Word Art — Stamp To Sticker

Word Art — Stamp to Sticker
by Jen White

Double the usefulness of your word art stash by turning a stamp into a sticker.

NOTE: This tutorial was created for Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.

Sometimes you need a stamp and sometimes you need a sticker.

Stamps are made to look flat on a page and should never have a drop shadow applied to them.
Stickers will usually have a white stroke (or border) on the outside of them. They do get a drop shadow, but typically a very small one.

In this tutorial I’ll show you how to turn a stamp into a sticker. If you need to turn a sticker into a stamp, read Word Art—Sticker To Stamp.

Step One: Open a Stamp

This tutorial works for well for word art and type because they act like a stamp. I will be demonstrating with a word art stamp I created (see it below). Click here to download my word art.

Open a stamp (File > Open).
Press the letter D to reset the Color Chips to the default of black over white.

Next, you will need to make sure the canvas around the stamp is roomy enough to allow for the sticker application.

In the Menu Bar, choose Image > Resize > Canvas Size. (PS: Choose Image > Canvas Size.)
In the dialog box, set the Width and Height to 200 Percent. Click OK.

Step Two: Add a Stroke Style

The next step is to add a stroke outline around the word art to give it the appearance of a sticker.

In Photoshop Elements:

In the Menu Bar, choose Layer > Layer Style > Style Settings.
In the dialog box, check Stroke. Set the Size to 15 px, the Position to Outside, and the Opacity to 100%. Click on the Color Chip to open the Color Picker. In the Color Picker, choose white and click OK. Click OK to close the Style Settings dialog box.
In the Menu Bar, choose Layer > Simplify Layer.

In Adobe Photoshop:

In the Menu Bar, choose Layer > Layer Style > Stroke.
In the dialog box, set the Size to 15, the Position to Outside, the Blend Mode to Normal, and the Opacity 100%. The Color Chip should be white. Click OK.
In the Menu Bar, choose Layer > Rasterize > Layer Style.

Step Three: Crop the Sticker

You should have been left with lots of extra pixels around the sticker, so let’s trim some of those off.

In the Layers panel, hold down the Ctrl key and click on the thumbnail of the stamp layer to get a selection outline.
In the Menu Bar, choose Select > Modify > Expand.
In the dialog box, Expand By 5 px and click OK.
In the Menu Bar, choose Image > Crop.
Press Ctrl D (Mac: Cmd D) to deselect.

Step Four: Save As a PNG

Save the sticker (File > Save As) as a PNG file with a unique name.
Close the original file without saving.

Here is my sticker after I’ve added it to a card and applied a drop shadow.

Credits
Card: Thanks by Jen White
Kit: Me & You by Sahlin Studio
Font: OctoberTwilight