Digital 'Adhesive'

Happy Thursday, everyone! Ron from Club Scrap here with a new digital tutorial for you today.

We all know that paper crafters use a variety of adhesives for making layouts, cards and projects, but you don't normally think about digital crafters needing adhesive, right? Well, today we're going to look at one way to make digital 'adhesive tape' that can be used to add an interesting bit of embellishment to your digital pages and cards.

As always, I'm using Adobe Photoshop 5 to do this, but any program that supports layers should work for you - you may need to modify the steps to accommodate the particular program that you're using.

1. Create a new document, 12x12, 300 ppi, transparent background.

2. Open a background of your choice - I'm using one of the backgrounds from the September Club Scrap Digital™ Kit, Serenity.

3. Drag the background onto your new document (in Photoshop, if you hold the Shift key while you drag, the background will center itself in your new document). Once you drag the background over, you can close the background file.

4. Create a new layer on top of the background.

5. Magnify your layout to zero in on an area - this will help you better see what you're working on.

6. Using your marquee tool, create a rectangle that's about 2 inches long and 1/2 inch high.

7. Use the Fill command (Shift-F5) to fill the rectangle with the color white.

8. Deselect the rectangle (Command/CTRL-D).

9. Use the Polygonal Lasso tool to select a zig-zag area on 1 edge of the rectangle, then delete the selection.

10. Repeat step 9 on the other edge of the rectangle.

11. Reduce the opacity of the rectangle - try around 30% opacity, but this may vary depending on the color of your background.

12. Use the Layer Style Command to set Inner Shadow, Bevel & Emboss, and Drop Shadow, using the parameters shown below. This will add depth and realism to your piece of tape.

Inner Shadow Settings

Bevel & Emboss Settings

Drop Shadow Settings

13. Place the 'tape' on the corner of a photo, rotating it as needed.

14. Make additional pieces of tape as needed for the other corners of the photo.

Tip: Make tape in different sizes and colors and save them all in a single PSD file to use as 'ready to go' elements. Experiment with different opacity, and Layer Style settings to vary the look of your tape pieces.

Hope you enjoyed this quick look at making and using your own digital adhesive! Now go and make something digital!