DIY: Nautical Shower Invitation in PSE

I've been bumbling around and slowly trying to teach myself how to use Photoshop Elements (PSE) 10.

I want to be able to design my own things, but I have literally negative experience so my learning curve has been pretty slow. I finally feel like I've picked up a few key skills (some by googling and some just by trial and error), so I feel confident enough to try out my own projects (like making a bridal shower invitation!).

My dear friend Tiffany is getting married in September, and I was stoked when she agreed to let me host a shower for her at my place (which is happening this Sunday). Remember when Tiffany got engaged on a sail boat? Her wedding is going to have some nautical touches (think sailboats not sand/starfish).

I took a stab at designing her shower invite in PSE. Please note that I am definitely not a PSE expert. I'm sure that there may be many better ways to do what I did, so I'm just sharing with you the way I made it happen.

Here's my step by step process. I wanted to use the colors of her bridesmaids dresses: an ocean/teal, dark maroon, and a royal purple. I wanted to incorporate a slightly nautical touch, so I went with ropes. :)

Here's the final product (excuse the blurring for privacy):

One biggg lesson I learned with this project is that the way the color looks on my screen does not= the color that prints (thank you husband). Viet patiently explained to me what was happening after I spent a significant amount of time designing the invite and picking the colors perfectly (I may or may not have saved the color swatches from our JCrew bridesmaids dresses to use for the invite). I was a bit frustrated I couldn't get it perfect, but I decided it was good enough. :)

Step 1:

Once I created a new file for an A9 card (8.5 x 5.5 inches), I clicked on the brush tool to create the border.

Step 2:

I selected the brush I wanted to use by going up to the top left corner box (the top yellow arrow) and pushing the drop down arrow to get a variety of different brush options. The 2nd yellow arrow is pointing to the brush groups (I'm making these terms up as I go :)). I liked the "Pen Pressure" group the best. and My favorite was the Torn paper (medium sized) option #27. When looking in the boxes, you're really just trying to find the right simple shape you are looking for. You can customize how dark the imprint will be and how spaced out each of the images will be by clicking on the opacity button and the little tool button right to the right of the opacity button.

Step 3:

To use the brush, I just held down the main button on my mac and moved my mouse around the outside corners of the image. It took several practice tries to get it looking exactly how I wanted it:

Step 4:

I wanted Tiffany's name to really stick out, so I used an all cap font I downloaded from dafont.com. It's called "Claire Hand."

Step 5:

I wanted some sort of symbol to pull the whole thing together, and I found the perfect rope heart on istockphoto.com. I opened it into PSE, and then I dragged into the mainscreen from my project bin using the moving tool (top left).

Here it is up close:

I used the paintbucket tool to change the color of the heart to pink.

Step 6:

When searching for nautical inspired invitations to get some inspiration, I found one that had really cool writing that looked like a rope on dafont called "Rope MF."

Then the rest of the invite was just simple text.