AAQ block and mini tut on curved lettering

I'm going to start with this upper right corner... I just love this textured black.. It is green on the other side... I've known from the beginning that I want a banner in this corner so I don't want to finish embellishing the seam until I can see where the exact position.(Just a side note: the brown flat beads on the lace are from a necklace similar to my giveaway recently)

I used TAP (transfer artist paper) on muslin to get an aged look... It worked fairly well on this larger banner but on a small one the transfer began peeling... but I can use this one.. I had changed the black and white image to sepia tone in Google's wonderful free program Picasa....

With it pinned in place I can see what else I want to use to fill that space and where to finish embellishing that seam... I hate beading a seam only to discover it is going to be under an image and make a bumpy image. The cameo needs to be antiqued yet. It is not set in a backing and I will just bead around it. It was part of a mixed lot I got cheap at a jewelry site long ago...

Now the letter tut... Every so often I find a situation where I want to have lettering conform to a particular shape.. in this case a banner. I paste the banner into photoshop (or similar program) and begin placing each letter in individually. I do them individually rather than typing the entire word so I have control over the spacing between letters...

I set each letter right on the curved line of the banner. I continue until I have all the letters on the line.. Then I lower the banner just a tad until lettering is centered on the banner and like magic the lettering conforms to the banner.

This work well also if you wanted the wording along a curve without a shape. Put in your curved line....place the lettering along the line and when finished remove the line... I've done this on blocks by basting the curved line, stitching the letters and then removing the basted line...

This would be very time consuming if you had a great amount of text but for something like this is is perfect!