Life Is Magical

This tutorial was written by me and uses an image by Michael Landefeld. Michael's tubes are licensed and are available to purchase through CILM . His work can be seen at www.mlteedesigns.com. Any similarity to any other tutorial is purely coincidental.

Supplies Needed:-

Paint Shop Pro

Animation Shop

Tube , Mask and Font of Choice (I used Becky Mask023 and Harrington Font)

Circular Frame By Conny Meister

Scrap kits by Melissa at Scrappy Expressions

Visman Extravaganza Transmission available Here

Lokas 3D Shadow available Here

Supplies Here

Unzip all your supplies and minimise in your work space. Install the plug-in into your plugins folder, remember to do this with PSP closed or it will not work properly. Don't forget to save your work regularly and to rename your layers if you find this easier for you. The only layers I have renamed in this tutorial are those which form the animation .

Open a new image about 600x600 and flood fill white. Copy and paste the circular frame and colourise to suit your tube if necessary.

On your layers palette right click and duplicate your frame . X out the duplicate and make the original frame layer active. Now find your Visman Extravaganze PlugIn:-

Play about with the settings until you have something you like , I used the following:-

Line Width 20, Offset 18, Contrast 40. Change your blend mode on this layer if you wish and reduce the opacity if you think your colours are too strong.

Un X the copy of the frame click into the centre circle with your Magic Wand. You ill see a line of marching ants appear around the edge of the inner circle. Now go to Selections, Modify , Expand, and expand the selection by 2:-

Create a new raster layer and flood fill this with a colour from your tube. Drop this layer below your frame layer, don't de-select yet:-

Now copy your tube nd paste as a new layer between your flood fill and the frame, position the tube so that you get the maximum possible of the face in the frame. Now invert the selection and making sure you are on the tube layer hit delete on the keyboard. The excess tube should now have gone. Duplicate this layer 5 times, so you have a total of 6 tube layers, and rename them 1-6 from the bottom up. Change the opacity of each layer as follows:-

Layer 1 - 100%

Layer 2 - 80%

Layer 3 - 60%

Layer 4 - 40%

Layer 5 - 20%

Layer 6 - 5%

X out layers 2-6. Copy and paste your main tube and position in front of your circle and add Lokas 3D Shadow with the following settings:-

Outside Only checked, Blur 60, Transparency 23, X ,Y and Z all at 0, Zoom 100, Offset X 10, Offset Y 10, Perspective 80 Colour Black, and click OK.

Now find the beads in your scrap kit and copy and paste them onto your image, place them between your frame and tube so that it looks like the tube is laying on them. Duplicate the bead layer and resize by 80% and arrange to your liking:-

Now add some of the scrap elements to suit your tag. I chose to use the bows and a tag on mine like this :-

Make your white background layer active and cut and paste a doodle of choice. Resize and place to the left of your tag. Duplicate the layer and mirror:-

Keeping on the white background layer, add a new raster layer and flood fill with a pale colour from your tube. Apply the mask of your choice, I used Becky Mask 023. Arrange slightly to the left , duplicate and mirror so that a little of the mask is showing all around the edge of your tag.

Now select your Text Tool and add your name to the tag. I used a font called Harrington with the following settings:-

Use the nodes to pull it to the size and angle you are happy with, convert to a raster layer then apply a drop shadow. I used:-

Now x off the white background layer, make your main tube layer active and click on your crop tool. Go to the top settings and find the Snap Crop Rectangle to settings, and choose the Merged Opaque Box, it's the one I have highlighted below:-

A selection will appear around the outer edges of your image similar to this:-

If you are happy with the selection click on the Green Apply button and crop the image, un x your background. Add your copyright, license number where necessary and watermark or tagged by line, and we are now ready to animate your tag.

Make sure all but the layer you numbered 1 in the 1-6 is visible, and that your white background layer is the active layer. Right click into your image and click on copy merged:-

Take this image into Animation Shop, right click into the workspace and Paste as a New Animation:-

Go back to PSP, x out Layer 1, un-x Layer 2, Copy merged again, take to Animation Shop , right click into your first image and then paste after the current frame:-

Repeat this with the other 4 layers. You should now have an animation with 6 frames. Now click into the first frame and then press Ctrl+A, this will select all the frames, right click into the first frame and select Copy. Right click into the workspace, and paste your copied frames a new Animation. Click into the first frame again and Ctrl+A.

Now find Animation in the top Tabs, and click on reverse frames:-

This has the effect of making Frame 6, Frame 1. Click and Ctrl+A again, right click and copy, and go back to your first 6 Frames. Click inside Frame 6 to make it the active frame, right click, and paste after current frame. Your animation should now have 12 frames.

Right click again in the first frame, and look for Frame Properties:-

Click and then set the speed to 30 as follows (The lower the setting, the faster the animation):-

Now resize your animation if necessary,

Now save your work as a gif and your tag is finished.

If you have any queries on this tutorial , please contact me. I would also love to see your results.

This Tutorial was written in July 2010 by Helen Peachey, and the concept of the tutorial is copyrighted.
Please feel free to LINK to the tutorial and/or print it out for your personal use,
but please do not copy it in any way to put online, pass out or re-write without permission.
The image you create using this tutorial is for you to do what you wish except for monetary gains or for merchandising.
© Peachies Designs and Tutorials. Any Resemblance to another tutorial is purely coincidental.