Stitches Text Effect

In this tutorial you will learn how to create a Zombie Text effect that works great for Halloween flyer's, pamphlets and forum signatures. The steps to create this effect are relatively easy to accomplish with a little time and effort.

Here is an example of the text effect that we will be creating with this tutorial:

Step 1.

Open an existing document in photoshop, or create a new one. I will be working with a 400x400 canvas.

Fill the background with your desired color, I'll be using #6A6A6A for this tutorial.

Step 2.

Press Ctrl + Alt + Shift + N on your keyboard to create a new layer.

Set your foreground color to: #392700

Go ahead and get out the Text Tool ( ) and select a nice looking font. Here I'm using a font called Accent SF, which you can download freely by clicking here.

Note: Free registration required

Here are the exact Text settings I've used:

Type out your text near the center of the canvas as I have done here:

Step 3.

Double click this layer, and apply the following blending options:

Bevel & Emboss:

Colors Used: Highlight Mode: #FFFFFF Shadow Mode: #421700

Satin:

Color used: #B58F3E

Stroke:

Color Used: #D0AD60

Result:

Step 4.

Press Ctrl + J on your keyboard to duplicate this layer.

Select the Burn Tool ( ) and apply the following settings:

Randomly brush around the text to create various little dots and squiggly lines as shown:

Step 5.

Get out the Smudge Tool ( ) and apply the following settings:

Now Distort the bottom part of each letter using the smudge tool until you have something similar to what I have here:

Step 6.

Press Ctrl + Alt + Shift + N on your keyboard to create a new layer.

Get out the Lasso Tool ( ) and make a selection as I have done here:

Fill this selection with #896A28 using the Paint Bucket Tool ( ).

Double click this layer, and apply the following blending options:

Bevel & Emboss:

Color Overlay:

Color used: #BD0000

Result:

Step 7.

Repeat step #6 several times to create many different "cuts" in each letter of your text:

Step 8.

Press Ctrl + Alt + Shift + N on your keyboard to create a new layer.

Set your foreground color to black (#000000).

Get out the Brush Tool ( ) and set it up with a round soft 2 pixel brush as I have done here:

Now draw lines across each of the "cuts" that we made in steps #6 and #7 to add the effect of stitches to each letter of our text:

Here is how my text ended up, as you can see this is a very easy and fun effect to create a very scary looking text effect that works great on all sorts of Halloween related applications:

Here's what I came up with after messing around with the text a little more, and adding some graphics to the background with a few effects:

Thanks so much for reading this tutorial, I hope you've enjoyed it!