Text With Adobe Photoshop Elements.

When I make my text and type it up onto my icons, it FADES the text into the image. It does the same thing when I add a thin border, but I want to the text to be the pure, solid color that I chose, as if made by a pencil mark. So far i've been editing EVERY pixel with the pencil to make the colors solid, but does anyone know how to turn off the fading thing that the text does?