Stamped alphas are hot! Lately I see designers putting loads of them in their kits and I love it. There is more to stamped alphas than you probably know; you can use them in many different creative ways. Once upon a time I almost never used them on my pages because they looked ‘flat’ to me but once you experiment a bit more you will learn to love them. They are so versatile! Today I want to give you my stamped alpha 101.
THE STANDARD WAY
Let’s start with the beginning. This is the way stamped alphas are used most of the time. Nothing wrong with that! Putting the alpha flat on the page mostly require a quite solid paper underneath for it to be visible like I did above using Traci’s Rugged kit. The rule is to never use a shadow when putting it flat on the paper. No stamp is ever layered in real life. As you can see you easily layer something over it, I used a font to add extra information in the title but you can layer whatever you want. Go ahead and put some clusters over it – there is no limit! You can also use this method to add some text to your background paper without it overpowering the title in the front like this lay out by aly321:
COMBINE THEM WITH OTHER ALPHAS
In the same lay out shown above you can see that a really nice way to use stamped alphas is to combine them with normal ones. Just put the normal ones on top and shadow them. It’s a really neat way to create fun different looking titles.
STAMP THEM OVER PICTURES & PAPERS
A really cool way to use this alpha is over the edge of a paper or picture. I have made a small step by step tutorial using last year’s Project Life: January doing it the easy way.
1) Put your stamped alpha over the layers.
2) The stamp is touching two different layers. Make a copy of the stamped word and tuck in under the top layer. So one above and one under the top layer. Then select the top copy of your title and choose the box selection button from your tools. Select the bottom part of the text and be sure to align the box perfect to the paper and not the shadow. Then take your eraser and erase everything in the selection box.
The result is a realistic looking stamped title!
ADJUST THE ALPHA TO YOUR LIKING
Stamped alphas are a dream to change! They can easily be recolerd or clipped with an paper. Give it a try! The possiblity’s are endless.
MAKE IT A CUT OUT ALPHA
You might not want to use all stamped alphas for this. I would say that if it’s too distressed just leave it it’s original shape but the more thick stamped ones you can use to make a cut out alpha. I changed my Wilderness page and made the title a cut out. Clip the title with an alpha and use the inside shadow function.
MAKE IT INTO A STICKER ALPHA
If after all you still do not want to use the stamp alpha that came with your freshly bought kit you can always change it into a sticker. Just use the outline tool in photoshop to give it an sticker border. Now you can shadow!
About the Author: Samantha Raaphorst is a 27 year old native of The Netherlands where she lives with her boyfriend and their baby, Simba the Saint Bernard. She has been digitally scrapbooking since 2011 and is still learning every day from the great community. She’s a Disney scrapper most of the time and her favorite thing to do is clustering. Besides scrapbooking she works as a Sales Advisor, is a huge foodie, a daydreamer, a traveler, a cosmetics junkie, and a nature lover.