Make Glitter Letters in PS Elements

Since it's Valentine's Day...I thought I'd hook you guys up with a little gift.
A tutorial that I think is pretty awesome.

Especially because I did it all myself.

Score one for me.

 

I know what you're thinking.

"OMG she's actually posting a tutorial she promised us!"

Yupp.  I am finally posting a tutorial I've promised to you!!  I have a thing for glitter, and I've seen blogs and sites with glittered text...and I wanted it!  So I googled a bit, read some different tutorials...and discovered that doing it in Photoshop Elements is a bit different than Photoshop.

Actually, a bunch different.

Luckily, I spend enough time messing around with PSE to figure this stuff out.

I use Photoshop Elements 10 for all my photo editing (except for what I mess with on Instagram...oh, and since losing my camera charger cord most of my pics are thanks to my iPhone now.) because it's affordable, easy to use, and definitely worth investing in!  I have used it to create all of my blog designs (oh yeah, I make all my own stuff. FYI) and it rocks.  But enough about me and what I do when bored...on to the tutorial!

1: You first need to set the glitter background as a pattern.  I found free glitter downloads here and here.  You use the select tool to make a square/rectangular selection of glitter (you don't want any of the background or it doesn't work properly...trust me).

2: Then you'll go to Edit > Define Pattern From Selection.  This will save the glitter background to your Patterns for use later on.

3: To start making glitter letters, open a new blank file and add a layer of text.  Thick fonts work the best for this.  You can find a ton of free fonts on dafont. The font I'm using here is Channel.

4: Making sure the text layer is selected (it has the dark box on the right hand side like shown above), go to Layer > New Fill Layer > Pattern.  Check the box "Use previous layer to create clipping mask".  Click ok, and the box will pop up letting you select which pattern to use.  Choose one of the glitter patterns we made above.

5: See the glitter now? We're almost done!  The glitter makes the edges of the text a bit less clear, so to make it really pop, we're going to add a bit of shadow to the text.  Make sure your text layer is selected again (not the pattern layer), and go to Layer > Layer Style > Style Settings.  Check the Drop Shadow box.  You can adjust the shadow to your liking, for this example I set the size to 2 pixels,  distance to 1 pixel, and opacity to zero.

6:  The only thing left to do is merge all your layers together to save your image as a picture!  You can do as many different layers of text as you want, just make sure you follow all the steps properly to apply your patterns to the right layers!  Woohoo - glitter text in five minutes!

Please be sure to let me know how this tutorial worked for you!  And don't forget to Pin this :)

{please note - I did not create the glitter background patterns used here.  I have included the links to the glitter patterns above.  This tutorial is based on a tutorial by SweetC'sDesigns, but as her tutorial was for Photoshop, I changed everything to be applicable to Photoshop Elements users.}