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On one of my searches for interesting fonts (I’m a font addict, and not ashamed to admit it :D) I found a CUTE font at 1001fonts.com called ‘Mousie’ and decided to make a freebie out of it. While colouring the alpha, I thought: Why not share the way I colour decorative fonts, so here it is.

I use PSP X2, but I’m sure you’ll be able to adjust the different steps to whatever program you are using. No doubt there are several ways to colour a font, and maybe even easier ways to do it – lol – but this is MY way.

Because I have hundreds of fonts and can’t install them all, I open the font file and just leave it open in the background. PSP X2 will pick up any font you have open, so there’s no need to install it.

To view the images in this tutorial, just click on them and use the back arrow to come back to this page again.

Open a new file, rather big, I like to have a bit of space so I can move things around (for this font I used a 8×8″ canvas).

Select the colour you want the letter to be – in this case I prefer black. Make this your background colour and make sure your foreground colour is off.

Set the font size to about 200

Type the letter A

Add a new layer and move that under the layer with the letter on it. I put all the colours on the second layer, this way you can always change things if you don’t like the results.

Select all the parts you want to be the same colour (hold down the shift key while clicking, to select more than 1 area). The selected parts will have the ‘marching ants’ around them.

If you would add colour at this point, there’s a 99.9% chance the blank parts won’t be filled completely. To prevent this, go to selections -> change -> expand and change the number to 3

Now click the bottom layer and flood fill the selected areas with the colour of your choice.

selections -> select none

Click on the layer with your letter again, select the areas you want to colour, expand with 3, go to the bottom layer and add the colour, select none

Repeat those steps until the complete image is coloured, making sure you do the ‘selecting’ on the layer with the typed letter, and change to the bottom layer to add the colours.

You can save the unmerged coloured image as a psp file, so you can always open it at a later time and add different colours.

Now, what I want to do is make a sticker of this letter. To do this:

Merge all visible layers. Make sure you are on the layer with the image and go to

selections -> select all
selections -> float
selections -> change -> expand -> 15

Add a new layer and move it to the bottom. While on the bottom layer, fill the selection with white

selections -> select none

To give it a bit of dimension go to: effect -> 3D effects -> inside bevel

these are the settings I used

Merge all visible layers, copy the layer and paste it as a new image – this way you’ll end up with only the image and no extra blank space around it. To keep the transparency: Save as a png file.

Et voila, done!

And here’s the freebie I promised: Letters A-Z coloured, all png files 300 dpi

Download Mousie Alpha 4.78 MB

If you download the freebie, or use the tutorial to colour your choice of font, please leave some love. Constructive feedback is very much appreciated!

Posted in Blog, Freebies, Tutorial by Antoinette at Saturday, September 17th, 2011
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