*Element
ELEMENT: Vellum Tag
By Jeri Ingalls 2005
Apr 16, 2005, 05:31

Photo Impact contains all the shapes necessary to make designing a tag easy, all you have to do is open them up, size them to your specifications, add the effects you want, and you’ve got your tag.  Here’s a quick tutorial for how to do this, and to add a little something extra, I’ll make the tag a vellum one, though if you’d like the tag to be solid, just skip the transparency step.

First, I always create my elements on the layout itself, so make sure your layout is open.  If you’re starting without a layout in mind, go to File/New/New Image and put in your page dimensions (8x10, 8.5x11, 12x12, whichever you prefer) and make sure the resolution is set for 300.  Add some kind of background or fill so it’s easier to see what you are doing.

Choose the Shape Tool on the left side toolbar.  Click on the little man under Shape, and here you can chose your shape, we’ll be using the circle for this tutorial.  Make sure the color is set for white, and 2D object is selected.  If you are making a solid tag, you can choose whichever color you want, but we’re going to make this one vellum.

Drag out your circle shape as shown at the left.  I like to use the View/Fit in Window view to draw the circle as it gives me some idea of what the size will look like on the finished page, then I will zoom in closer for the detailed work.  Photo Impact will make the shape on it’s own layer, and it will be easy to move around later, so don’t worry about where you place it on your page, I like to pick a blank spot to work in if I’m making it right into my layout. 

Now we will make the shape look like vellum.  First chose Object in the Menu Bar, than Properties.  A box will open up with the properties of your shape displayed.  I leave everything at the default, than in the transparency box, I’ll enter the percentage of transparency I want.  I’m choosing 70 here, but this can be whatever percentage you want, if the preview box is checked, you’ll be able to see the changes as you make them.  Sometimes it’s hard to tell how transparent it is unless you have something underneath, which I’ve done in the example below.

Now, using the graphic below as your guide, choose the Outline Shape Tool on the left toolbar, and once again choose the circle.  Pick a contrasting color, such as black, or something else if your page background is black, choose 3D, and roughly draw out a circle about the same size as your transparent one.  The color and size can be changed later, so don’t worry about being too exact.

Using the above graphic as a guide, change the width of the border by choosing the Material folder in the menu bar above.  The Material Box will open up, here you can adjust the border by choosing the Border/Depth Tab, and sliding up the arrow on the Maximum border width, for this tag I’m going to choose 9.  It looks quite thick in the example, but the example is for a smaller circle, so it will be just fine for this tag.  Click on the OK button and the changes will be made.

Now you can move the open circle around the edges of your vellum circle, and make any other adjustments you want, see the graphic below for some examples.  If the size is off, change with the Size tool, you can change the color, or use a metallic preset in the preset gallery, if the edge seems to deep for you, change the depth by opening up the Panel and making adjustments there.  There are lots of options, just play around with the settings until you find what you want.

When you get the edge looking the way you want it, draw out another smaller circle for the tag hole, it will use the same settings that you have for the outside edge.  Again, if you want to change this, use the steps above.  I changed the border of my inner circle outline a bit to make it less thick.

Using the Solid Circular Shape Tool, make a circle just a bit larger than the inside of your tag hole, move it over the tag hole, choose your pointer tool, and click on the down button shown above.  This moves the circle just below the outside of the tag hole, but still on top of the vellum.

When you get things the way that you want them, with the pick tool draw a square around the whole tag, this will choose all the items you have just made.  Then go to Object/Merge as Single Object, than you will be able to move the tag with the parts all together and see the transparency results on different parts of your layout.

When you Merge as a Single Object, you will get a warning that the non-default attributes will be lost, this simply means you won’t be able to change the transparency any more once you convert it.  Don’t worry about this, just press Yes.

And now you have your vellum tag, you can add a drop shadow now and add to your layout, decorate it, or even make it patterned vellum.

A quick way to put a pattern on the vellum is to select one of the shapes in the shape tool and with the white color in 2D mode, drag out some shapes and place these on top of your tag.  Rotate them around to make them look like a pattern.

With the pick tool, choose all the patterned objects, go to Object/Object Properties, then set a transparency for the design.  I’m going with 60 on this so that it still stands out from the body of the tag.

When you get the look you want, choose everything with the pick tool, then once again choose Object/Merge as a Single Object to bring it all into one layer.  Now you can move the tag around to where you want it on your page.

There are so many different options with these tags that I can’t cover them all in a single tutorial, so I’d say to just experiment, you can get some surprising results!