Calendar Day and a Photoshop tidbit I learned

So here's my December calendar!  I can't believe 2013 is coming to an end! (Why are these letters so small?  Beats me!  They get bigger down below!)

While making this calendar I learned something so I thought I'd share it here in case I forget then I can always come back and look!  I learned how to make a shadow in Photoshop for the '2013' on the calendar.  There is more than one way to do it, but I think the way I show here is the easiest for me.  Here are the steps I took:

1.Type the characters and under the layer style menu choose stroke.

 2. Select the size (#pixels) and color of the stroke (this is a matter of preference) and click OK.

 3. Create a new layer and draw a rectangle using the rectangular marquee tool.   Fill the rectangle with the same color as the shadow (teal) using the paintbucket tool.

 4. Put the rectangle layer under the character layer (brown), choose the rectangle and shadow layer (teal), right click and select merge layers.  This allows you to separate the layers in the next step.
 

The rectangle is between the bottom shadow layer and the brown letters

 5. To separate the two shapes select the original characters (brown)with the magic wand, right click and choose layer via cut.

6. To make the shadow a solid shape, first duplicate the original (brown).  Close the eye on the top copy because it is above the original and you won't be able to see it unless you do!  Select the original with the magic wand and color it the same color as the shadow (teal) using the paintbucket.

7.Now all you have to do is select both layers and merge them.

8. You now have your original characters as well as a solid shadow shape!

So, was that too confusing?  I've never really written a "tutorial" before if that's what this is!  I'm sure plenty of you know how to do this (it was a revelation for me!), so this isn't for you!  Actually for me it would have been easier to go into Make The Cut and create a shadow in less than 5 seconds, but I happened to be in Photoshop and I was too lazy to open another program and go through that process.  I don't think it's a bad idea to learn things in more than one program either, makes you super knowledgeable!  In case you're interested here is what I used for my calendar:

Carta Bella Merry and Bright digi papers and elements from Jessica Sprague
Calendar Builder graphic set (grid and 'December') from LD
Fonts (all from Scrapnfonts):
SNFSimonsays
SNFSimonsays3D
SNFSunday

See ya later and just keep crafting!  Of course, you could leave a comment too!