Cool Little Project Thingy

Hey guess what?!? It's finally spring break! And what an amazing break it has been. I'm loving this whole not worrying about school thing. But sadly it ends soon. :( HOWEVER, spring break being over means that graduation is just that much closer! (YAY!)

I've been working on a fun little project that I'm thinking will end up being graduation presents for some of my friends. Its basically personalized stationary, and it's super easy to do with Photoshop. Here's how I've been doing it:

Open up Photoshop and create a new project. Make it paper-sized (I'm going to be printing this so I'm making it 8.5 x 11)

It should look like this.

Then, find a picture that you want to be the background. I have found that it works best with pictures that are taken "long-ways" so that they are oriented the same way as the paper. Generally these pictures look sideways on the computer before you edit them.

like this! I did all necessary edits to the picture,
 before I started working with the new project that I created.

After you locate your picture and make sure that everything is turned the right way and cropped the way you want, you "place" it onto the 8.5 x 11 background that you made. To do this, you File > Place 

Then choose your picture. Double click it to put it on the background. It shows up and has this big X over it, that's because it's not in the project yet. At this point, you can move it around and then hit Enter (on your keyboard) to actually put it there. 

At this point it becomes fun and artsy :) hehe.

I like to mess with the opacity of the picture a lot.

and I also like to make things Black & White. Though this picture I like with the washed-out colors. But if you want to make it B&W, I like to add an adjustment layer, that way it's easy to undo.

Of course I like to mess with the opacities....:)

After you get the background the way you want it, you'll want to add lines. Which is super easy. All you do is use the text tool and just type ___ over and over again :) I generally have to do half and then copy/ paste for some reason. Not sure why, so I just do it and move on. Then I make the lines less opaque so that they blend a little better.

This is what it looks like in the end. 

The last thing you need to do is flatten the image so that it can save as a jpeg and is easy to print out. SO just go to Layers > Flatten Image, Then File> Save As. :)

I love the idea of sending letters on these, or binding them and making a super special little journal, who knows, the possibilities are endless! I am a little concerned that the ink will be too much for regular paper, so I might try it on some scrapbook type paper or light card stock. We shall see.

**Update- I am doing this currently for some gifts, as was the plan (YAY for actually accomplishing something on the to-do list) and so far, because of how opaque I'm making the pictures, printing them is not a problem at all! After I'm all done I will post some pictures.