Happy Holidays! It’s the Christmas season for most of us & it’s St. Nicholas today for me & mine. That means… it’s time for baking! Who’s in? Who has a sweet tooth just like mine? If you do, please join us for our beloved Recipe Card Challenge. This year we are focusing on Holiday Baking and sweets, sweets, sweets!

Anyone & everyone is welcome, it’s free, fun & fabulous… if I do say so myself. Anyone that submits at least one recipe this December will get the entire, downloadable, PDF Recipe Book. Interested? Come join us!

Whenever we run one of these challenges there’s always a free Recipe Card Template. This year it’s a super fun baking template, created using the wonderful Baking Spirits Bright CU Layered Templates by Blue Heart Scraps.

learn more in our forum

This recipe card template is the usual size for our Recipe Challenges ( 7″ X 5″; 300 dpi card (2100 X 1500 px)) and includes the usual graphics, text & layers you would expect in a recipe card template. Something new I added this time is a background pattern layer, called BAKING PATTERN.

I’ve got the Recipe Card Template open on my Photoshop desktop. Let’s take a closer look. It’s easier to see the BAKING PATTERN layer with the upper layers turned off.

  • Simply click the tiny eye icon to the left of each layer to turn layers off

To recolor the background & BAKING PATTERN layers, I’m using red (#b40707). You can use any color you choose. It doesn’t even have to be a traditional holiday color. You do you.

  • Click and make sure you are on the Background layer
  • Click on the Color Swatches (black/white) on the left
  • Pick any color on the Color Picker pop-up
  • Click OK

First, we’ll recolor the plain Background layer. Make sure you are still on the Background layer in your Layers Palette.

  • Click on the Paint Bucket Tool in your left menu
    Your mouse pointer will now have a tiny Paint Bucket icon
  • Move your mouse over the Background in your workspace and CLICK

Tada! A new red background.

Now let’s recolor the BAKING PATTERN layer.

  • In your Layers Palette click on the BAKING PATTERN layer
  • Then click on Image, Adjustments, Hue/Saturation in the top menu

This will give you a new Hue/Saturation pop-up:

  • Click on the tiny Colorize box in the bottom left
  • Then click OK

Note: make sure your red (or chosen color) Color Swatch is still on top in the bottom left corner of your side menu bar.

Just colorizing the BAKING PATTERN layer may be enough for you. This is a matter of personal taste. I wanted to pop my BAKING PATTERN layer a bit more.

  • Again, make sure you are on the BAKING PATTERN layer
  • Click on the teeny tiny dropdown arrow next to the Layer Filter box
  • Choose Screen (or anything that strikes your fancy)

And that’s it! A whole new look with a couple quick clicks. Have fun & share your recipes with us this December?