What you will need for this tutorial.

Paint Shop Pro and Animation Shop

Two tubes of choice. I have used the gorgeous work of Jennifer Janesko. Jennifer's work is Licensed through CILM and both licenses and tubes are available through them.

Mask of choice. Mine was a Christmas Gift to Zone Groups members by Conny Meester so I'm afraid I cannot share it here.

Papers of choice (mine came from Pink Lady Scrap Kit by BlueDream Designs )

Word Art and Font of Choice. My font was Cynthia which I believe is a PTU Font, but any nice script font will work.

Filter Eye Candy 4000 HSB Noise.

Let's get started

Open your tubes, mask,word art and papers in PSP and minimise for now. Open your font and minimise on your pc.

Open a new image 600 x 250 pixels at 72dpi resolution and flood fill with white.

Copy and paste a paper of choice, or flood fill with a colour or gradient to go with your tubes.

Now apply your mask from image:-

You might need to tick the Invert Mask Data box depending on your mask. In your layers palette, merge group.

Now using your pick tool:-

Pull out the nodes so that your mask almost fills the canvas:-

Now find your preset shape tool, and find a nice heart shape. I used the Corel Heart 1. Set your foreground colour to a nice darkish colour to suit your tube, background null, and line width 8:-

Now draw a heart that takes up approximately half the width of the canvas, align centre, and then convert to a raster layer:-

Now draw a smaller heart with the same settings, and place to the left of the big heart, align this vertical center in canvas:-

Convert to a raster layer, then duplicate and mirror. Close off all the layers except the two small hearts and merge visible.

Now make the large heart layer active, and using your magic wand click inside it, then go to selections, modify, expand:-

Enter 3 in the box and click OK. Now go to the small heart layer and hit delete. The overhanging parts of the small hearts will now have disappeared. Now merge both your heart layers:-

Now click into all three hearts and expand the selection by three as before. Copy and paste a different paper, or flood fill with colour or gradient of choice. If you use a paper, invert your selection, and making sure you have the paper layer active hit delete. Selections none.

Drag this layer under the heart frame layer, change the layer to multiply, and drop the opacity to about 73:-

Now click back into the right hand heart on the frame layer, expand by three and paste your first tube. When you are happy with it's size and position, invert the selection and hit delete to remove any overhang. Duplicate this layer and mirror it, so that it's now in both the small hearts, and the faces face each other. Merge these two tube layers together, drop below the frame layer and change the blend mode to hard light.

Now click into your centre heart, expand as before and paste your second tube. Adjust the size and position so that the part of the tube you wish be prominent is in the centre. Invert the selection and delete so your tube now sits nicely in the heart. Drop this under the frame layer and give it a subtle drop shadow.

Add some Word Art to suit your tube. I chose a Love Theme for mine as Valentines Day is approaching.

Add your name in a nice script font. I used Cynthia Script and I gave it a drop shadow of Vertical and Horizontal 0, Opacity 80, Blur1.

Now add your copyright and any license number and taggers mark as required.

If you do not wish to animate your tag, you can now delete the white background layer ,merge all the other layers visible and save as a png.

If animating, duplicate your heart frame layer twice to give you a total of three heart layers. X-out the top two layers.

With your magic wand click onto the frame on the original layer, and go to your Eye Candy HSB Noise Filter:-

We are going to use the "Transparent Haze" settings:-

Click ok. On the second frame layer, use the same settings but click on the random seed button:-

Repeat this again, hitting random seed again on the top frame layer.

Save this image as a PSP image in layers for using again.

You are now ready to take your tag to Animation Shop.

Make sure you have the two copy frame layer x'd out. With the background layer active, right click onto your image and choose the "copy merged" option:-

Now right click into the workspace in Animation Shop, you will see the following:-

Click on this and your image will now appear on the AS workspace as Frame1.

Go back to PSP, x-out the bottom frame layer, and open the middle one.

Repeat the copy merged and then right click into the Frame 1 in AS:-

Click on Paste - After Current Frame.

Back to PSP, x-out the middle frame, open the top frame, and then click into Frame 2 in AS and repeat the above.

You now have an image with three frames in AS. Click into the first frame, and then press CTRL+A to select all the frames. Right click and choose the Frame properties , set the speed to 15:-

Now use your Optimization Wizard , and then save your tag as a gif.

If you are unsure how to use the optimization wizard, use my tutorial as a guide.

I also made a matching avatar to go with my tag.

Open a new Image 150 x150 pixels and flood fill white. Apply the mask as you did in the tag, and draw out a single heart to fill the canvas. Add the background paper/colour to the heart, and use the tube of your choice, as you did for the central heart in your tag.

Add your name or initial depending on your preference, and also add the abbreviated copyright information. You need to have the © artist name, and your license number if required.

Animate the heart layer as above if required.

I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial and I would love to see your results. If you have any queries or wish to send me your results please email me.

This Tutorial was written in January 2009.
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.