Cheng and 3 Kids: Classroom Valentine's Day Idea

This is what we gave out last year at my son's kindergarten class for Valentine's Day. Everybody thought it was pretty cute. I had so much fun making them too!

If you're wondering if he was standing in front of a red textured wall when I took his picture, then you're wrong. I am far from being computer savvy, but there's this neat little trick I learned from watching YouTube tutorials (several of them actually, I guess I'm a slow learner, LOL). It's called a layer mask, and this is what I used to merge my little boy's photo onto the red digital paper.

All I needed was a camera, a camera ready child :), photo editing software (I used Adobe Photoshop Elements 9), card stock paper (I used pink for the heart and blue for matting), photo paper, heart shaped Dove Chocolates, and glue dots.

Here's how I did it.

First, I cut out a heart shape on pink card stock paper with my Silhouette Cameo. But you can also use scissors if you want.

Cheng and 3 Kids : Valentine's Day Idea - Layer Mask tutorial for Adobe Photoshop Elements 9

Then, I took a picture of my little boy holding the paper heart. I chose this white wall as the background so it would be easier for me to edit it.

Next, I opened the file on Adobe Elements 9, resizing the image so that the heart is slightly bigger than the chocolate heart. (For demonstration purposes, I made this one bigger than the actual Valentine cards I made for his class.)

After that, I opened the digital paper that I wanted to use as the background (the digital paper is from the Lovey Mini Kit by Pixel Gypsy). The picture has to be on top of the digital paper as illustrated on this photo above (blue circle). If the digital paper happens to end up on top of the picture, all you have to do is to drag it down and vice versa.

Then, I clicked on the image - please check out the blue circle (or blue oblong, if you want to be technical, LOL) - and then I clicked on the Quick Selection Tool, then New Selection (blue arrows).

What the Selection Tool does is it draws a path around the image that you want to merge into the background. So I clicked on my little boy's image. Sometimes the path doesn't go around the whole image, you just have to drag the path until the whole image is included.

Next, I clicked on the Add Layer Mask Tool (blue arrow). Now you'll see that his picture is merged into the red digital paper.

I wasn't too happy with the selected image because as you can see on the photo above, some of the white wall was showing. So I clicked on the brush tool, making sure that the Foreground Color is on top of the Background Color (blue arrows), if not, just click on Switch Foreground and Background Colors. Then I clicked on the area that needs to be erased. Whenever I erase too much and need to bring it back, I just switch the foreground and background colors then click on the erased area again. Fun, right? :)

Next, I added the text (I used Cheri font for the text) and the slight glowing effect. Aaaannnd I'm done!

Well, the digital part anyways. :)

I printed them out using the photo paper, cut them, then matted them on blue card stock paper and adhered the Dove Chocolates with glue dots.

As I've mentioned at the beginning of this post, we gave these out last year. I haven't decided what we're giving out for Valentine's Day this year. I guess I'm gonna be doing a lot of searching on Pinterest. :)

What about you? Are your kids ready for Valentine's Day?

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