Hybrid Tutorial – Framed Birthday Art!

Have you seen Penny’s latest kit in her 12 Months series? It’s a fabulous birthday kit and there’s an adorable subway art style wall art add-on that comes in both a layered psd file as well as a jpg image. I love this image she created, and I wanted to make a birthday sign to display at an upcoming party.

I chose to use a frame that had a front opening that measured 6″ wide x 7.5″ high. The back opening was actually 6.5″ wide x 8″ high. I started by opening a custom sized canvas in Photoshop CS5 by going to File > New and set my canvas to be 6″ wide and 7.5″ high.

I opened the word art file by dragging the image from ACDSee into Photoshop. The program automatically sized the image to fit my canvas and placed it in the center of the canvas as well. I needed to increase my canvas size so the paper would fit snugly into the frame, so I went up to Image > Canvas Size and increased my canvas to be 6.5″ w x 8″ h. I made sure the anchor was set to be the middle – selecting this option causes the program to add an equal amount of canvas around the entire image, ensuring the image stays centered.

Then I pulled a couple of elements from the birthday kit and placed them onto my canvas to get an idea of what I wanted to print and cut out. I cut the maroon square out with a scalloped circle die cut after I printed the document.

Once this was done, I duplicated the background layer and added an inner stroke to that layer by going to Edit > Stroke. I selected a light grey color. The stroke will act as a cutting guide once my document has been printed.

I increased the canvas size once again, this time to 8.5″ w x 11″ h. I kept the anchor in the middle. Then I selected the layers that held the background with its stroke and the word art, and dragged them to the upper left corner. Next, I moved the maroon square and the circle to the lower right corner. After that, I dragged the banner to the right hand side of the page, making sure it was outside the grey line. My final canvas was ready to be printed and it looked like this:

I printed the page using borderless printing and then cut the pieces out. For the main canvas, I used my Fiskars paper trimmer.

I used my Sizzix Big Shot machine with a Nestabilities scalloped circle die to cut out the birthday circle embellishment.

I added some 3-D foam adhesive squares to the back to provide some dimension to the scalloped circle piece.

Then I placed the circle onto the word art background.

After this step was finished, I placed the canvas into the frame.

Next, I hand-cut the birthday banner with plain old scissors and applied mini glue dots to the top back of each triangle. I used some baker’s twine by The Twinery on the back of the banner.

I tied a bow at each end of the banner and then used more mini glue dots to attach the banner to the frame.

I really like how this piece turned out and it went together very quickly. It took me longer to write the tutorial about how to make it than it did to actually make the project. I’m excited to hear what my guests think about it at our next birthday party!