Holy Crap! It's a Blog Post! 

How to do Fancy Schmancy Lettering

If you're comfortable using Photoshop Elements then you can read this post. It will give you the quick version of how to do this.

http://neonsunshine-jody.blogspot.ca/2011/11/okay.html

You can use this method to do cutouts as well like the Eiffel Tower heart at the bottom.

Beginners, you will also learn to use other functions in this TUT.

For those of you just starting and are still trying to find the photo bin read the post below.
This post will also show you how to:

- quickly find the size, DPI and amount of zoom on your work
- add a plain coloured layer of your choice
- what that little gear on the styles pallette does; like how you can add different shadow effects and even bevels to your work.

Ok Enough with the small talk, onto making 

Fancy Schmancy

Lettering

We're using Elements 11 for this. I'm sure it will work in Elements 13 too.

First open a NEW file from the OPEN button at the top left hand of elements. I made my new file 2"  high x 4" wide.

Notice the round circle on OPEN. Click it to find NEW FILE. A window will open so you can select a background for your text. I chose a TRANSPARENT background.

TIP
The RED OVAL shows the ZOOM factor, the SIZE OF FILE in inches and how many DPI  (mine is 300DPI) the file has.

The FILE menu is circled below. Go to the FILE pull down menu at the top and go down it until you  find PLACE. See picture below. It will open a window that you can select a nice background. I've chosen the highly saturated butterfly background that I made. You can use a dictionary page or postage stamp background; whatever you like.

Don't worry if it doesn't fit. As you can see mine didn't. I dragged the butterfly background so it covered the file background. Don't worry about dragging the picture outside of the background.

Just above the layers pallette on the far left is a paper icon. It's in the lower circle. Click it to add a layer. This will be your text layer. On the screen shot it is shown as layer 1.

TIP
If you want, you can change the name of LAYER 1 to TEXT LAYER by double clicking on the layer name and filling in with your own text.  Hit your return key to finish naming the layer.

Font layer
Choose a font and type a word onto the text layer. Make sure it's a really beefy font because you want to fill the text with the background image. I used CARGO font.

You can get it free from dafont.com
http://www.dafont.com/cargo-crate.font

Once you've typed your word drag the text layer to the bottom of the stack.
At this point you won't be able to see your text anymore.
It's important to have your layers in the proper order, unlike what you can see below.

This should show the text layer at the bottom of the stack.

 Click on the grey background to deselect the 2 layers.

AT LAST THE FUN PART!

Put your cursor between the 2 layers. Then press the OPTION (mac) OR ALT (PC) key. Your cursor will change. If it doesn't gently slide the cursor along the gap between the layers until it does.

When your cursor changes, click your mouse. Voila!
You now have text filled with background.

It may be a bit of a letdown so you can add a plain background so it will pop.

TIP
I've added a boring grey background. To change the layer colour double-click on the top square. It's in the circle on the left.

Adding the background
To get the background, select your layer colour. Click on the LAYER pull down menu. Choose NEW FILL LAYER and then SOLID COLOUR. It will automatically add a layer the same colour as that square that's circled.

Add a shadow and outline text using STROKE
To add the black outline click on your text layer, add a shadow and click on the gear. It will open the window shown above. The outline effect is from the STROKE selection. You can make the outline thick or thin by using the slider on SIZE. I used 3 for the thickness.

Whew! I forgot how much work these blog posts are!
Be sure to leave your comments. Don't be shy about asking questions. If you have a dumb question, there will be lots of other less brave people wondering the same thing. Do it for them. It also helps me.

Ok it's 5am and I'm fried. Have fun with it.