Working With Templates - Part 1

Today ~ I promised to talk about templates and I am going to show you how to use a template designed by Meredith at M Originals (link is in my sidebar). I would really like to know if this helps you so please leave some feed back in the comment section. Also – email me if there is something you don’t understand. Also - if there is something that you would like me to do a tutorial on - let me know :D

Let’s get started!

I am using template #11 by Meredith and I am working in PSE 6. Here is what my screen looks like after I open up the kit that I chose – which is the Olivia Kit from Shabby Princess.

You will see at the bottom the template and all the items in the project bin. I find it easier to keep the project bin open when I am working with a template. Now that I am ready to work – I change my work area to cascade mode and minimize all my embellishments so that my screen now looks like this:

Now we are ready to start filing in the template space.

For the background I just drag and drop the paper that I want to use into the template and then make sure that it is positioned correctly to fill the page. Easy enough? Now I click on the layer that says Shape One in the layers palate and choose the next paper that I want to work with, by again dropping it into the template that I am working with,

As you can see, the paper is hiding part of the bottom circle – I need to drag it over so that it completely hides the circle I want to fill with paper – See below.

Now I am going to CUT that paper to fit the circle by using the short cut key combination of CTRL and G. See what our template now looks like!

I told you this was easy!!!! Moving on – Next Circle! Oh – BTW – When I am done with a paper I close it – if I decided to use it again – I just reopen it.

So – let do Shape One Copy 2 by highlighting it in the Layers bin.

Drop and Drag the paper you want to use into the template.

Make Sure that You cover the entire circle and use CTRL G to cut your paper.

Two more to go – Remember highlight the layer in the layers palate that you want to fill, drop and drag your paper, and use the CTRL G keystroke to cut your paper – Finish all the circles now.

Here is what I have when my circles are filled:

Now I am going to fill the square – and you can use an image like this if you want to – just add a title and some journaling and you are good to go.

Like I said - now all I have to do is add some journaling and a title and I am done. However, this is not the image that I want to use, my image is a landscape orientation, so I am going to rotate the template and do some embelishing.
and I am going to fill Shape Two with paper.

Time to put Princess-in-Training into the LO.

It is on top and I am going to send it back so that it is under one of the circles. I also added the drop shadow to the image.
Time for a title – and I begin by deleting the layers that are in the template that say title and journaling.

I am going to use the word art provided in the kit and embellish – so I restore all my hidden embellishments back to the work area

Again, drop and drag them into place, and I like to get all my embellishment onto the page and then maximize the page.

Time to move them into to place and here is my final page!

Save your page as both a png and jpeg!

There are a few little trick that I omitted – because I wanted this to be an easy way for folks to get started, like I didn’t tell you how to “paste”the image to the circle and stick them. I am going to do that in tomorrow’s lesson – Templates Part two.