Review by Laurel Lakey

Note: This product review was written using Adobe Photoshop CS3 on an iMac.

ScrapSimple Card Templates are great products that allow you to create personalized cards for any occasion. I’m going to focus on one card template and show you how you can easily create a multitude of different looks quickly and easily. (Personally, that’s my favorite kind of project, the quick and easy kind!)

For these cards, I’m going to use Mandy Steward’s ScrapSimple Card Templates: Square. First, open all of your card template pieces and while holding down the Shift key, drag each one onto your card base. This will ensure that they appear in the right place on the base template.

Another tip is to make sure that in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, you turn off "Auto Select Layer" in your toolbar at the top when you have your Move Tool selected. This will let you click anywhere on the template file and move it over. You don’t have to click specifically on the element itself. This really helps when you have tiny elements to drag over.

Once you’ve done that, save your file as a layered file in the template folder, so that you only have to put it together once. Always remember to do a “Save As” so that you don’t accidentally save over one of your original template pieces.

Here is my composite with all of the template pieces. You can see that all of the layers are still intact and I’m ready to start bringing in papers and elements.

Since this is a 5x5 card, I want to make sure that I resize the papers I want to use, so that the scale is not off. I resize my papers to 5x5 and then drag them over to my card template. I then create clipping masks of the various element pieces (Ctrl+Alt+G on a PC, Cmd+G on a Mac).

Here is what the template should look like once you’ve finished with all of your clipping masks.

I want to add a little more punch to these different elements, so in keeping with the Action Hero theme, I decide to add a black stroke to all of the different pieces. I do this by choosing one layer and tweaking the settings until I like them. Then, to copy the same layer style onto each of my other layers, I simply right-click on the layer that has the stroke and select "Copy Layer Style." Then, while holding down the Shift key, I right-click on each of the layers that do not have the style and select "Paste Layer Style." Easy-peasy!

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Once I have all of my layers stroked, it’s time to add some text and embellishments to finish the thank you card.

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From here, you can do all sorts of different types of cards, just by changing the papers, embellishments, fonts and text that you use. Here are a few different examples. In one, I removed items from the original template...

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... and in the other I added some extra things.

You’re only limited by your imagination!

All cards by Laurel Lakey.

Project Ingredients:

	Note: Commercial license versions of ScrapSimple Embellishment Templates: Sparkle Trails, ScrapSimple Embellishment Templates: Photo Folds 2 and ScrapSimple Tools - Styles: Paper Textures 4902 are also available.

Laurel lives with her husband of three years and their 19-month-old son in southern California. She enjoys photography, reading, singing, crafting, watching old episodes of Alias and new ones of Lost.