Making Curved Text

This next bit can be a bit tricky so take your time and don't fret if everything starts going wrong... just keep hitting undo until you get it how you like it.

Click and drag a circle around your image, making sure that your circle is a little bit bigger than your image.  When you are happy with the rough size of it (you don't need to be exact), release the mouse button.

Yes, I know your image has disappeared.  Don't worry, it's hidden away safely :o)

Now we need to try and give your image an edge using the white shape.  Don't worry... there *is* a method to my madness... I know this is a text tutorial and we haven't done anything with text yet... we just need to do a bit of preparation first :o)

Okey dokes, so how do we get the edge around our image when we can't see our image?  You go to "Layers" then down to "Arrange" and across to "Send To Bottom"

You'll notice that those little square boxes are still around your white shape?  That's cool - we want it like that :o)

This is where it might start getting tricky, so save your work again just in case :o)

Hover your mouse over one of the little boxes on the side... you'll notice that your cursor changes to a double-headed arrow shape - the arrow heads are pointing to both the left and the right and a little rectangle shape is above it.

Now hover over one of the boxes at either the top or the bottom... you'll notice that your cursor changes to a different sort of double-headed arrow - this time the arrow heads point up and down and the little rectangle is still there.

Try hovering over one of the corner boxes now.  Your cursor has changed to a 4 headed arrow with the little rectangle still there.

Decide what how much space you want to leave around the outside of your image... the space that is showing in white will be the gap between your picture and your text - any letters that have a tail (lower case g, y, j, p, q etc) will hang into the white - the main part of the text will go around the top of your white shape.  I usually leave somewhere between half and a whole square of the background in white depending on how fancy my text is going to be - if it's going to be really swirly and elegant I leave about a square but if it's something plain I usually leave about half a square of background. 

The best way to work out how much space you need is to try and "see" the text on your white shape... try and see all the letters and what they look like - how far down does the tail of that letter come?

When you've decided how much space you are going to leave around the outside of your image, you need to click and drag on those little square boxes to get your white shape and your image to be roughly the same shape but leaving your little half to 1 square white edge around the outside of your image - use the surrounding background squares as a guide to how much you are taking your white shape in by.

This is what mine looks like now:

 Save your work... that's the hardest bit done!  :o)