Easter Egg Place-Holders:Tutorial

Since I'm hosting Easter at my house this year, I thought having Easter place holders would be a fun way to decorate the table. These pop-up egg cards look great and really didn't take much time to make. Here's how I created them: (I use Photoshop Elements 6.0 on a PC-- some commands might be different in other versions or on Macs.)

1. Open up a new 8 1/2 x 11 document at 300dpi.

2. Use the rectangle marquee tool. I set mine as a fixed size: 3in. by 1.5in.

3. On a new layer add a stroke to the outside of the rectangle (in PSE Edit--Stroke--5pixels outside)

4. You should now have one rectangle. Duplicate this layer (CTRL-J) and line the top edges. The middle line will be the fold line for the name plate. At this point you can merge these two layers together.

5. Add papers or other decorations as desired. (Hint: I created a mask for the papers. I opened a new layer then highlighted the inside of the first rectangle with the magic wand tool (W). I then went back to the new layer and filled it with a solid color (bucket tool--K). I repeated with the second rectangle. That way I could clip papers to the mask and it would fit perfectly. This makes switching out papers a breeze.)

You can see how I clipped (CTRL-G) the Cheeky Time paper by Mindy Terasawa to the mask below.

6. Open up Egg Pebbles by Katie Pertiet. Place one image onto the place holder document. Position it so that half the egg is on the bottom rectangle and half is on the top.

7. Type the guest's name.

8. Fill the page up with as many name plates as possible. (Actually to make it easier for me, I open a new 8 1/2 x 11 document. Then I merge the layers of the finished place holder and drag it onto the new layer. Next I go back to the original document, undo the merge---ctrl z, change the name and the egg color and repeat.)

9. Print onto paper.

10. Using an Exacto-knife, cut the top portion of the egg out. Then fold on the middle line.