Tutorial- Make your own wood veneer digital elements

This might just be the single silliest page I’ve ever made. And the one that took the longest to make. And possibly the second layout I’ve made with a Katy Perry song. And I looove it! Like super duper love it. I learned so much making this page!

Using wood on your scrapbook pages is a huge trend in the scrapbooking world. More in paper scrapbooking than digital it seems. I’ve been watching a ton of Two Peas videos lately and it seems like there is at least a little wood veneer on every page. I did a bit of searching for similar products in the digital world, but couldn’t find much.

Luckily for me, Tiff has some CT wood products, so I got to play around and make my own. Just like my new obsession for making my own flairs, making my own wood elements has been a really fun learning experience.

I “wood-ified” the title by typing my text, simplifying the layer, then applying this layer style. Super simple.

The arrows were done by using the arrow shapes that come in PSE, simplifying those, and adding a style as well.

I downloaded these custom circle shapes to get the arrows inside the circles. To get custom shapes into PSE, download your files and find the file with a .csh extension. Copy that file into Macintosh HD-> Applications -> Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 -> Support Files -> Presets -> Custom Shapes. (They don’t make it easy to load shapes like they do for brushes and styles in PSE11).

For the joined hearts, I used one of these heart shapes. I duplicated it twice, then arranged them so they were in a line touching each other. I simplified the layers, then merged them, making them all on one layer. Then I applied the wood styles.

For the wooden “hello”, I used this font to type out the words I wanted to use. (note, if you want to use the font commercially, you need to purchase a license) Then I drew the outline of the shape I wanted to surround the words with, in this case, a rectangle. I moved it around so that the bottom of the word would touch the edge of the inside of the rectangle, Then I simplified all the layers and merged them before adding the layer style.

The talk bubble “wow” was a bit trickier to figure out. There isn’t an “outline of a talk bubble” custom shape, so I figured out how to make one. (with the help of Professor Google). I drew a regular talk bubble shape on my LO using the custom shape tool. Then I simplified the shape and added a stroke to the outside (right click your shape and select “edit layer style”. Check the Stroke box and play around with the slider until you get the thickness you want).Then I used the Magic Wand tool to select my talk bubble. It should only select the area inside the Stroke. Then I hit delete, which made the talk bubble disappear, leaving just the outline. After that, I just added words like in the above paragraph and continued from there.

That may seem like a lot of work, but once you’ve done it a couple of times, it goes by pretty quickly. And if you’re like me and want to make your own customized ellies, it’s definitely worth the time!

Credits-
In This Moment kit
Wood It Be overlays
Bead Blast 1
All by Inspired by Dominic
Wood veneers made by me using Wood it Shine Layer Styles by Inspired by Dominic
Flairs made by me using Bekah E’s Clear Layer Styles
Fonts- Katy Berry, Lobster, and Always in My Heart

*I am a Creative Team Member. This means that I receive free products in exchange for making and advertising layouts for designers. However, the opinions expressed here are my own. The enthusiasm expressed here is definitely my own. See more of my CT layouts here.