Double-outline and Overlapping Letters

© Copyright Arizona Kate

In this tutorial we'll use Paint Shop Pro to create this Cinco de Mayo heading with traditional Mexican colors and a red banner background.

With this tutorial we'll be creating some festive lettering with bright Mexican colors and a double outline. The first color outlines each individual letter with a second color outlining the whole word. Additional embellishments will be added to each letter. Today's example celebrates Cinco de Mayo with traditional Mexican colors and a red banner background. A color swatch is provided on the next page for you to copy if you want to use the colors shown in the above image. Of course, this double-outline technique could be used for any message, header or banner, not just Cinco de Mayo!

A double outline usually looks best when using large, fat, block style letters. Possible fonts are Tristan, Pythagoras or Arial Black. El Rio Lobo would work good too, it has a great Spanish flair and also has its own 'built-in' embellishment.

This tutorial was written for Paint Shop Pro version X and is suitable for beginner to advanced beginner. You should be familiar enough with Paint Shop Pro to know where to find the basic commands and tools. We'll be using some vector tools, which is usually considered advanced, however, there isn't any node editing involved in this project. Don't let the word 'vector' scare you away! ;-)

You can get a demo of PSP X from Corel.com. Nearly any version of PSP that has vector tools could be used, however, name and location of tools/commands will be slightly different.