Summertime Blues

Supplies Needed

Paint Shop Pro and Animation Shop

Tube of choice . I used a lovely tube from the work of Les Toil who gives permission for his work to be used. The tag above was created for a competition run in the Les Toil Yahoo group.You can see more of his work, and read his TOU at ToilGirls.

Mask and brush of choice.(I have used Becky Mask 38 and a twirl brush I made myself which I have included in the supplies.)Accents from a scrap kit to suit your tube. I used one of my own scrap kits, Blue Glass,normally available exclusively through The Zone Groups. (Membership necessary, but no participation required).

Xenofex 2.0 Rip Open Xenofex is a pay filter but a demo can be downloaded from Alien Skin Software

Supplies Here

Open a new image 600 x600 pixels at 72dpi resolution, flood fill white. Add a new raster layer and flood fill with a medium colour from your tube . I used #4E5B82.

Apply your mask of choice, and Merge Group.

Now apply Xenofex 2.0 Rip Open to the mask layer with the following settings:-

Curl Size 60, Curl Amount 40, Curl Variation 80, Edge Roughness 5, Shadow Width 2.83.

Select the Make Selection Transparent Box, Random Seed 5829.

Copy and paste the Oval Frame from the Scrap Kit onto the Canvas and move the mask layer around slightly so that the rip effect sits nicely around the edge. You should now have something like this:-

Now take your magic wand set with Tolerance and Feather at 0, and making sure you have the mask layer active, click into the centre of the mask. Add a new raster layer and apply your brush or brushes of choice. I used the Twirl Brush once, and reduce the opacity of the brush layer to about 75.

Now for the slightly tricky bit. We want out tube to look as if the image is walking out of the frame. Copy and paste your tube and position it so that the front foot is outside the frame, and the back foot is half way across it. Now reduce the opacity of your tube so that you can see the frame through it clearly.

Using the freehand tool, draw the selection you wish to delete:-

Hit delete on the tube layer, put the opacity back to 100% and Selections None. add a drop shadow of choice to your frame and tube layer. I used Lokas 3D on the tube set at the default Flat Faint setting, and Paint Shop Pro Drop Shadow at-2,2,50,8.00 colour black on the frame.

Now add the bow and any other of the elements you wish to decorate the tag with. Give each of these the same drop shadow as you gave the frame.

The final element you add should be the flower, if you are going to animate your tag. Add it towards the top right hand side of the frame, and give it a drop shadow of about 2,2,40,1. Duplicate the layer twice to give you a total of three flower layers. Close off the top two.

Making sure you have the original flower layer active, Select All, Float , Defloat. our flower should now be selected. Go to Adjust, Brightness and Contrast and use the following settings:-

One the second layer, use the settings changing the contrast to 10, and on the top (3rd) layer set the contrast to 5.

Now crop any excess white on your image and resize to suit your taste. Sharpen any layers as necessary.

Add your text and copyright layers. I used the font Heather for my name, and added Eye Candy 4000 Glass, set at Glass Tubing with the blue as the glass colour. I also added a thin white Gradient Glow.

If using a scrap kit make sure you credit according to the makers TOU. If you have used mine please add "Scrap kit by Peachies Designs and Tutorials".

If you are not going to animate your tag, you can now Merge all the Layers and save as a jpeg or png, whichever is your preference.

If animating, make sure you have only the bottom flower layer open, click into any layer and copy merged:-

Take this merged image into Animation Shop as Paste as a New Animation. Now go back to PSP, close off the bottom flower layer, and open the second layer. Copy merged again and take to Animation Shop. This time, right click into the first frame, and then paste after current frame:-

Again, go back to PSP, close off the middle flower and open the top flower layer. Take this back to Animation Shop, click into Frame 2, and paste after current frame:-

Now run your optimization wizard and save your tag as a gif.

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.