your convenience, I've created a pdf file containing all these instructions which you can download and print out:
Download JBarlow_Banner-MaskingTut_05-12-08.pdf

For this project you will need:

Photo editing software (I used PSE6)
Digital papers (I chose Audrey Neal's "bluegrid", "greengrid" and "kraftblue" papers from her
     "File 13" Collection)
White cardstock (I used textured for a nice, um, textured effect)
Adhesive (I used a Zig 2-Way glue pen, Tacky glue and Xyron machine)
Ink pad (for distressing edges)
Sandpaper
Scissors
Hole punch
Fiber - ribbon, cord, twine, etc.

For those of you with some knowledge of digi scrapping, you can just follow the bold instructions. Additional instructions are underlined. And, for the most detail, just continue reading.

Let's get started!

Step 1 - Create a blank canvas

(All shortcuts are Photoshop Elements, i.e. PSE). Open your photo editing program and create a new blank document by clicking on the "Ctrl" key and the "N" (for "new"). Specify a size of 8.5 inches width and 11 inches height, a resolution of 300, RGB color and a white background. This will give you a white "canvas" so to speak, to drop your artwork onto and later print out.

         

Step 2 - Drawing Diamonds on a Grid

Turn on the grid by going to "view" in the top toolbar and checking "grid". Each large square on the grid equals one inch and the smaller squares equal a quarter inch.

Before drawing, hit "Ctrl D" (for default) to make sure your foreground/background colors are black/white.

Right-click on the shape tool in the tools section on the left of the page and select "custom shape tool" (heart). (If you hover over each tool with your mouse, the tool's name will pop up.) In the "shape" box at the top (to the right of the heart), click the little arrow to open the fly-out box and then click on the double arrows on the top right edge to open another fly-out box where you can detail the image you're looking for. Choose "shapes" in the alphabetical listing.

    
                       turn on grid                                                custom shape selection tool

In the shapes box, select the filled diamond shape by double-clicking on it. Draw your diamond to about 3 inches long and 1-1/2 inches wide. Of course, the size of the diamond should be relative to the size of the project you're putting the banner on.

                               

Before we go any further, since we will be using these shapes for clipping masks, we will need to simplify this layer that we've just created. This will take the diamond from a shape drawn on a sheet of paper, to a moveable object with a transparent background. Kind of the difference between a drawing and a cut-out.

To simplify the layer, right-click on the diamond layer in your layers palette and choose "simplify layer" from the drop-down menu. You will see the background of the diamond thumbnail go from solid to "checkered". The checkered background indicates transparency in PSE.

Now let's turn off the grid by going to "view" again and checking "grid" again. When the grid is showing, anything that you place on your canvas will "snap to" the guide lines. This is great for aligning photos and objects, but not so much when you just want to nudge things into place, as we will with our next diamond shape.

We're now going to duplicate our diamond shape. Select your "move" tool (see red arrow, below) and with your mouse on the diamond shape, hold down your "alt" key and you will then see a shadowed cursor appear. This means you are about to make a copy onto a new layer. Before you move the cursor, and while you are still holding down the "alt" key, also hold down the "shift" key. Keeping these two keys held down, click and drag your mouse to the right and you will see a new diamond shape. Holding down the "shift" key during the copying process enables you to move the duplicated object in a perfectly straight line up or down from the original. Adjust your new diamond so that it is next to the old one with a little space between. You'll notice in your layers palette on the right that PSE has made a new layer for the new diamond. Now, go ahead and make two more diamonds the same way so that you have four diamonds in a row.

Step 3 - Make a Clipping Mask

With our diamonds on a transparent (or simplified) background, we have now made shapes that we can use as clipping masks. In PSE lingo, this pretty much means that you can clip another digital element, usually a pp or a photo, to this shape.

To continue, we will open up 3 patterned papers (pp's). Because of the small shapes that we are using, I suggest a pp with a small scale pattern, or else you won't be able to detect the pattern. I chose Audrey Neal's "bluegrid", "greengrid" and "kraftblue" pp's from her "File 13" collection. I will be using the papers in the same order as just mentioned.

You can open your papers by clicking "ctrl" plus "O" (for open) and browsing to the file where your digi pp's have been stored. Choose your 3 pp's and click "open". (If you hold the "ctrl" key, you can make a multiple selection.) You will see the pp's appear in the project bin underneath the main screen, as well as in the main screen.

My blue pp is on the top of the stack that I just loaded, so I will move the blue pp to the background canvas. In your layers palette, click on your first diamond layer. Now, when we pull in the pp, it will come in just on top of the first diamond shape. Go back to the main screen and, with your "move" tool still selected, click and drag the blue pp down onto the "untitled" document in your project bin at the bottom of your page, under the main screen, as shown below, left.

 

You will notice that the edge of the blue pp extends outside of the background canvas. Let's resize the blue pp, so that the pattern is smaller for our diamond. Drag the paper so that the top left corner aligns with the top left corner of the background canvas. Then click on the bottom right little square of the bounding box and drag the paper up so it fits just at the right edge of the background canvas, as shown above, right. It will be shorter than the background, but that's okay - it won't show. Click the green arrow to commit the size change. Now we're ready to clip the blue paper on the 1st diamond shape in one easy move.

In the layers palette, you will see the blue pp above the 1st diamond layer. Place your mouse cursor at the border right in between the pp and the diamond layers and then hit the "alt" key. You will see a symbol that looks kind of like an "8" with an arrow to the left. That means you are about to clip the top layer onto the bottom layer.

     

Go ahead and click with your mouse while that symbol is showing and - to da! - your pp is now clipped to the diamond shape. See it up in the main screen? Cool, huh?

             

Let's go ahead and duplicate your pp layer in the layers palette and clip that same pp to the 2nd diamond. Target the pp layer by clicking on it. Then, right-click and select "duplicate layer". Another blue clipped layer will appear just above the 1st blue layer. Click on the new copy and simply drag it to just above the 2nd diamond layer. Again, place your mouse cursor at the border right in between the pp and the diamond layers and then hit the "alt" key. Click with your mouse to clip the duplicated pp to the 2nd diamond. You should now have the blue pp clipped onto the 1st 2 diamonds, as shown below, left:

 

Now we will mask each of the remaining diamonds with each of the remaining papers following the exact same steps:

Click on the 3rd diamond in the layers palette. Double-click on green pp. Make sure move tool is selected. Drag green paper down onto the background canvas in the project bin. Resize the pp. Place your mouse between the green pp and 3rd diamond layers in the layers palette. Click "alt" and then click your mouse. Repeat steps for the kraft pp and 4th diamond. You will then have 4 masked diamonds as shown above, right. If you would like to further resize your pp's to get more detail of pattern, just click on the pp layer in the layers palette with the move tool selected and simply drag the corners of the pp until it's as small as you'd like. (You'll have to click the green checkmark to commit in order to see the change.)

Now you know how to mask a pp onto any shape! You can use your shape tool to draw a shape, as we did, or you can use a shape that you "brush" onto a layer, or you can even use an alphabet letter as a mask. I recommend shapes and alphies that have enough "area" to really show the clipped pp. Have FUN playing with that. And, of course, anything that you mask, if you do it on a simplified layer with a transparent background, it can just be printed out onto a white paper (as we will do) and then cut out for use on a "real" paper layout. That's what "smashing up" is all about!

Step 4 - Making Some Small Diamonds

Now we're going to make three smaller diamonds for variety in our banner. Since our diamonds are already masked with paper, this will be an easy-peasy process.

In the layers palette, click on the first blue pp layer. Now, holding the "shift" key, also click on the diamond layer below it. Make sure you have the move tool selected. On the main screen, put your mouse on the selected diamond, hit the "alt" key and drag a new masked diamond into place as you see below.

                  

Now we'll make this new diamond a little smaller. After you drag the new diamond into place, click on it and you will see the bounding box appear. Grab the corner of the bounding box and simply drag the box to a slightly smaller size. Click the green checkmark to commit the change.

Now let's make a copy of the green masked diamond and the kraft masked diamond. (Remember to select BOTH the pp and diamond layers in the layers palette at once by holding down the "shift" key.) Resize each one. They don't need to be exactly the same size. Variety is good. You should now have a row of 4 larger diamonds and a row of 3 smaller diamonds.

Step 5 - Make a Duplicate Set

I want to make some more diamonds while I'm at it and fill up our background. There's a super easy way to do this without moving each layer individually. Select your move tool. In your layers palette click on the very bottom diamond layer, hold the "shift" key, and also select the very top layer of all in the layers palette. (All but the bottom background layer.) Now ALL of the masked diamonds should be selected. You can take your cursor and move them around as a group now. Place them on the page so that there's an equal border at the top and on both sides.

Now, let's duplicate this whole top half! While pointing to the selected top half, hold down your "alt" key and "shift" key together. Then click and drag the duplicated copy down so that it fits underneath the top setion with an equal boundary on the bottom and sides. Let go and, voila, you now have 14 masked diamonds. You can click on any of the layers in the layers palette now and you'll see the individual layer become highlighted as you click on it. Wasnt that SO much easier than measuring and drawing each one individually?

                         

Step 6 - Adding Text to Masked Shapes

I want to spell out the word "romance" on 7 of the diamonds and I chose to do that on the top two rows. For the 7 diamonds I'm going to add text to, I want to first merge the 2 layers of each clipping mask together. That way I don't have to worry about accidentally moving the pp behind the mask. I do this by right-clicking on the paper layer in the layers palette and then I choose "merge down". Then click on the next pp layer, right-click and choose merge down and so forth until you have 7 patterned diamonds visible in both the layers palette and on the main screen.

Before adding the text, target (or select) the very top layer in the layers palette. This way you'll be able to see all the text, as it won't be hidden by layers over it.

It will be easier to add the text to a zoomed-in view of our main screen. Hold down the 'alt" key and roll your mouse scroller AWAY from you to zoom in. I want my text to be in white, so first, click "D" for default, which brings up the default colors of black/white for the background/foreground. Click now on "X" to switch the foreground color to white (and the background to black).

Select the "type" tool ("T") and place your cursor in about the middle of the bottom half of the 1st diamond. I chose a distressed font to give a "stamped" effect.

After you type the letter, click twice on the move tool and arrange the letter just where you would like it to be. Keep in mind that on your banner, you will only see the lower half of the diamond, as it will be folded over.

                     

Now let's put just a teeny drop shadow on that letter and it will look more like a rub-on or a sticker. In the palette bin at the top of the right side, click on "Effects", then the 2nd icon which is "Layer Styles". From the drop down box, choose drop shadows. Choose the last one in the top row - "low" (as seen below, left) and double click on it. Now scroll down to your letter in the layers palette and you will see a little "fx" on the layer.

   

Double click on the "fx" in the layer and you will get a "style settings" box, as shown, above, right. You can do quite a bit of adjustment to the drop shadow here and you can even save these settings and paste them into other layers. For the letter's drop shadow, we will key in the following 3 numbers: Size = 5, Distance = 5, Opacity = 40. That will give a nice, subtle and realistic looking shadow.

Next we'll make a copy of the letter. Select the move tool and, with the cursor on the letter, just as before, click the "alt" key and drag the letter to the next diamond. Release. Click again on "alt", drag, release. Repeat until each diamond has a letter on it for the word you want to make.

Now we will change the letters to spell the word "romance". First, make sure that in addition to the move tool being selected, you also check the "auto select layer" box (just on top of the move tool). This will help you to locate the layer your selected letter is on in the layers palette. On the main screen, click once on the letter you want to change and you will see the bounding box appear. Find the layer that has now been highlighted in the layers palette and double-click on the letter thumbnail in that layer (i.e. the actual little pictue of the "T" in the layer.) Now the letter on the main screen will be highlighted and you can simply type to change it to the appropriate letter.

Note: When I spelled out "romance", I didn't want the same colors and sizes next to each other so I mixed up the placement of the letters. Just be sure to double-check to make sure you get ALL the correct letters in the word placed where you want them. Since we copied each letter with the font, size, color and drop shadow choices already made, it was a simple matter to just change the letter.

Step 7 - Printing

       

Now, what you see on your main screen, as shown above, will be what gets printed.

Go ahead and choose print from the "file" menu. Hit print, and in preferences, select "best" for quality.

I used a textured cardstock which, of course, gave my little banner some texture.

Step 8 - Finishing Banner and Applying to Project

The letter diamonds will be folded over cording and adhered together in the finished state. For the remaining diamonds, you may choose to fold them in half as well, or you can cut each diamond in half to make two triangles that will actually be hanging freely from a cord or ribbon.

For the whole diamonds: cut each diamond out and crease in half "loosely", but don't make a hard crease at this point. If you have a Xyron machine, now is the time to send the diamonds through, re-flattened with the patterned side UP.

Choose and measure the twine or cording you want to use. (I made sure that my word would fit on an 8.5 x 11 layout way back when I sized my diamonds.) A rounded cording or twine works great with this method, but I think a thin ribbon would work as well. Remove the diamonds from the Xyron and place them on your work space with the sticky side up and be sure the letters are in the correct order. Carfully place the twine at the fold line of each diamond and then, one at a time, fold the diamonds over the twine so that the letter shows on the top and adhere.

   

When folding, make sure that the point and sides meet up. Sand or ink the edges and then further distress with the edge of a scissors, if desired. Bend 'em up a little, too. This is just my preference, as I love the shabby chic look. Also this process makes the paper a little more like fabric. Add to your project.

            

Here, you see the banner with the word "romance" along the side of the page. I wrapped the twine around to the back.

For half-diamonds: I found it easiest to start by cutting my row of diamonds in half, across, at the midpoint, giving me a block with the triangle tops at each end (shown below, left). We will be "stringing" these triangles to make the banners, so I flipped this block over and drew a pencil line where I thought I would want the holes to be punched. After drawing the line, I then finished cutting out the triangles, punched 2 holes for my ribbon or fiber, one at either end of the top of the triangle, and then distressed them, as above. You could also sew on them, stamp on them, place rubs on them - whatever your creative mind can think up.

 

Then, thread your ribbon, cord, fiber or whatever, through the holes. I find that a dental floss threader is the best as it's flexible and will fit through most holes easily. You can either wrap your ribbon around to the back of the project, or leaving a little extra, knot the end and let it hang loosely. Again, bend up your little banner to give it added dimension.

   

Then, finally, add the banner to your project! You can either keep your banner straight, like I did in the "Romance" layout, or as in the card below, let it twist and turn a little for a more whimsical effect.

       

This is SUCH a fun little project. The variations and possibilities are endless. I hope you've enjoyed learning the clipping mask technique and I hope you'll take the time to play around with adding a banner to some of your projects. I'd love to see your creations - please share them with me by emailing me at janlbinpa@hotmail.com. If you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to pm me (pascrapgal) or email me!

xoxoxo
Jan   

Comments

[Cathy]

I LOVE these little banners! so fun!
Thanks for the tutorial Jan!!!

[Lucy]

Awwwww but this is not only clever but amazing and so cute!!!
I so gonna do me some banners!
Luv ya Jan:D

[kristina]

This is wonderful. Thanks for the tutorial! :)

[Britta]

Hi Jan! Thank you so much for this AWESOME tutorial! This must have been so much work for you!
I followed it step by step (have to say: I am a total photoshop beginner and just downloaded the Photoshop 30days trial) and in the middle of Step 3 I just can´t clip the pages! The icon is (how you´d call it in word) grey-backgrounded and I can´t even hit it. Have I made a mistake in one of the earlier steps? Maybe you can help?
I am sorry if this question sounds stupid but as I said I am totally new to this whole digi thing. It is this blog that made me "go for it" *lol*
Have a great Sunday!
Britta

[Joscelyne (Joscie) Cutchens]

super super cute! I have been somewhat obsessed with banners myself lately! :)