Scrap Stuff with PSP Tutorials

All My Tuts Bundled

2009-05-13T15:20:00.001-07:00

I've been asked several times over the last year to package up my tuts into word format so here they are. There is 63 psp and 23 photoshop tutorials, all with clear pictures and easy to follow instructions. Sometimes, it's just easier to follow a tutorial when it's sitting beside you rather than flipping back and forth to a page on the net. So, if you're interested, you can go to my store and purchase this pack from the link below.

Click here to purchase this tut pack

Problems with 4Shared

2009-02-24T08:36:00.001-08:00

I've been hearing all over the net that people have been getting viruses from downloading things from 4shared. Since ALL of my freebies and tut supplies are hosted at my 4shared account, at this time, I would advise everyone to not download anything from my links untill I can figure out what to do about it. I do not want anyone to be getting any viruses or trojans from any of my links. I will let everyone know when I've figured out what I'm going to be doing.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Shawna

Jellybeans

2008-11-30T22:44:00.000-08:00

Needed: Eye Candy 5 Impact which you can get a free trial Here
Supplies: SK Jellybeans.f1s Download Here
Put this into your EC5 Impact Bevel folder.

1. Open up a 300 by 300 transparent image.

2. Set your foreground and background to black.

3. Click on your Preset Shapes tool on the left and set it to Ellipse.

4. Draw out a slightly oval shape onto your canvas.

5. In the layer palette, right click on Vector 1 and choose Convert to Raster Layer.

6. Right click on your oval shape in the layer palette and choose Duplicate.

7. With your Mover tool selected on the left, move your second oval to the right like in the picture below:

8. Click on your Preset Shapes tool again, leave it at Ellipse and this time draw out a longer more oval shape like in the picture below:

* This oval needs to be the same length as your 2 smaller ovals above it. Try and get it so that it is even with both outter edges of the 2 other shapes. See picture below for the finished shape so you'll know what I mean:

9. After you get your bean shape even and like how it looks, in the layer palette right click on the Vector layer and choose Convert to Raster Layer.
10. Right click on one of the layers in the layer palette and choose Merge, then Merge Visable.

* Now that you have your shape, here's how to colour it.

11. First, hold down your Shift key on your keyboard and hit the d key. This will duplicate our bean shape. Now you can save the original shape somewhere on your computer and close it out. We will be working on the duplicate.

12. Go up to the Selections tab at the top and choose Select All, then back up to the Selections tab and choose Float, then up to the Selections tab again and choose Defloat.

* You should have marching ants all around your black bean shape.

13. Create a new layer over that one by going to the Layers tab at the top, and choose New Raster Layer.

14. Choose a colour for your foreground, I'm using #C00000.

15. Click on your Flood Fill tool on the left, and then click once inside your new blank layer to fill it with red.

16. Go up to the Selections tab and choose Select None.

* You'll notice that you have some ugly black pixels around your jellybean. That's from the original black shape we made. It is on a separate layer under our red bean, so let's delete the black shape, as we don't need it any more.

17. Right click on your black bean shape in the layers palette and choose Delete.

18. Now go up to the Effects tab, then down to Plugins, then find Eye Candy 5 Impact from the flyout, and choose Bevel.

19. Under the User Settings on the left, look for SK Jellybeans and click it once to select it. Then hit the OK button in the top right corner.

And there's your jellybean :)

When making a different colour jellybean other than the red we used here, once you get into the EC5 Impact Bevel and choose the jellybean preset, you will have to click on the Lighting tab at the top. Under Shadow Colour, change it from the dark red that is there now, to a darker shade of whatever colour you chose for your bean. No need to change anything else.

Tube your beans for easy sizing, and if want, use your burn tool at a low setting to shade in small places.

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means. If you are using this or any of my tutorials for your groups or as part of your own tutorial, please post a link to the tut on my blog and let your members download the supplies from my blog for themselves.

Sprinkles

2008-11-30T22:33:00.000-08:00

Required: EyeCandy 5 Impact which you can get a free trial Here
Supplies: Here

* Place the SK Sprinkles.f1s into wherever your Eye Candy 5 Impact Bevel folder is, and the Line Style into your Styled Lines folder of PSP.

1. Open up a 200 by 200 transparent image.

2. Set your foreground and background to whatever colour you want to use for your sprinkle. I'm going to start off with #F48FAA.

3. Click on your Pen Tool on the left. Create as vector is checked, Segment Type is Line Tool, Line Style is Rounded Ends, Anti-alias is checked and a Width of 17.

4. Drag out a line shape like the one in the picture below:

5. In the Layer Palette, right click on Vector 1 and choose Convert to Raster Layer.

6. Go up to the Effects tab at the top, down to Plugins, then find Eye Candy 5 Impact, and choose Bevel from the flyout.

7. Under the User Settings on the right hand side, look for SK Sprinkles and click it once to select it, then click the OK button.

And there you have your very first sprinkle.

8. Set your foreground and background to some other colour you'd like for another sprinkle. Let's say your going to use a christmas green #2D8F2D.

9. Follow these same steps until you get in the EC5 Impact Bevel part. Choose SK Sprinkles again, but this time, since you are using a different colour than the pink we used previously, you need to change the Shadow Colour under the Lighting tab.
You'll see that it is a medium shade of purple now. That's because we needed a dark shade for the pink we just used. Click the purple square and your colour box will pop up.

10. At the bottom you'll see HTML #AF5B77. Erase those numbers and type in the colour value numbers you've chosen for your next sprinkle, #2D8F2D.

11. See the small dot indicated by the red arrow at the top?. Place your cursor on that dot and move it upward to a dark shade of green, then hit the OK button.

12. Take a look at your green sprinkle preview and see if you like what it looks like. If not, then go back into the shadow colour box and choose a different shade of green.colour box and choose a different green.

13. Click the OK button on the EC Bevel section when you are satisfied.

* You'll notice that I changed the width to 21 and made it shorter for my second sprinkle. Change your settings up for each. Makes for a nice variety. You can also make them slanted, diagonal, vertical ect....... For PSP users, tube them for easy resizing.

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means. If you are using this or any of my tutorials for your groups or as part of your own tutorial, please post a link to the tut on my blog and let your members download the supplies from my blog for themselves.

Candy Sticks

2008-11-30T22:21:00.000-08:00

Needed: EyeCandy 5 Impact. Free Trial Here
Supplies Zip: My bevel and glass settings, which you can find Here

1. Open one 600 x 600, and one 400 x 400 transparent canvas.

2. Set your foreground to whatever colour or gradient you want your candy stick to be. I'm going to be using #9FA1FD.

* We first need to make our pattern for our candy, so....

3. Flood fill the 400 x 400 canvas with the colour you chose.

* Now you need to choose a colour for your stripes.

4. I've chosen to use a silky white gradient for my stripes. It's called Snow and you can find it Here

Angle is 40
Repeats are 0
Style is Linear
Set this as both your foreground and background gradient.

5. Click on your Preset Shapes tool on the left and set it to Rectangle.

Anti-alias is checked
Create as Vector is checked
Line Style is solid
Width is 1

6. Drag out across your canvas 1 long rectangle the size you want your stripes to be. Make sure it reaches to the edges of both sides with no spaces. Here's what mine looks like:

7. In the layer palette, right click on Vector 1 and choose Convert to Raster Layer.

* Now, we need to duplicate this strip as many times as needed to fill your canvas up evenly. This will depend on the width you've chosen and on your preference of how many stripes you want. I've got 10 for mine.

8. Right click on your strip layer and choose Duplicate. Then repeat the same step, as many times as needed, each time right clicking on your original stripe to duplicate.

9. Now, with your Mover tool, drag one of the stripes up to the top of your canvas like in the picture below. Make sure it covers the top edge, but doesn't go over.

10. Move the rest of the stripes out evenly like in the image above. Notice that there is a white strip at the very top and it ends with your purple colour at the bottom and does not have a stripe touching the bottom edge. Your canvas should begin with a stripe and end with a colour.

11. Once you have that done, Right click on one of the layers in the palette on the right and choose Merge Visable.

12. Set your new pattern as both your foreground and background pattern in the materials palette.

Angle is 40
Scale is 100

13. Click on the Preset Shapes tool on the left and set it to Rounded Rectangle.

Anti-alias is checked
Create as Vector is checked
Line Style is solid
Width is 1

14. Drag out your candy stick shape onto your canvas. Here's what mine looks like:

15. In the layer palette, right click on Vector 1 and choose Convert to Raster Layer.

16. Go up to the Effects tab, then down to Plugins and find your EyeCandy 5 Impact and choose Bevel. Find SK Candy Stick from the list on the left and click it once to select it, then click the OK button.

** When doing this tut with any colour other than purple, when you are in the EC 5 Imact Bevel section, click on the Lighting tab at the top. Where it says Shadow Colour, you will need to click on that purple square and change it to a slightly darker shade of the candy stick colour that you chose. Leave everything else the same.

* Your image should look like this:

17. Next, go back up to the Effects tab and to EyeCandy again but this time chose Glass. On the left, look for SK Candy Sticks Shine, click it once to select it, then click the OK button.

* Yours should look like this:

** You can make these any size you want, fat or skinny, with gradients or multi coloured stripes. Experiment and have fun :)

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means. If you are using this or any of my tutorials for your groups or as part of your own tutorial, please post a link to the tut on my blog and let your members download the supplies from my blog for themselves.

Chocolate Pops

2008-11-30T21:48:00.000-08:00

Supplies: Download Here
Plugin Needed: EyeCandy 5 Imapct Free Trial Here

1. Start by opening up a 400 by 400 transparent image.

2. Set your foreground and background colour to #7F5026.

3. Click on your Preset Shapes tool on the left and find SK Fat Baby Star from the list and double click it to select. Anti-alias is checked, Create as Vector is checked, line style is Solid, and a Width of 1.

4. Drag out your shape onto your canvas, about the same size as the one in the picture below:

5. In the layer palette on your right, right click on Vector 1 and choose Convert to Raster Layer.

6. Go up to the Selections tab and choose Select All, then up to the Selections tab again and choose Float, then back up to the Selections tab again and choose Defloat.

* You should have the marching ants all around your star.

7. Go up to the Selections tab again, and this time go to Modify then to Contract and in the Number of Pixels section type in 3.

8. Make a new layer by going up to the Layers tab at the top, then to New Raster Layer.

9. Change your foreground colour to #8D5F39 and flood fill your new layer with this colour. (flood fill is the paint bucket on the left)

* What we are going to do here is.... fill the star with a slightly lighter shade of brown. We are going to use part of this second lighter layer as our shadow.

10. Click on your Mover tool on the left. Place your cursor on the lighter brown layer on your canvas and move it to the right and downwards just a bit like in the picture below:

* Your marching ants will stay in place, but the lighter brown that is OUTSIDE of the march ants is going to be our shadow.

Look at the picture below. It shows you how much I've moved my lighter brown layer outside of the marching ants:

11. Now hit the Delete key on your keyboard. The only thing left of that layer should be the small outter layer of your light brown star.

12. Go up to the Selections tab at the top and choose Select None.

13. Click on your Mover tool and push the thin shadow layer back into place in the star. Because we've contracted the image by 3 pixels, it will be slightly smaller than the darker star, so place it like in the picture below, leaving a bit of darker brown showing around the edges.

14. Go up to the Adjust tab, then down to Blur, then over to Gaussian Blur and set the radius to 2.50

* Now we are going to repeat all those steps again, but this time we are going to use white instead of brown for our highlight.

15. Click on your original brown star layer, and go up to the Selections tab, choose Select All, then Float, then Defloat.

16. Go back up to the Selections tab, choose Modify, then Contract, then set the pixels to 4 this time.

17. Make a new layer by going to the Layer tab, then New Raster Layer, and move it to the top of the pile in the layer palette.

18. Change your foreground colour to White and flood fill this new layer with white.

19. Click on your Mover tool, and move this white layer up and towards the top left. Move this one out a little more than we did for the light brown shadow. We want our highlight to be a little thicker than the shadow was.

20. Hit the Delete key on your keyboard when you are satisfied with how it looks.

21. Go up to the Selection tab, and choose Select None.

22. With your mover tool, move it back into place inside the brown star.

23. Go up to the Adjust tab, then to Blur, then to Gaussian Blur and set the Radius to 3.75. Here's what mine looks like now:

24. Click on your original brown star in the layer palette to make it the active layer.

25. Go up to the Effects tab, then down to Plugins, and find Alien Skin Eye Candy 5 Impact and from the flyout choose Bevel.

26. From the User Settings on the left, find SK Chocolate Pop, click it once to select it, then click OK. Here's what mine looks like now:

27. You'll notice from the picture above that we have some blured edges outside of our star. We need to get rid of those so...

28. Click on your original brown star in the layer palette ( if it isn't already selected)

29. Go up to the Selections tab, choose Select All, Float, then Defloat.

30. Go back up to the Selections tab and choose Invert.

31. Now in the layer palette, click once on the white and or brown highlight layer, then hit the Delete key on your keyboard.

32. Next, click once on your thin brown outline layer and then hit Delete on your keyboard.

33. Now go up to the Selections tab and choose Select None.

34. Right click on one of the layers and choose Merge, then Merge Visable.

* Now to make the stick for it.... We need to increase the canvas height first...

35. Go up to the Image tab, then to Canvas Size. In the New Dimensions section type in 400 width and 700 Height and set it to Pixels.

36. Move your star up so there's room below to make the stick.

37. Set your foreground to white and click on your Pen tool on the left. Create as Vector is checked, Mode is Draw, Segment Type is Line Segments, Line style is Rounded End, Width of about 13, and Anti-alias is checked.

38. Draw out a straight line the length you want your stick to be.

39. In the layer palette, right click on Vector 1 and choose Convert to Raster Layer.

40. Go up to the Effects tab, down to Plugins, then find Alien Skin EyeCandy 5 Impact, then to Bevel. Under the User Settings, find SK Sucker Stick, click it once to select it, then hit OK.

41. Move the stick behind the star layer in the palette.

42. Right click on one of the layers and choose Merge, then Merge Visable. Decorate with the candy of your choice.

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means. If you are using this or any of my tutorials for your groups or as part of your own tutorial, please post a link to the tut on my blog and let your members download the supplies from my blog for themselves.

Christmas Frame

2008-11-26T11:41:00.000-08:00

Supplies: Download Here

Needed: Simple filter 4 way average. Get it Here Click on the photo icon to download it. Unzip it and copy and place it into the plugins folder wherever you have yours saved on your computer.

1. Open up a new transparent image about 400 pixels wide by 450 pixels long.

* This will be the size of your picture you are going to insert later on. You can make this any size you want when redoing this tutorial, but for now, keep to the same size I'm using.

2. Open up from the supplies folder one of the swatches. I'm going to be using SK Christmas Frame 02. Set it as your foreground pattern, Angle 0, and Scale 100.

3. Go up to the Image tab and choose Add Borders.

* You might get a popup message saying something like the image must be flattened into a single background layer. Click OK.

4. Change your settings to the same as the picture below. If you colour swatch is white, change that to a darker shade of grey instead. Since our canvas has now been flattened, it has a white middle, so if you add a white border as well, we aren't going to be able to select it with the magic wand later on, so change your colour to some shade of grey.

5. Click on your Magic Wand tool on the left, Mode is replace, Match Mode is RGB Value, Tolerance is 30, Feather is 0, and Anti-alias is checked. Click once on your grey border. You should have marching ants all around your border.

6. Click on your Flood Fill tool on the left and then click once on your grey border to fill it with the stripes from your foreground pattern. You should now have this:

7. Now, go up to the Effects tab, over to 3D Effects, and then to Cutout and use these settings:

8. Go up to the Selections tab and choose Deselect.

* Now to add some small coloured beads.

11. Go up to the Image tab and choose Add Borders. Change you pixles to 2 and your colour to white. Since we have a dark frame, we need a light colour for the border so that it doesn't blend into the frame's colours and we can select it easily with the magic wand.

* You should now have a 2 pixel white border around your canvas.

12. From the supplies folder, choose one of the coloured bead patterns and set it as your background. I'm going to use the gold pattern.

13. Click on your Magic Wand tool on the left and click once on your outter white border to get the marching ants. If you find it hard to see, you can zoom in to make your canvas appear bigger for better viewing.

14. Click on your Flood Fill tool on the left and then click once inside the marching ants to fill it with your bead pattern.

15. Go up to the Selections tab and choose Select None. This is what you should have so far:

16. Next, set your foreground colour to #570101 and your background colour to #8B0B0B.

17. Click on your background swatch again and click the gradient tab. From the gradient dropdown list, find foreground-background and select that. Set it to Linear, Angle at 20 and Repeats at 1.

18. Go up to the Image tab and choose Add Border again. Leave the colour as white but change your pixels to about 20.

19. Click on your Magic Wand tool and then click once on the new 20 pixel white border to select it.

20. Click on your Flood Fill tool on the left and with your RIGHT mouse button, click once inside the marching ants to fill it with your background gradient.

19. Go up to the Effects tab, over to 3D Effects, then to Cutout and use these settings:

20. Repeat step #19 again, but this time change the Opacity to 40.

21. Go to the Selections tab and choose Select None. This is what you should have:

22. Go up to the Image tab and click on Add Border. Change the pixels to 3.

23. Click on your Magic Wand tool on the left and then click once on the white border.

24. Set your foreground to one of the bead patterns, I'm still using the gold.

25. Click on your Flood Fill tool and then click once inside the marching ants to fill it with your beads.

26. Go up to the Selections tab and choose Select None.

27. Click on the Image tab and choose Add Border. Change the pixels to 20.

28. Click on your Magic Wand tool and click once on your white border.

29. Set your foreground pattern to SK Christmas Frame 02, Angle is 0 and Scale is 100.

30. Click on your Flood Fill tool and then click once inside the marching ants to fill it with the diagonal pattern.

31. Go up to the Effects tab, down to Plugins, then find Simple and from the flyout choose 4 way average.

* Your diagonal stripes should have turned into a plaid pattern. See picture below:

32. Go up to the Effects tab, over to 3D Effects and choose Cutout and use the settings below:

33. Go up to the Selections tab and choose Select None. Here's mine so far:

34. Go up to the Image tab and choose Add Border. Change the number of Pixels to 3.

35. Click on your Magic Wand tool, then click once on your white border.

36. Set your coloured beads as your foreground pattern.

37. Click on your Flood Fill tool on the left and then click once inside the marching ants to fill it with your beads. Here's what mine looks like so far:

* We're almost done. Now to get rid of the white middle.

38. In the layer palette, right click on Background and choose Promote Background Layer.

39. Now click on your Magic Wand tool, click once on the white part in the middle of your frame. Marching ants should be all around the white middle square.

40. Go up to the Edit tab and then down to Clear and click on it. Your white should have disappeared leaving you with a transparent middle.

41. Go up to the Selections tab and choose Select None. And we are done :) Save it as a .png file or .psp file to preserve the transparency in the middle.

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means. If you are using this or any of my tutorials for your groups or as part of your own tutorial, please post a link to the tut on my blog and let your members download the supplies from my blog for themselves.

Suede Looking Ribbons

2008-10-11T21:45:00.000-07:00

Supplies: SK Suede Ribbon Greyscaled, SK Perfect Stitch. Download Here

This tutorial will teach you how to make the ribbon in the above picture. It is for psp users. This tut is done in PSP 8, but can be done in any version as well, although my screenshots will look different than yours, and some of your tools may be in a different loction in your version of PSP. I originally did this ribbon mainly in photoshop, but will do my best to duplicate it using PSP.

1. Open up SK Suede Ribbon Greyscaled from the supplies zip. Hold down your Shift key on your keyboard and hit the D key. This will duplicate our ribbon so that we are not working on the original and you can reuse it later for another ribbon. Close out the original ribbon.

* Next, we need to recolour this by using the Manual Colour Correction function.

* If you are using PSP version 9 and above, for whatever reason, corel has decided to hide this feature. Go to Khiba's site and scroll down till you see the heading Customize! Retrieve PSP 9 Unused Tools". Watch her little viewlette on how to unhide this feature.

2. Go up to the Adjust tab at the top, over to Colour Balance, then down to Manual Colour Correction. You will see this box pop up.

Where it says Source, you are going to put in a medium shade of grey that you choose from your greyscaled ribbon. I choose to use #CBCBCB.
Where it says Target, that is where you put in a colour that you want your ribbon to change to. I chose a light shade of pink #EEBABC. Hit OK when you are done.

3. In the layers palette on the right, right click on your ribbon layer and from the flyout choose Duplicate.

* You should now have an exact copy on top of your original pink ribbon.

4. Hide the duplicated ribbon layer. Click the eye icon next to it to hide it.

* We are going to be doing the background pleats of the ribbon.

5. Click on your ribbon layer (the one that is not hidden) in the layer palette to make it the active layer.

Go up to the Effects tab at the top, then down to Texture Effects, and over to Blinds and use these settings:

* You should have something that looks like this:

6. Unhide the duplicated ribbon layer from the layer palette and click on it to make it our active layer.

* Now we are going to work on the top part of our ribbon.

7. Go up to the Selections tab at the top, click Select All, then back up to the Selections tab again, and click Float, then back up to the Selections tab and click Defloat.

* You should have marching ants all around your ribbon.

8. Go up to the Selections tab again and down to Modify, then over to Contract and put 6 in the Number of Pixels section and hit OK.

* Your marching ants should have contracted inward by 6 pixels like the picture below:

* Now we need to get rid of the parts of the ribbon that is outside of our marching ants so that we can see our pleated edge on the layer below.

9. Go up to the Selections tab at the top, and click Invert. Now hit the delete key on your keyboard.

10. Go up to the Selections tab and choose Select None.

* This is what you should have so far:

11. In the layer palette, right click on your top ribbon layer (not the pleated one) and choose duplicate.

* You should have in your layer palette, 2 copies of your plain ribbon and one copy of your pleated ribbon.

12. Make sure you have the copy of your duplicated ribbon as our active layer ( it should be highlighted blue in the layer palette and it should be the one on the top of the other 2) now, change the blend mode to Multiply. See pic below:

* Yours should have changed from the lighter pink to a darker pink like the picture below:

13. Now use the sliders and lower the opacity of that layer to 80%.

14. Hide the pleated layer in the layer palette and right click on one of the remaining layers and from the flyout choose Merge, then Merge Visable. Unhide the pleated layer.

* Now we need to lighten the top ribbon in places and darken it in others.

15. Make sure you are working on the unpleated layer and click on the lighten/darken tool. Choose the default, soft round brush,

Size 33
Hardness 50
Density and Thickness 100
Opacity 18
Mode Lightness

*** With the lighten/darken tool, if you click with your left mouse button it will lighten, and if you click with your right mouse button it will darken.

16. Using your left mouse button to lighten, run your brush down the middle of the ribbon in strokes rather than one continuous line. Try not to hit the top and bottom edges of the ribbon, lighten around them. We want those to stay darker than the middle. That's what gives the ribbon it's shape. We're going to do this several times, so don't worry if you think you aren't doing it right, or it's not lightening enough. Here's what mine looks like after the first pass. It's just a very subtle lightening.

* Now we are going to darken it around the edges. Like i explained earlier, if you use your right mouse button, it will darken the image, but i find that very awkward to keep it clicked down and use it that way. So, up at the top you will see Swap Mouse Buttons. Put a check in there. With that check in there, it is going to allow you to use your left mouse button to darken instead of the right mouse button.

17. Keep the settings the same on your lighten/darken tool and just brush around the edges using short strokes. Go farther down into the ribbon near the middle in some places just to give it a bit of dimension. Also, mix some diagonal strokes in there rather than using all straight across strokes, but be sure to keep the middle the lightest part of the ribbon. You can also increase the Opacity to about 25 if you feel you need to.

* See how the 2 effects makes it look like the ribbon is puffed up and curved a bit?

Continue to switch back from light to dark to achieve a look that you like. Don't forget when you are going back to lighten to uncheck the Swap Mouse Button.

18. You can also go back to an opacity of 18 and darken the pleated parts of the ribbon as well, but not too much.

19. When you are satisfied with how it looks, in the layer palette, right click on one of the layers and from the flyout choose Merge, then Merge Visable.

20. Open up in your psp, SK Perfect Stitch.jpg from the supplies zip. Click on the File tab at the top of your psp and go to Export, then to Custom Brush. In the box that pops up, give your brush a name and hit ok. You can name it the same as mine SK Perfect Stitch if you want so that it will be easy to find if you do this tut again.

21. Change your foreground colour to the slightly off white colour #EFEFEF.

22. Click your paint brush tool on the left hand side and leave all settings at it's default, except change the rotation to 90, and the Step to 35.

23. Create a new layer by going up to the Layers tab at the top and coose New Raster Layer.

24. Place your cursor at a point near the beginning top edge of the ribbon and just click once.

* You will see just one small stitch.

25. Scroll to the very end of your ribbon, hold down your Shift key on your keyboard and position your cursor where you want the very last stitch to appear and click once.

* You should now have a straight line of evenly spaced stitches. You can change the spacing of the stitches by changing the number in the Step section. The higher the number the more space between stitches you will have, the lower the number the closer together the stitches will be to each other. Here's what my first line of stitches looks like:

26. In the layer palette, click on the stitches layer to make it active if it isn't already. Now, right click on it and choose Duplicate. Use your mover tool to drag the second stitch layer down to the bottom portion of the ribbon and line it up with the top stitches.

27. Turn off your ribbon layer in the layer palette and right click on one of the stitches layers and choose Merge, then Merge Visable.

28. Turn your ribbon layer back on.

29. We need a slight drop shadow under the stitches so, go up to the Effects tab, then to 3D Effects, then over to drop shadow and use these settings:

vertical and horozontal is 0
opacity is 25
blur is 7
colour is #221D12

30. Right click on one of the layers and choose Merge, then Merge Visable and you are done. Here's what mine looks like:

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means. If you are using this or any of my tutorials for your groups or as part of your own tutorial, please post a link to the tut on my blog and let your members download the supplies from my blog for themselves.

Shiny Buttons

2008-10-11T21:40:00.000-07:00

Needed: EyeCandy 5 Impact

Supplies zip you can get HERE. You need to put the 2 Eye Candy 5 glass presets into the Alien Skin EC 5 Impact folder/Settings/Glass

1. Open up a 400 x 400 transparent canvas.

2. Put your foreground colour to #059EE4 and your background colour to #A1E1FF and click OK.

3. Click on your background colour again and then click on the Gradient tab at the top. Change your settings to the ones in the picture below:

:

4. Click on your Preset Shapes tool on the left and scroll down till you find the Ellipse. In the options bar at the top:

Anti-alias is checked
Create as Vector is checked
Line Style is Solid
Width is 1

5. Hold down your Shift key and draw out a fair size circle on your canvas.

6. In the Layer Palette on the right, right click on Vector 1 and from the flyout choose Convert to Raste Layer.

* Decide what you want to put in the middle of your button. It can be text, tube, photo, or whatever you want. In the supplies folder, I've given you a sample flower bunch to use for this tut.

7. Copy and paste your image into the middle of your circle.

8. Now give your text, or tube image a slight drop shadow. Use the settings like in the picture below.

9. In the Layers Palette, right click on one of the layers and choose Merge, then Merge Visable.

Here's what mine looks like now:

10. Go up to the Effects tab, then down to Plugins, then from the list find Alien Skin Eye Candy 5 Impact, then click on the Glass Option.

11. On the left you will see User Settings. Choose on of the glass presets from the list. I'm going to be using Simple Glass Button 02. Select it then click OK.

Here's mine:

* You can add any extra highlights on it, or when in the EC Glass options, fool around with the different reflections and settings in there to get different looks.

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means. If you are using this or any of my tutorials for your groups or as part of your own tutorial, please post a link to the tut on my blog and let your members download the supplies from my blog for themselves.

Gingham

2008-08-05T19:06:00.000-07:00

Supplies: Texturizer plugin and my texture swatches. This is optional and only if you want to give your pattern a little bit of texture. You don't need it to make this gingham tutorial. In the example above, I've used a quilted texture, which I've included in the zip, along with another different texture that you will see in the example photo's in this tutorial.

Download these from Download Supplies Here.

Place the texturizer plugin wherever you have your plugin folder on your computer. Also, I use this plugin A LOT, so i've made a folder called texturizer swatches and put it into where i have all of my PSP stuff in My Documents. It just makes it easier to find all my textures if they are in one place.

** When doing this tutorial for the first time, use the same colours and sizes that I do so that there is no confusion in the tut. You can change the colour and size if you want when doing it another time.

1. Start by opening up a 20 by 20 transparent image.

* This will be your main canvas. It's small because gingham is made of tiny check patterns.

2. Set your foreground to white (i'm actually not using white as i think a slightly off white looks better #EFEFEF). Now flood fill your 20 x 20 with this colour.

3. Tiny canvases are hard to work with while they are so small, so lets enlarge it by clicking on your zoom tool on the left and type in 3000 in the percentage box. ( the zoom tool is the icon on the left that looks like a white arrow pointing upward and to the left).

4. Open up a 10 by 10 new transparent image.

5. Flood fill this with your main colour you want your gingham to be. In this case mine is #F8C2C2.

6. Go up to the Edit tab and down to Cut, then click on your main 20 x 20 white canvas to activate it.

7. Go up to the Edit tab again and choose Paste, then Paste as New Layer.

* Your pink square should now be in the middle of your canvas.

8. Click on your Mover tool and move the pink square up and over to the top left of your canvas. If you move it slowly, you will notice that your pink square will snap into place when you reach the top left of your canvas. This is what you should have now:

9. In your layer palette on the right, right click on Raster 2 ( which should be your pink square) and choose Duplicate.

10. Now go up to the Image tab and choose Mirror. Your duplicated pink square should have flipped over to the right hand side of your canvas like this:

* Now we need this one to be a lighter shade of pink than our first one so...

11. In the layer palette, lower the opacity of your duplicated square to about 52%.

* We need to make a copy of this lighter pink layer and position it in the bottom left hand corner.

12. In the layer palette, right click on your light pink layer and choose Duplicate.

13. Go up to the Image tab and choose Flip then back up to the Image tab and choose Mirror.

Taa Daa, you've got yourself a seamless gingham pattern.

14. Right click on one of the layers and choose Merge then Merge Visable. Save this somewhere on your computer, but don't click it off. We aren't finished yet.

* You can test it out by setting it as your foreground pattern and flood filling a new 200 x 200 canvas.

If you'd like to give it a little bit of a texture, I'm going to show you a couple different ones next if you continue on.

15. OK, you've flood filled a 200 x 200 canvas with your new gingham pattern and you should have this:

* This 200 x 200 canvas is just a test image we are doing. If you were making an actual page, you would make your canvas whatever size you needed and then did the textures on there.

16. Go up to the Effects tab, down to Plugins, then over to Texture and click on Texturizer. In the dropdown box indicated with the red arrow, click on that and click on Load Texture. Navigate to wherever you saved SK Gingham Texture.psd from the zip, click on it once then click Open and it will load as your chosen texture. Then change the rest of your settings to the one in the picture below and click OK.

This is what you should have.

This setting gives you a faint grosgrain look:

Experiment with the settings and different textures and see what you can come up with.

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means. If you are using this or any of my tutorials for your groups or as part of your own tutorial, please post a link to the tut on my blog and let your members download the supplies from my blog for themselves.

Putting Together Your Kit Preview For Your Blog

2008-08-05T18:36:00.000-07:00

This is one tutorial that I never really thought about people not knowing how to do, so thanks for the request Sharon. I'm sure it's going to be of help to some people. I don't know how others do theirs, but this is how I do mine, and it works for me.

First thing you need to do before anything else is find out what size of canvas width your blog or site will allow, without it overlapping into the sides of your blog. My width limit is 550 pixels, but my length can be anything I choose. I'm going to be using my Spring Kit for this tut.

Normally, I use all my papers as my background for the preview, so open up all of your papers in PSP and duplicate each one (hold down your Shift key on your keyboard and hit the D key to duplicate) then close out the originals. We are going to be cutting these so we don't want to wreck the one's you are going to be giving away.

1. Select one of your duplicated background papers to start working with. Click on your Crop tool on the left.

2. Up at the top, you will see Width and Height. . Type in the amount of pixels that your preview canvas is. Mine was 550 x 550.

3. Place your cursor on your paper somewhere inside your crop box and then move the crop box to a section of your paper that you want displayed as part of your preview background. When you've got that set as you like it, just double click inside the crop box. This will be your main canvas you will be working on.

This is the cropped version of my first background paper that I chose:

4. Choose another background paper and crop it to the same Width and Height as you did with the first paper.

* Now we are going to either drag and drop or copy and paste this second paper onto your first paper that is on your main canvas.

5. Make sure your second paper is the active one, and go up to the Edit tab, then to Copy. Click on your main canvas ( which is what your first cropped paper is on) to make it the active one. Then go back up to the Edit tab and over to Paste, then to Paste as New Layer.

* Your second paper will be covering your first, so we need to move that down.

6. Click on your Mover tool on the left and shift your second paper down a little bit so that you can see both of them. Here's what mine looks like at this point:

* All drop shadows will be left untill the end so don't put any on just yet.

* I actually have 10 papers in this preview, but becase it's very early in the morning and I'm lazy, I'm only going to be doing 3.

7. Repeat theses steps for as many papers as you have in your kit. Use your mover tool to shift each one downwards and make them evenly spaced with each other. Here's mine with 3 papers:

* Now that we've got our papers displayed as we want them, it's time for the elements. I always tube my elements when doing preveiws. I do this because it is much easier to resize them down this way than just duplicating them, then resizing. Also, I find that they come out nicer without the distortion and sometimes jagged looking edges.

8. Start by opening up some of the elements you want to use in the preview. If you have a ton of them in your kit, you may not be able to display them all, so open up the ones you like the best. I'm going to use a few of the paperclips I had made for this kit.

9. I always name my preview tubes starting with the word Temporary so that I can find them easily when I am done my preview and delete them so it doesn't clog up my tube section. So for example, I have my first paperclip ready to tube. Duplicate it and close out the original. Crop out all the unneccissary space around your first element, and make sure it doesn't have more than 1 layer.

10. Go up to the File tab, down to Export, then over to Picture Tube. Give your tube a name such as temporary spring 01 ( or whatever your kit is called) and then click the OK button.

11. Do this for each of the elements you are going to be using for your preview. It doesn't matter if it is a really big element either, such as a frame, it can still be tubed.

12. When you've finished your tubing, on your background main canvas, create a new layer. (Layers tab at the top, choose New Raster Layer).

13. The placement of your elements is all up to you, but you need to get the sizing of them appropriately for your preview. What I do is, make a duplicate of your main background canvas to use as a test run. Click on your Tube tool and choose your first element.

14. Plop it down on your test run canvas to see how big it is. More than likely it will be too big for your preview, but it gives you an idea of how much you need to scale it down. Go up to the Edit tab and click undo to get rid of it, then scale it down a bit and plop it back onto your test run canvas. ( to scale down, look up top for the section labled Scale and under it will be 100. Use the down arrow next to it to scale it down to a lower number. This will decrease your tube's size) Do this untill you find a size that looks good. Then go back to your main canvas and put your tube down there. Remember to always put each tube on a new layer so that you are able to move it around and to apply your drop shadow to a single item.

* Tip: Don't make everything the same size, vary it up. Here's mine. I've added a few elements and have not yet put a drop shadow on anything.

15. When you have it all placed and it looks good, then you can click on each item seperately and put on a drop shadow of your choice. I can't tell you what that is because your shadow will depend on your own elements. If it is a light colour, you will not be using the same very dark shade of a shadow that you would on a dark coloured element. So that part is all up to you.

* When your shadows are finished, you need to put your blog address and title on your preview kit. This is up to your own imagination and likes and preferences. Most times, I just use a simple partially opaque ribbon going across the preview pic, and I add my blog address and the name of my kit.

16. I've set my forground to a gold pattern, turned off my background so that I will just be getting an outline of a rectangle and not a filled one. Line style is solid, and a width of 1. Draw out your rectangle straight across your preview canvas. Right click and convert to raster layer.

17. Click on your Magic Wand tool, and click once inside your rectangle that's on your canvas. You should have marching ants all around inside the rectangle.

18. Go up to the Selections tab, down to Modify then over to Expand. Expand by 1 pixel.

19. Go up to the Layers palette and make a new raster layer and drag it under your rectangle you just drew.

20. Click on your Flood Fill tool on the left and fill your blank layer with white, then lower the opacity to about 45.

* The lowered opacity of the white lets you have the appearance of a label ribbon, but still lets you see what is beneath it.

21. Go up to the Selections tab at the top and choose Select None. Here's where I'm at right now.

22. In the layers palette, turn off all of your layers except the outline of the gold rectangle and the lowered opacity white layer. Then right click on one of those still visable layers and choose Merge, then Merge Visable.

* You can now move this down to the middle of your preview canvas.

* You need to put a slight drop shadow on your ribbon label and with white opaque items, that's a bit tricky. This is my way of doing it.

23. Make your label ribbon acitve by clicking on it on your canvas or in the layer palette. Go up to the Effects tab, then to 3D Effects, then over to Drop Shadow. Use these settings:

Vertical: 1
Horozontal: 1
Opacity: 32
Blur: 7
Colour: #221D12
Shadow on a New Layer is CHECKED. << Very important that it is on it's own layer.

* You'll notice that your white had turned darker because of the shadow we just put on it. We are going to get rid of most of it with our rectangle tool.

24. Click on your Selection tool and set it to rectangle. We want to get our rectangle as close to the top and bottom gold outlines as possible. Try not to go outside of the gold oulines because then you will be deleting part of your shadow. You may want to zoom in closer for this step. See my example below:

25. Once you are satisfied with your results, make sure you have the shadow layer of your label ribbon as your active layer in the layer palette. Hit the delete key on your keyboard. By doing so, you have just deleted all the shadow from inside your white label but still have the shadow showing only on the outsides of your label.

26. Choose a nice font and colour for your text. Normally, I choose a darker shade for the foreground and a lighter shade of the same colour for the background. In this case, I'm going to use #2E9ED2 for my foreground outline, and #A6D9F0 for my background fill of my text.

27. Type out the name of your kit, your blog name/address and any other information you want on there.

28. All that's left to do is to save it as a .jpg and you're ready to upload it to photobucket or some other photo hosting site.

Quilt Blocks and Stitching-Requested Tut

2008-07-10T23:57:00.000-07:00

Supplies Needed: Texturizer plugin which you can get HERE
My Supplies: Which you can get HERE

1. Start out by opening up a 400 x 400 transparent image.

2. Open up from my zip, SK Quilting Fabric 01 and set it as your foreground pattern.

3. Flood fill your canvas with it. You should have what looks like this now:

* This fabric swatch is a bit dark, so we are going to lighten it up a little.

4. In the layer palette on the right, right click on your fabric layer and go to New Adjustment Layer then to Brightness/Contrast. It may also be found under the Adjust tab at the top. Set the brightness up to 35 and click OK.

5. Right click on one of the layers and choose Merge, then Merge Visable.

* Now we are going to change the fabric from grey to another colour.

6. Go up to the Adjust tab at the top, then to Colour Balance, then over to Manual Colour Correction.

* * I'm using PSP8, but in later versions of PSP, the manual colour correction option may be hidden. Go to this site Khiba's, and scroll down to where it says "Custominze! Retrieve Unused PSP 9 Tools" and watch her little viewlet. It will show you how to unhide the maual colour correction option.

7. Click on the coloured box under Source and from the colour properties box change the colour to #9D9D9D, then click on the coloured box under Target and change it to #C0C0FF then click OK. You should have this:

* Now for the quilting part with the Texturizer plugin.

8. Go up to the Effects tab at the top, down to Plugins, over to Texture, then to Texturizer.

9. Click on the down arrow in the little box beside the word Texture, then click on Load Texture. Navigate to where you unzipped my files and click once on SK Quilt 50 x 50.psd to select it, then hit the Open button and it will appear in your texturizer settings box. Change the other settins to the same as in the picture below:

You should now have this:

* I've included several different quilt sizes for the texturizer plugin in the supplies zip for you to experiment with on other projects.

Now for some simple edge stitching......

* I'm not sure if this is a default font or not but just incase, I've included it in the supplies zip.

1. Open up ARDS1 font from the supplies zip and minimize it.

2. Click on your Text tool on the left and go up to the font box at the top and find ARDS1 and select it as your chosen font. Font size is 14, Stroke width is 0, Anti-alias is checked, Line style is Solid, Auto kern is UNchecked, Kerning is -132, Leading is 0.

* We are going to increase our canvas just a little so we can see all the outter edges.

3. Go up to the Image tab at the top, and click on Canvas size. Our canvas we are working on is 400 by 400 and we want to increase it by 50 pixels all around, so starting in the New Dimensions section, change your settings to the ones in the picture below:

4. Change your foreground and background colours to white.

5. Click once with your cursor at the beginning top corner of your purple quilt layer and your text box will pop up. Hold down the letter v on your keyboard and it will begin to type out a series of v's that are very close together. Let go of the v key when you've reached the opposite edge of of your purple quilt. Click Apply when you are satisfied with what it looks like. Here's mine:

6. In the layer palette on the right, you'll see Vector 1, right click on it and choose Duplicate. We now have 2 identical layers of stitching.

7. Click on Vector 1 to activate it, then click on the + sign in front of it and you will see A vvvvvv as another layer under Vector 1.

8. Right click on the A vvvvv layer and from the flyout choose Convert Text to Curves, then choose As Single Shape.

9. Double click on the vvvvv layer and your Vector Properties box will pop up.

10. Click the white coloured box under Stroke, then change the colour number to #6E5E3E and hit OK.

11. Click on the white coloured box under Fill and change this to #6E5E3E also and hit OK, then click OK on the Vector Properties box.

* Doing this gives our stitches a bit of a thread look rather than having it just very smooth and white. Kinda looks fake that way in my opinion. Now it looks more like stitches and a lot less like v's.

12. In the layer palette, right click on one of the stitches layers and choose Convert to Raster Layer and then do the same for the other stitched layer.
13. Turn off your purple quilted layer by clicking once on the eye icon beside it, and now right click on one of your stitched layers and choose Merge, then choose Merge Visable.

* Now for the pain in the butt part. Putting those tiny black dots under each stitch. I hate doing this and fiddled around and experimented till I found a shortcut, so i'm going to show you my way. If you prefer the other way, create a new layer and place it under your stitch layer. Set your foreground to black and with your paintbrush set at about 4 or so, put a dot under each top and bottom point of your stitches. Merge those two layers when done. Here's my way.

14. In the layer palette, right click on your stitches layer and choose Duplicate. You should have Copy of Merged in the top position in the layer palette.

15. Go up to the Adjust tab at the top, and then all the way down to Negative Image. The copy of your stitches layer should have turned all black.

16. Drag the black stitches layer under your white stitches layer in the layer palette.

17. Set your foreground colour to black or any colour other than white.

18. Click on your Pen tool on the left. Continuous and Create as Vector are both checked, Mode is Drawing Mode, Segment Type is Line Segments, Line Style is Solid, Width is 4, and Anti-alias is checked.

19. Hold down your Shift key and drag out a straight line making sure it extends beyond the edges of your purple quilted layer. See pic below:

20. In the layer palette, right click on that layer and choose Convert to Raster Layer.

21. Drag that layer above your stitches layer in the layer palette, and then with your Mover tool, position the black line evenly in the middle of your stitches line.

22. Go up to the Selections tab at the top, choose Select All, up to the Selections tab again and choose Float, back up to the Selections tab and choose Defloat. You should have marching ants all round your straight black line.

23. Hit the Delete key on your keyboard.

24. In the layer palette, click on the layer that has the Black stitches on it and hit the Delete key on your keyboard again.

25. Go up to the Selections tab and choose Select None.

26. You'll notice you have an outline of black left over from the straight black line on your canvas. Right click on that layer in the layer palette and choose Delete.

27. Now, turn off your white stitches layer in the layer palette ( click the eye icon next to it to turn it off) and you will see that you now have what looks like this:

* We need to make the top half and bottom half of these black stitches into 2 seperate layers so that we can move them down a bit to match up with the points in our white stitches so.....

28. On the left, click on the Selection tool and set it to Rectangle. Make sure feather is set to 0 and Mode is Replace.

29. Draw out a rectangle like in the picture below. Careful not to touch the top portion of the black stitches.

30. Click on your black stitch layer to make it active then go up to the Edit tab and choose Cut, then back up to the Edit tab and choose Paste, then Paste as New Layer.

31. Go up to the Selections tab and choose Select None.

* Now we have 2 black stitch lines that the dots are evenly seperated and will co-ordinate with the spacings in our white stitching layer.

32. Turn on your white stitch layer again, select your Mover tool and move each line of black stitch dots under the white layer and line the black points up with the white points. See picture below:

33. When you've got your placement of black dots lined up with the white, turn off your purple layer and your white stitch layer and right click on one of the black dot layers and choose Merge, then Merge Visable.

* Now, those dots look a little harsh so we are going to give them a slight blur to soften them up.

34. With your black dot layer active, go up to the Adjust tab at the top, then down to Blur, then over to Gaussian Blur. In the Radius section, type in 0.75 and hit OK.

* If you like it that way, leave it as is, I lowered my opacity to about 66 on the black blur layer. Just a personal preference. Here's what mine looks like now:

35. When satisfied with what it looks like, turn off your purple layer and right click on one of the remaining layers and choose Merge, then Merge Visable. Rename this layer TOP.

36. In the layer palette, right click on TOP and choose Duplicate, then go up to the Image tab and choose Flip. Rename this layer BOTTOM.

* You may need to adjust that stitched line slightly.

37. In the layer palette, right click on TOP and choose Duplicate again.

* A duplicate layer will appear over your top stitched line.

38. With your Mover tool, drag that new layer down to the middle of your purple quilted layer, then go up to the Image tab at the top, choose Rotate, then choose Free Rotate. Put the green dot beside Right and the green dot beside Free and type in 90.00. Make sure All Layers and Rotate single layer around canvas center are both UNchecked. Hit OK. Rename this layer LEFT.

39. Move LEFT layer over to the left of your purple quilt edge.

40. In the layer palette, right click LEFT and choose Duplicate. Move that over to the right of your purple edge. Here's what mine looks like so far:

* You'll notice that you have one or two stitches that are hanging over the edges. Just grab your eraser tool and click on the layer that has the hang over and gently erase.

* This is up to your personal preference, but I like to give my stitches a slight drop shadow.

41. Click on TOP in the layer palette to make it active. Go up to Effects, over to 3D Effect, and over to Drop Shadow. I've chosen a darker shade of my purple quilt layer as the shadow colour instead of black so that it doens't darken my stitches. Also, I always put my shadow on a new layer just incase I decide I don't like it or want to change it later on.

42. Click on each of the remaining stitched layers and give it the same shadow.
* Now we are going to darken the edges of our purple quilt layer.

43. Click on your Lighten/Darken tool on the left. Size about 35 to 40, Hardness is 50, Step 25, Density and Thickness is 100, Rotation is 0, Opacity is 20 and also put a checkmark in Swap mouse buttons. That way you can just use your regular mouse button to darken instead of using the right click mouse button because that can get awkward.

* I've just used a few strokes all around the edges to darken them up a bit. Lower the opacity if you think it's too dark. Here's what mine turned out like:

* All that's left to do is Merge Visable and you've got a quilted pattern. This stitching technique also works with x's or the letter l. You can use this quilting technique with shapes as well, and patterned paper too, but you will have to tweak the settings a bit during the Texturize part to get the quilting to show up against the pattern. Experiment and see what you can come up with.

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means, send them here to my blog to get the supplies and tut for themselves.

Notebook Paper

2008-07-02T11:23:00.000-07:00

Supplies Needed:
Mura's Meister Copies (optional): Download Here
My zip containing SK Blue lines and SK Pink Line: Download Here

1. Start by opening up a transparent image whatever size you want your paper to be. I'm using a small size for this tut 425 x 510.

2. Set your foreground colour to #F2F2F2 and flood fill your canvas with this.

3. Open up SK Blue Lines from the zip and set it as your foreground pattern. Angle 0 and Scale 100.

4. Flood fill your canvas with the blue lines. This is what you should have at this point:

5. Open up SK Pink Line from the zip. Copy and paste it onto your canvas.

* You may need to copy and paste it twice if you are making a larger sheet.

6. Move it over to the left leaving a bit of space inbetween the edge and your pink line. Here's mine:

* Next we are going to create the holes for the paper. The use of Mura Meister Copies plugin is optional here. You can do this manually, but I like that it gives you perfect, evenly spaced holes this way. For this to work out properly, we need our canvas width to be the exact same as our height. My canvas height is 510 pixels so we need to increase our canvas size. So.....

7. Go up to the Image tab at the top and click on Canvas Size. In the New Canvas Size box, type in 510 for both the width and height ( make sure it says pixels in the box beside width and height) and hit OK.

* You will have blank space on both the left and right of your canvas.

8. Set both your foreground and background colours to black.

9. Click on your Preset Shapes tool on the left and set it to Ellipse. Anti-Alias and Create as Vector both checked, Line Style is solid, Width is 1.

10. Draw out on your canvas a small circle the size you want the holes to be.

* Now we need this dot to be perfectly centerd on our canvas to use this next plugin properly, so....

11. Go up to the Edit tab and select Cut, then back up to the Edit tab and choose Paste, then Paste as New Layer. It should now be in the center of your paper.

12. Go up to the Effects tab, down to Plugins, then find Mura's Meister and choose Copies. Change your settings to the one's in the picture:

* I only want 3 holes at the side of my paper, if you wanted 4 or more, change the section at the top right that says Number from 3 to however many holes you wanted.

* You should now have 3 holes going in a horozontal direction across your paper. We need to rotate these so that they are vertical.

13. Go up to the Image tab at the top, then down to Rotate, then Free Rotate. The green dot should be in Right, and also beside the word Free. Type in 90.00 amount box. Make sure that All layers and Rotate single layer around canvas center are NOT checked off. Hit OK.

*Your 3 black dots should now be in a vertical line.

14. With your Mover tool, move them over to the left and position them on your paper where you want the holes to be cut out.

15. Go up to the Selections tab at the top, choose Select All, then up to the Selectios tab again, choose Float, back up to the Selections tab and choose Defloat.

* You should have marching ants all around your 3 dots.

16. Hit the Delete key on your keyboard, then in the layer palette, click on the layer that has your paper on it and hit your Delete key on your keyboard again.

17. Go up to the Selections tab at the top and choose Select None. Here's mine so far:

* You'll notice you have a fuzzy black outline around your holes. That's the slight remains from our cut holes, and we need to get rid of those.

18. In the layer palette, click on your top layer (which was your black dots before we deleted them) and click the delete button or right click on the layer and choose delete.

19. Right click on one of the layers in the layer palette and choose Merge then Merge Visable.

You can spiff up your paper by making some of those thingamajiggs that you stuck over the holes when the paper used to rip out of your binder, or rip a corner off, stain it ect.....

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means, send them here to my blog to get the supplies and tut for themselves.

Perforated Edges-Requested Tut

2008-07-02T11:17:00.000-07:00

Edit: If your white rectangle kept disappearing when you hit the delete key, i had forgotten to tell you to convert it to raster layer after you dragged it out onto your canvas. I've fixed my mistake and i hope that's the only one. If you have any problems, just let me know.

This tutorial will show you how to create perforated edges like the ones found on stamps.

Supplies Needed:

Mura's Meister Copies: Download Here

1. Start by opening up a transparent image about 400 x 400.

2. Set your foreground and background to white or what I'm using is an almost white colour #F6F4F4.

3. Click on your Preset Shapes tool on the left and set it to rectangle.

4. Drag out a rectangle onto your canvas. Here's mine:

5. In the layer palette on the right, right click on your rectangle layer and choose Convert to Raster Layer.

6. Set your foreground and background to black.

7. Click on your Preset Shapes tool again and set it to Ellipse. Anti-alias and Create as Vector both are checked, Line Style is solid, Width is 1.

8. Draw out a tiny circle onto your canvas. Here's the size of mine:

9. In the layer palette, right click on that layer and choose Convert to Raster Layer.

* We need this to be centered on our canvas, so...

9. Go up to the Edit tab and choose Cut, back up to the Edit tab and choose Paste, then Paste as a New Layer.

10. Click on the Effects tab at the top, go down to Plugins, find Mura's Meister and select Copies.

11. Click on the Reset button in the bottom right corner, then in the bottom left corner, click the dropdown arrow and find Line and select it.

12. At the top where it says Number, change that to about 23. Yours may vary depending on the size of space you want to leave between each perforation. Click OK.

* You should now have a line of dots going straight across your canvas.

13. I've trimmed my line to 16 dots. Use your eraser tool to get rid of the unwanted dots. ( This next part is optional and just my personal preference) I like to have a bit of space left at the end of each dot just because I think it looks better if the corners aren't cut off. If after trimming your line you don't have any space, use your undo option untill you get back to your single dot and redo the Mura's Meister copies and change the number from 23 to one or two higer to get the dots closer together. See picture under Step #14.

14. With your mover tool, move the line of dots up to rest along the top of the white rectangle. Line up the middle of the of the dots with the bottom half of the dots resting on the white layer. See picture below:

15. In the layer palette, right click on your line of dots and choose Duplicate.

16. With your Mover tool, move that line to the bottom of the white rectangle and line it up with the top layer of dots.

17. Right click on your original line of dots and choose Duplicate. Hide that layer by clicking on the eye icon beside it.

18. Hide your white rectangle layer as well by clicking the eye icon beside it.

19. Right click on one of the 2 black dot lines and choose Merge then Merge Visable.

20. Unhide the white rectangle layer now.

21. Click on your black dot layer to make it active.

22. Go up to the Selections tab at the top, choose Select All, up to the Selection tab again and choose Float, then back up to the Selection tab and chosse Defloat.

23. Hit the Delete key on your keyboard.

24. Click on the white rectangle layer to make it active and hit Delete on your keyboard again.

25. Go up to the Selections tab and choose Select None.

26. In the layer palette, find the layer that had the black dots on them before we deleted it, right click and choose Delete to get rid of the black outline of circles that appears on your canvas. This is what mine looks like now. I've added a green background only so you can see my canvas better:

27. Unhide the remaining layer of black dots.

28. With your Mover tool, move the line down to somewhere near the middle of your canvas.

29. Click on the Image tab at the top, choose Rotate, then Free Rotate. Put the green dot beside Right and beside the word Free, and change the number in the box to 90.00 and click OK.

* You should now have a vertical line of dots.

30. Once again, I've erased a few dots until I ended up with just 10.

31. Move that line of dots over to the right and line it up.

32. In the layer palette, right click on your line of dots and choose Duplicate and move that line over to the left and line that one up as well.

33. Turn off all layers except the 2 remaining black dot lines and then right click on one of them and choose Merge then Merge Visable.

34. Turn your white rectangle layer back on.

35. With your black dot layer active, go up to the Selections tab at the top, choose Select All, up to the Selection tab again and choose Float, then back up to the Selection tab and chosse Defloat.

36. Hit the Delete key on your keyboard.

37. Click on your white rectangle layer to make it active, and hit the Delete key on your keyboard once again.

38. Click on your Selection tab and choose Select None.

39. Delete the layer that has the leftover outline of black dots. Here's what mine looks like now:

40. At this point all you have to do is add a scaled down photo and maybe a drop shadow if you want. Here's my final product:

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means, send them here to my blog to get the supplies and tut for themselves.

Felt-Suede Textured Shapes-Requested Tut

2008-07-02T11:10:00.000-07:00

Supplies Needed:

My zip includes 2 textures and star shape, all of which you can download HERE

1. Start by opening a new transparent image about 400 x 400.

2. Open up one of the textures from the zip. I'm going to be using the brown one for this tut.

3. Set your foreground and background pattern to the texture you've chosen. Angle 0 and Scale 100.

4. Click on your preset shapes tool on the left and set it to the rounded star that was included in the zip. Anti-alias and Create as Vector are both checked, Line Style is solid, Width is 1.

5. Hold down your Shift key to keep the star proportioned and drag out your shape onto your canvas. You'll notice on the right side that it's a little darker. That's because this swatch isn't seamless. I would have made it seamless, but I didn't like the end result, but don't worry, we will fix that up a bit later on.

6. In the layer palette on the right, right click on Vector 1 and from the flyout choose Duplicate.

* You should now have Copy of Vector 1 in the top position in the layer palette.

7. Click on your Eyedropper from the toolbar on the left, then click once somewhere on your brown star to set that colour as your foreground colour. Then Right Click somewhere on your brown star to set it as your background colour. We will be switching from our pattern to use a colour in a minute.

8. In the layer palette on the right, click once on your original star shape, it should be still named Vector 1. Click the small + sign in front of it.

9. Double click on the name of the shape that appears under Vector 1 (in our case Star) and your properties box will pop up.

10. Click once on the brown swatch under the word Stroke and your material palette will pop up.

11. Click on the Colour tab at the top and your brown colour you chose from your star with the eyedropper tool should be there. We need to make it a few shades darker so with your mouse, click once a little bit above the circle that you see in the colour palette. My colour turned out to be #2F2019. Click OK when done.

12. Back in your Vector Properties box now, change the Stroke to 7.

13. Click on the brown swatch under the Fill, and change that colour to the same colour you chose for the Stroke above. Again, mine was #2F2019 and click OK. This is what you should have now:

14. In the layer palette, right click on Vector 1 and from the flyout choose Convert to Raster Layer.

15. Do the same for Copy of Vector 1.

* Now to get rid of that darker right side.

16. In the layer palette on the right, click on Copy of Vector 1 to make it our active layer. Go up to the Selections tab, choose Select All, back up to the Selections tab and choose Float, then back up to the Selectios tab and choose Defloat.

* You should have marching ants all around your star image.

17. On the left, click on your Clone tool. Set the size to about 30 and opacity to 100. Right click once near the middle of your star then move over to the right side and with a few clicks, clone over that dark line a bit.

18. Selections tab again, choose Modify, then choose Contract and type in the number 2 for the Number of Pixels section and hit OK.

19. Go back to the Selections tab and choose Invert. This is what yours should look like (Ive turned off my darker bottom layer for you too see it better)

20. Turn off your darker bottom layer by clicking the eye icon next to it.

21. Choose your Lighten/Darken tool on the left. Default round brush, Size is 12, Hardness is 50, Step 25, Density and Thickness is 100, Opacity is about 53, and Mode is Lightness.

22. Lighten all around that 2 pixel outline of our star. Try and use long even strokes because if you go over the same spot more than once, it will lighten considerably more than you want it too.

* When you think you've got it, turn your darker star layer back on and see what it looks like. Here's what mine ended up looking like:

* Because this brown is such a dark colour, this won't make much of a difference on it, but if you are using a lighter colour, try putting a tiny drop shadow under your top layer to give it a bit more definition. All's left to do is merge visable your layers and you're done :)

Go HERE to learn how to put stitches onto your shape.

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means, send them here to my blog to get the supplies and tut for themselves.

Stitching Into a Shape

2008-07-02T11:03:00.000-07:00

Stitching Into A Shape:

Supplies: Star shape if you don't have it Download Here

* This tutorial will show you two things: how to shape your stitches into pretty much any design you want, and how to make styled lines for your stitches. First off, styled lines.

* You can use styled lines with the pen tool, preset shapes or text. I had wanted to do some stitching around a star shape I made and really had never shaped my stitches before. I normally have just used a straight line when putting stitching on ribbons n such, so I'd never really given it much thought on how to get them to go around a particular shape. I googled forever and got nowhere, the old fart Jeeves had no clue either, so after my frustrating search, and a few hours of poking around psp, I finally figured it out. And, i felt a little silly that it took me that long to do it lol. Anyway, it's done with styled lines. I thought the dashed line that comes with psp didn't look right, they were to short and close together, so back to google and trying to figure out how to make my own. It's pretty simple and I'll give you the basics.

1. Open up a new canvas about 500 by 500 pixles, and flood fill with a dark shade. I'm using #523D2E. That's just so we can see our stitches better.

2. Set your foreground to white and turn off your background. ( click the circle with the line going through it that is under your background materials palette to turn it off)

* Actually, I don't use white, I use #EFEFEF. I find the white is too harsh, but you can use either.

3. Click on your Preset Shapes tool and choose a shape. I'm using a star and have included it in the zip if you'd like to use the same shape. Anti-alias and Create as Vector are both checked, and Line Width about 1.50.

4. In the Line Style box at the top, click on Solid, then go back up to the Line Style box and in the bottom right corner, click on Custom. This is probably what you should see. I'm using PSP8 so yours may look slightly different.

* We are going to edit this solid line into dashes for stitches.

5. Click once on the Add button. You will notice that your solid line in the preview window has changed to a dashed line.

6. Now we are going to change the spacing in bewtween each dash. This takes a little bit of experimentation depending on what you want, but start out by typing in the number 12 in the box beside the Add button.

7. Click the Save As New button (always click save as new so that you don't destroy the solid line that we are editing).

8. Give your new line a name and click OK. It's helpful if the name you give to your line has the Length you chose in it so you will remember what it was if you are unsatisfied with it and want to modify it. I've named mine SK Dashed 12.

9. Your line is automatically selected as the Line Style, so with your star shape selected as your preset shape, hold down your shift key and drag out your shape. This is what mine looks like:

10. Right click on Vector 1 and choose Convert to Raster Layer.

* It looks ok, but it would look better with some texture, bevel and shadows.

11. Next give it a bit of texture by adding noise. Go up to the Adjust tab, then over to Add Noise. Put the green dot in Uniform, 45 for the amount and Monochrome is checked.

12. With your stitches layer selected in the layer palette, go up to the Effects tab, over to 3D Effects and choose Inner Bevel and use these settings:

* This next step is a bit tedious but neccessary if you want your stitches to look as real as possible. We're going to put little black shadow dots under the ends of each stitch. Your settings will vary depending on what colour background this is going to be placed on once you're done. Since this is a dark background, we need to use a darker colour so it will show up on the paper. If you were using a light background you would use a shade of grey instead of black.

13. Make a new layer and drag it under your stitches layer.

14. Set your forground colour to #221D12.

15. Click on your Paint Brush tool and choose the default round, size about 4, hardness 50, Density and Thickness is 100, Opacity about 70.

16. Start at the top and place a black dot under the ends of each stitch.

* Don't let them stick out too far from your stitch or it won't look realistic. Since we are on a new layer, you can always erase a bit if you make a mistake. Here's what mine turned out to look like so far:

17. Merge visable those 2 layers when satisfied. (turn off your background layer and right click on one of the remaining layers and choose Merge, then Merge Visable).

18. Play with your drop shadow settings too see what looks good against whatever background paper you've chosen. Here's my settings for this one:

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means, send them here to my blog to get the supplies and tut for themselves.

Foam Stickers

2008-07-02T10:59:00.000-07:00

No supplies needed for this tut.

1. Start by opening up a 400 x 400 transparent image.

2. Set your foreground colour to #FFA1AA and your background to #FFBBC2.

3. Click on your Preset shapes tool on the left and set it to the flower from the zip. Anti-alias and Create as Vector are both checked, Line Style is solid and a Width of 1.

4. Hold down your Shift key and drag out your shape onto your canvas. This is what you'll see:

* The 1 pixel outline will be barely visable, but don't increase it.

5. In the layer palette on the right, right click on Vector 1 and choose Duplicate.

* You should now have Copy of Vector 1 in the top position in the layer palette.

6. Click on the + sign in front of Vector 1, then double click on the name of your shape ( in this case Flower) and your properties box will pop up.

7. Click on the pink swatch under Stroke and change your foreground colour to #EFEFEF, then change the Stroke to 14.

8. Click on the pink swatch under Fill and change the colour to #EFEFEF and click OK. This is what you should have so far:

9. In the layer palette, right click on Vector 1 and choose Convert to Raster Layer, then do the same for Copy of Vector 1.

10. Click on your top pink layer to make it active. Then go up to the Effects tab, over to 3D Effects, then to Drop Shadow. Use these settings:

11. Right click on one of the layers in the layer palette and choose Merge Visable.

And you're done your foam sticker :)

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means, send them here to my blog to get the supplies and tut for themselves.

Ripped Cardboard-Requested Tut

2008-06-12T19:45:00.000-07:00

Supplies Needed:

Texturizer plugin which you can download HERE
My 3 cardboard jpg's. Download all from HERE

I'm using a simple rectangle shape for this tutorial. After you've gotten this technique down, you can use any shape you want. So that we match up, use a rectangle shape while doing this tutorial.

1. Open up a new transparent image.

2. Set your foreground and background to SK Corrugated from the zip.

3. Click on your Preset Shapes tool and choose Rectangle, create as vector and anti-alias both are checked and a line width of 1.

4. Draw out a rectangle.

* We are going keep our image we just dragged out as a Vector image and duplicate our layer 1 more time.

5. In the layer palette, right click on Vector 1 and from the flyout choose Duplicate.

6. Open up 1 of the 2 paper jpg's from the zip. I'm using SK Cardboard Paper 02.

7. In the layer palette, click on the small + sign beside the duplicated layer. Under Copy of Vector 1 will be another title. Mine says Rectangle because that's the name of the shape I drew out. Yours may say something else if you used another shape.

8. Double click on the word Rectangle and a properties box will pop up.

9. Double click on the picture icon under the word Stroke. From the dropdown box, find either SK Cardboard Paper 01 or 02, whichever one you opened up from the zip. Click on it to select it then hit OK.

10. Do the same for the Fill box and hit OK when you have changed both of those to your chosen paper swatch.

* You should have 2 different layers now. One with your corrugated cardboard and another with your chosen paper from the zip. If it isn't, move your paper layer above the corrugated layer.

11. In the layer palette on the right, right click on each of your vector layers and from the flyout choose Convert to Raster Layer.

12. On your paper layer ( not corrugated layer) Go up to the Effects tab at the top, then to 3D Effects, then to Inner Bevel and use these settings:

13. Click on your Freehand Selection tool on the left. Selection type is Freehand, Mode is Replace, Feather is 0, Smoothing is 0, and Anti-alias is checked.

14. If it isn't already, click on your paper layer to make it active. With your freehand selection tool, draw out where you want your tear to be. Here's what mine looks like:

15. Hit the Delete key on your keyboard. That piece we outlined should now be gone.

16. Go up to the Selections tab at the top, down to Modify, then to Expand. I've chosen to expand by 6, you may make your selection larger or smaller.

17. Click on your Lighten/Darken tool on the left. Default round brush, Size is 8, Hardness is 50, Density and Thickness is 100, Opacity is 32. Swipe down and lighten your image that is inside the marching ants selection. You can lower or raise the opacity to lighten more or less, but it looks good to me, so i'm going to keep it like that.

* Next we need a little texture on that section with the marching ants.

18. Go up to the Effects tab, down to Plugins, then find Texture, then Texturizer and use these settings:

19. Go up to the Selections tab and choose Select None.

20. I like to put a barely visable drop shadow on this layer so go up to the Effect tab, over to 3D Effects and then to Drop Shadow and use these settings:

21. Get your eraser brush out and click on your layer that has the drop shadow on it. Erase all around the outter edges. We only want the drop shadow under our rip.

22. Basically your done. All you need to do is add an eyelet, erase the middle of it and add a string.

* I only made one large rip at the bottom, if you are doing more than one, ripping it all over in different sections, hold down your shift key each time you make a new rip.

You can also make it more beat up looking by lightening and darkening it in places. Start off with a low opacity of about 9, brush size about 45 to 53, Hardness of 50. Lighten it in places all over, then darken it in places you didn't lighten it. Change the opacity to about 13 and darken some of the edges and other spots on the tag or whatever image you have.

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means, send them here to my blog to get the supplies and tut for themselves.

Wire Words-Requested Tut

2008-06-08T08:32:00.000-07:00

This is a very quick and simple tutorial on how to create wire words or shapes.

Supplies Needed: Super Blade Pro -- download a Trial HERE
My Zip: Fonts, and SK Wire Words Silver SBP setting. Download HERE

* Place the 2 SK Wire Words bitmaps and the .q5q file into your SBP Environments and Textures folder, wherever you have it installed on your computer.

1. Start by opening up a new transparent image. I'm using a size of 475 by 475 pixels for the purpose of this tutorial, but you can choose whatever size you want.

2. Set both foreground and background colours to white.

3. Double click on a font from the zip, or use one of your own choosing. I have chosen to use the Saginaw font. Create as Vector, Size 100, Stroke Width 0, Anti-alias is checked.

* You don't have to install the font, just open it up by clicking on it and then minimize it. You will still be able to use it without installing.

4. Type out your name on your canvas.

5. In the layer palette, right click on Vector 1 and choose Convert to Raster Layer.

6. Go up to the Selections tab, choose Select All, back up to the Selections tab and choose Float, then again to the Selections tab and choose Defloat.

*You should have marching ants all around your image.

7. Go up to the Effects tab, down to Plugins, find Flaming Pear and choose Super Blade Pro.

8. From the list of presets, find SK Wire Words.q5q, select it and then hit OK. You should have something that looks like this:

9. Go up to the Selections tab and choose Select None.

Use tiny beads, flowers or whatever you feel like decorating it with. I've included in the zip, 25 tiny beads to get you started. Put a small drop shadow on your wire words and you're done :)

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means, send them here to my blog to get the supplies and tut for themselves.

Scallop Any Shape

2008-06-08T08:28:00.000-07:00

Needed:

Vector Tube Script which you can download HERE
Zipped Stuff: Heart Shape, scallop dot tube, (scallop dot in png format included). Download HERE

* Unzip the vector tube script and place it in your Scripts-Restricted folder.

1. Start by opening up a 200 by 200 transparent image.

2. Set your foreground and background colours to black.

3. Click on your Preset shapes tool on the left and set it to Ellipse. Anti-alias and Create as Vector are both checked, line style is solid, and a Width of 1.

4. Draw out a small circle on your canvas about the same size as the one in the picture below: My circle tube is included in the zip.

5. Crop the extra space away from your circle and export it as a tube. File menu, Export, Picture Tube, leave everything at it's default and just give it a name like small scallop 01.

* You can delete that canvas after tubing it, we no longer need it.

6. Open up a 450 x 450 pixel transparent image.

7. Set your foreground and background colours to a light grey. I'm using #C0C0C0.

8. Click on your Preset Shapes tool on the left and choose Shawna Heart from the list. Anti-alias and Create as Vector are checked, line style is solid, and a Width of 1.

9. Draw out your shape like in the picture below:

10. Click on your Picture Tube Tool on the left and find your single black dot you made earlier or if you are using mine, find temp scallop circle. Scale is 100, Step is 20, Placement Mode is Continuous, and Selection Mode is Incremental.

* If you have chosen to use your own black scallop dot, you need to increase or decrease the Step number so that your dots are spaced correctly and touch each other. Open an temp canvas and drag out a line of dots. If they are too close together, then decrease the Step number, if they are too far apart increase the step number untill they are placed appropriately.

11. Go up to the Script section in the options bar along the top and scroll down to the bottom and find Vector Tube and select it.

* Your heart shape needs to be a Vector shape, so if you've automatically right clicked and changed it to a raster layer, change it back to a vector from the undo button in the edit tab or redo it.

12. Beside your Vector Tube script there is an arrow pointing to the right, click it once.

* Your heart should now be scalloped with your black dot tube:

13. In the Layers Palette on the right, click the + sign beside Vector 1. You will see the title shawna heart. Double click that and a vector property box will pop up.

14. Click the light grey coloured box under Stroke, then click on the black coloured square to change your grey to black. Do the same for the Fill properties, then click OK.

* Your entire shape should now be all black:

15. In the layer palette, right click on Vector 1 and choose Convert to Raster Layer.

16. Right click on one of the layers in the layer palette and choose Merge, then Merge Visable.

* At this point, you can save this as a .psp or .png file and use it as a solid template, or if you want to make it a frame with the middle cut out then continue on.

17. Set your foreground and background back to our light grey colour #C0C0C0.

18. Click on your Preset Shapes tool again and find your heart we used earlier, same settings.

19. Draw out another heart shape on top of your black scalloped heart. The size of heart you draw will determine the size of your scalloped border. A smaller heart will leave a larger border and a bigger heart will leave a smaller border when we delete it for the middle. Use the nodes that are on each end of the dotted square to pull the heart in or out. Here's what mine looks like:

* Here's a little trick to get your 2 shapes centered perfectly on top of each other. When you've drawn out the size of heart you want for the middle, click once on your black layer to make it active, go up to the Edit tab and choose Cut, then go back and choose Paste, then Paste as New Layer. It will center perfectly in the middle of your canvas. Then do the same for the grey heart.

20. In the layer palette, right click on your Vector layer and choose Convert to Raster Layer.

21. Go up to the Selections tab at the top, down to Select All, up to the Selections tab again and choose Float, then back up to the Selections tab and choose Defloat.

* You should have marching ants all around your grey heart.

22. Hit your Delete key on your keyboard.

23. In the layer palette, click on your black layer to make it active, then hit the Delete key on your keyboard.

24. Go up to the Selections tab at the top and choose Select None. You should now have this:

25. In the layer palette, delete what was once your grey heart layer. It sometimes still has a small border left from cutting and we don't want that to interfear with our design.

That's it!!! You can now scallop any shape, and size you want, quick and easy.

* Tip: You can also cut tiny shapes out of your single scallop dot like stars, circles, hearts ect..... then use the Vector Tube script to scallop your shape.

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means, send them here to my blog to get the supplies and tut for themselves.

Zipper-Requested Tut

2008-06-02T18:34:00.000-07:00

Supplies Needed:

My Supplies: SK Herringbone Dark Blue, SK Silver Top Stop, SK Bottom Stop, SK Pulls, SK Teeth, SK Teeth Lines, Greg's Pool Shadow plugin. Download Here
Mura's Meister Copies: Download Here
Optional: Super Blade Pro Trial

* I cannot include the silver preset that I used becaue it is not mine, and I don't have permission to use it in this tutorial, but just do a google search and you will find hundreds of them.

* I have also included in the zip file a few different zipper teeth, pulls, and stoppers in silver that I made for those that don't have or don't want to install SBP.

There are a few different kinds of teeth that zippers use, but I'm going to show you the easiest rectangle tooth first, then get into the other 2 another time.

1. Open up a 200 by 200 transparent image.

* To get a silver/chrome or gold tone to your zipper teeth, the easiest plugin to use is Super Blade Pro. The link to a trial version is in the Optional section above.

2. Click on your Selection tool on the left and set it to Rectangle, Anti-alias is checked and Feather is 0.

3. Draw out a small rectangle for the first tooth, size appropriate to the size of zipper you want to create.

4. Go up to the Layers tab at the top and choose New Raster Layer.

* If you are not using Super Blade Pro, and just want a coloured tooth, fill with desired colour, give it a slight bevel and skip to step #7.

5. Fill with white. Don't deselect yet.

6. Go up to the Effects tab, down to Plugins, over to Flaming Pear, then to Super Blade Pro. Find a silver preset you like and apply it. Here's what mine ended up looking like. I have a slight drop shadow on mine, but because we are using such a dark fabric for this tut, the shadow will not have much of an impact, so you don't have to put one on if you don't want.

7. Open up an 400w by 800h transparent image.

8. Copy and paste your single silver zipper tooth onto your new canvas.

9. Go up to the Effects tab, down to Plugins, then find Mura's Meister and select Copies. Change your settings to the ones in the picture below.

* I first tried a Tile Gap of 2, but when I put my 2 lines of teeth overlapping each other, the space inbetween was to large, so I clicked Undo, went back to Mura's Copies and tried a Tile Gap of 1 and it was perfect. Depending on the size of tooth you made, you may need to adjust yours as well, so that there isn't a noticable amount of space between the right side of the zipper teeth when you put the together.

This is how the spacing should look when we put them together. They should fit snuggly into each other, so adjust your tile gap accordingly.

This is what mine looks like now:

10. Rename this layer Zipper Teeth Left.

11. Open up the SK Herringbone fabric swatch from the zip file and set it as your foreground and background material pattern. Angle 0, Scale 100.

12. Click on your Preset Shapes tool on the left and set it to Rectangle. Anti-alias and Create as Vector are checked, Line Style is Solid, Width is 1.

13. Draw out a long rectangle the entire length of your canvas, and a little bit wider than twice the width of your zipper teeth. See pic below for example:

14. In the layer palette on the right, right click on Vector 1 and choose Convert to Raster Layer.

15. Rename that layer Material Left.

* Our fabric kind of looks plain and flat to me so we're gonna give the inside a very slight bevel.

16. Make sure your Material Left is highlighted in the layer palette. Click on your Selection tool on the left and set it to Rectangle, Feather is 0, Anti-alias is checked.

17. Draw out a very small rectangle the entire length of your material left section. Turn off your zipper teeth line so you can see the material layer better. ( click the eye icon beside zipper teeth left in the layer palette) See picture below for example:

18. Go up to the Effects tab, over to 3D Effects, then to Inner Bevel and use these settings:

* Don't deselect yet, we are going to do that same bevel again.

19. Repeat the inner bevel one more time, then go up to the Selections tab at the top and choose Select None. You should have what looks like this now:

* Now we are going to cut away that small flat part to the right of the bevel.

20. Select your Selection tool, set it to rectangle if it isn't already and draw out a small long rectangle like in the picture below:

21. Hit your Delete key on your keyboard, then go up to the Selections tab and choose Select None.

* Next we want to make a slightly bigger seam but we aren't going to use the bevel funtion this time, we are just going to lighten it.

22. Click on your Selection tool again, rectangle. Draw out another long rectangle, slightly bigger than the first one we did. Zoom to about 200% and get close to the edge of the first seam, but leave a very small space inbetween the two. The reason being, when we lighten our section here, that very small space we left will still appear dark, and will give the look of a seam separating the two. See the picture below:

23. Click on your Lighten/Darken tool on the left. Size is 17, Hardness is 50, Step is 5, Density and Thickness is 100, Rotation is 0, and Opacity is 60.

* Since our selection has marching ants around it, you don't have to worry about lightening the wrong part of the material. The marching ants will prevent that. I've found that it is easier to use this tool on a zoomed out, smaller looking canvas because then you can just do one long short stroke and get it very even, rather than doing one stroke then scrolling down and continuing on. So......

24. Click the Pan tool on the left. It looks like and arrow pointing upwards and to the left. Change the number in the Zoom % section up top to about 60%. Then using your Lighten/Darken tool, make one long, continuous stroke all the way down your selection. Keep your mouse cursor inside the marching ants selection.

25. Go up to the Selections tab, choose Select None. This is what yours should look like at this point. See why now you left a tiny space in between our 2 lightened sections? It looks like there is a dark seam there.

* Our zipper is looking good, but it looks a little flat to me so we're going to give it a bit of shadowing. And, since this is a long tut, I'm gonna do a quicky shortcut for shading and use a plugin.

26. Go up to the Effects tab, down to Plugins, and find Greg's Pool Shadow and use the settings in the picture:

* You should now have some wave and darkening to your left material.

* Next, we are going to give the top a little bit of a V opening, so we need to slant part of our zipper to the left and then make the material match up.

27. Unhide your zipper teeth left layer and click it once to make it the active layer. (click on the eye icon next to it in the layer palette to unhide it).

* There's too many teeth near the top, so we need to get rid of a few of those first.

28. Click on your Selection tool, set it to Rectangle. Draw out a rectangle on the first 4 top teeth and then hit delete on your keyboard.

29. In the Layer Palette, right click on your Material Left layer and choose Duplicate. Then hide Copy of Material Left layer for now.

30. Click on your Material Left layer, and draw out a rectangle from the top, and stopping halfway inbetween the 6th and 7th tooth.

31. Go up to the Edit tab, select Cut, back up to the Edit tab, select Paste as New Layer.

32. Go up to the Selections tab, choose Select None.

33. Right click on your cut section and rename it Left Top Piece.

34. Go up to the Image tab, choose Rotate, then Free Rotate. The green dot is beside the word Left, the green dot is beside the word Free and type in the number 13 in the box. Make sure All Layers and Rotate single layer around canvas center are both unchecked, and hit OK.

* Rotating makes our image slightly fuzzy so we are going to sharpen it with the Unshapr Mask option.

35. Go up to the Adjust tab, choose Sharpness, then choose Unsharp Mask. Radius is 1.00, Strength is 47, and Clipping is 0. Hit OK.

36. Move Top Left Piece over the bottom half of your Material Left and line up the edges evenly like in the picture below:

37. In the layer palette, click on Copy of Material Left to make it active but don't unhide it yet.

38. Click on your Selection tool, rectangle again, and make a selection like in the picture below:

39. Go up to the Selections tab, click on Invert and hit the Delete key on your keyboard.

40. Go up to the Selections tab and choose Select None.

41. Unhide your Copy of Material Left in the layer palette and move it below your Material Left layer.

* Just to make sure, you should have in the layer palette, zipper teeth left, then left top piece, material left, copy of material left on the bottom.

Yours should look like this, with a small piece sticking out. We need to get rid of that.

42. Click on your Eraser tool, and with very small short clicks, erase out that corner point, being carefull not to erase too far or you will get a gap.

43. In the layer palette, right click on one of your visable layers ( your teeth layer should be turned off) and choose Merge then Merge Visable, and rename it Left Material.

* Now we need to rotate our teeth to match up with our material.

44. Turn on your teeth layer and click it once to make it active.

45. Click on your selection tool again, rectangle and drag it out over the first 6 teeth to select them.

46. Go up to the Edit tab, choose Cut, back up to the Edit tab, and choose Paste, then Paste as New Layer.

47. Go up to the Selections tab, choose Select None.

* You can move those up a bit to a blank space but don't get too close to the top. We need to rotate these too and we don't want them going off the page.

48. Go up to the Image tab, choose Rotate, then Free Rotate and use the exact same settings we used before. They should still be there when the box pops up so just hit OK.

49. Again, use the same settings for sharpening that we used in step #35, then move those 6 teeth into place like in the picture below. Place the 6th tooth over the bended part to hid any flaws:

50. If they aren't already, even out your 2 sections of teeth, then turn off your Left Material layer in the layer palette and Merge Visable your 2 teeth layers.

51. Rename that layer Left Teeth.

* We still need to make a top stop, a bottom stop and a slider, so let's start on the top stop.

52. It's basically a silver rectangle shape, same as the teeth, only a little fatter. So once again, draw out a small fatter rectangle and use Super Blade Pro on this, or whatever plugin you used to make your teeth.

* I've included a silver top stop in the supply zip.

53. Rotate it so it matches up with our line of teeth and if necessary, use the Unsharp Mask on it as well. Here's what mine looks like now:

54. We need to make room for the bottom stop, so click on your Left Teeth layer, and with your rectangle selection tool make a selection around the bottom 2 teeth and hit Delete on your keyboard to get rid of them.

55. Go up to the Selections tab and choose Select None.

56. Now for our bottom stop. That is just a small silver square. Draw that out about the same size in the picture below, and use SBP or whatever plugin you used.

* Ive also included one of these in the zip.

57. Rename that layer Bottom Stop, and place it at the bottom of your zipper.

* Now we need to duplicate our left material and our left teeth layer for the other side.

58. Click on your Left Material layer to make it active. Right click it in the Layer Palette and choose Duplicate.

59. Go up to the Image tab and choose Mirror.

60. Click on your Left Teeth, then right click it and select Duplicate.

61. Go up to the Image tab and choose Mirror.

* You'll need to do a bit of shifting here. Move your Right Material layer over a bit to the right, then line up your teeth so they intersect with the other side of teeth. Here's what mine looks like:

62. In the layer palette, click on your Left Topper to make it active, right click it and choose Duplicate.

63. Go up to the Image tab and choose Mirror and move it into its place.

64. At the bottom of your zipper, move the bottom stop over so it's evenly placed.

65. I've made and included a few zipper pullers in the zip, but feel free to make and use your own. All that's left to do is copy and paste a puller onto your canvas, move it in place and merge visable your layers and you are done :)

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means, send them here to my blog to get the supplies and tut for themselves.

Round Scalloped Frame-Requested Tut

2008-06-02T18:17:00.000-07:00

In this tutorial, I'll show you how to make a round scalloped frame with mura's meister copies. I will be doing another tut some time soon to show you how to scallop other shapes such as squares, triangles, or just about any shape you can think of.

Supplies Needed: Mura's Meister Copies plugin Download Here

1. Start by opening up a transparent image slightly bigger than the size you want your scalloped frame to be.

2. Set your Foreground and Background colour to black.

3. Click on your Preset Shapes tool on the left and set it to Ellipse. Anti-alias and Create as Vector are both checked, Line Style is Solid, and Width of 1.

4. Hold down the Shift key and draw out a small circle, the size you want your scallops to be. (Holding down shift keeps the circle from going into an oval shape) Here's what my circle looks like.

5. In the layer palette on the right, right click on Vector 1 and choose Convert to Raster Layer.

6. Now, we need our single circle in the middle of our page for this next plugin to work, so the easiest way to do that is to go up to the Edit tab, choose Cut, then back up to the Edit tab, and choose Paste, then Paste as New Layer.

7. Next, go up to the Effects tab, down to Plugins, find Mura's Meister, and choose Copies.

8. At the bottom left, change whatever you have in there to Encircle, then make sure the rest of the settings are the same as in the picture below.

* Depending on the size of circle you made, you will have to adjust the Number section so that your dots line up with each other. My circle may not be the same size as yours, so my number will be different but the rest should remain the same.

Here is what mine looks like now:

* If your result is smaller than you want it to be, go to the Edit tab and click Undo. You will revert back to your single dot. In order for your frame to increase in size, you need to increas your canvas size. Go up to the Image tab at the top, then down to Canvas Size.

Your original height and width of your canvas is at the top. Try increasing your canvas by a few hundred pixels at a time to get the desired size. You will need to then go back and repeat steps #7 and #8 to redo the circle frame. Don't forget to change the Number section to get your dots to line up properly again.

* The smallest middle section is my original canvas of 475 pixels, the second one is my result after increasing my canvas from 475 to 675, and the third I increased my canvas to 875. You decide how much you want yours to increase.

9. Now we need to fill in the middle. Click on your Magic Wand tool on the left. Mode is Replace, Match Mode is RGB, Tolerance is 30, Feather is 0, Anti-alias is checked. With your circle layer active (highlighted blue in the layer palette on the right), click once in the center.

* You will have marching ants all around the bottoms of your circles.

10. Go up to the Selections tab, choose Modify, then Expand. In the Number of Pixels section, type in 5 and hit OK.

11. Go up to the Layers tab, choose New Raster Layer.

12. Flood fill your new layer with black.

13. Go up to the Selections tab and choose Select None.

14. In the Layers Palette on the right, right click on one of the layers and from the flyout choose Merge, then Merge Visable. You should now have this:

15. Change both your Foreground and Background to white.

16. Click on your Preset Shapes tool on the left and choose Ellipse.

* This next step we are going to draw out a circle that will represent the hole we will cut out for the middle of your frame. Draw it out so that it is smaller than your frame and doesn't cover any of the outter scallops. It must be a perfectly round circle, but the size doesn't have to be exactly the size you want the middle of your frame to be. We will fix that too.

17. Hold down the Shift key and draw out a circle. Here's my example:

18. We need both the black circle template and the white circle to be exactly in the middle of our canvas, so click on the black circle template to activate it, go up to the Edit tab, choose Cut, back up to the Edit tab and choose Paste as New Layer. Do the same to the white circle.

* Now, It looks like I'm going to have too much of a black inner border on my scalloped frame, so I'm gonig to increase the size of my white circle just a bit to make my black border smaller.

* If you like the way yours looks now, just leave it and skip to step 21.

The white circle is a vector shape still, so we can just pull the nodes to increase the circles shape without getting any jagged edges. Click on the Object Selection tool on the left. It looks like a square with an arrow in the middle and it is probably the last tool in your toolbar.

* You will get what looks like a dotted line square with a smaller square at each corner.

19. Now, to keep this circle in perspective while we pull the node to make it bigger, you need to use your Right Click mouse button this time. Put your cursor on the bottom right square, hold down your Right Click mouse button and pull out slightly.

20. We need to center it perfectly again, so go up to the Edit tab, choose Cut, back up to the Edit tab and choose Paste as New Layer.

* You can click the Mover tool button to get rid of that dotted square so you can see how it looks without that being in the way. If you think your black border is still to big, repeat steps 19 and 20.

21. I like mine the way it is, so in the Layers Palette on the right, right click on your White Vector Circle and from the flyout choose Convert to Raster Layer.

22. All that work and now we are going to delete the white circle. Go up to the Selections tab, choose Select All, back up to the Selections tab, choose Float, up to the Selections tab again and choose Defloat.

* You should now have marching ants all around your white circle.

23. Hit the Delete button on your keyboard, and the white circle will disappear.

24. In the Layer Palette on the right, click on your black scallop layer to select it. Now hit the Delete key on your keyboard again.

* Your middle should now be transparent.

25. Go up to the Selections tab, choose Select None. Here's mine:

* Delete all layers except the black scalloped layer and save this as a .psp file so you can use it as a template again.

*Now all you need to do to colour it is, go up to the Selections tab, choose Select All, Float, then Defloat.
*Create a new layer from the Layers tab.
*Flood fill with whatever you want.... a colour, paper, gradient, pattern.......
*Delete the black template

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means. If you are using this or any of my tutorials for your groups or as part of your own tutorial, please post a link to the tut on my blog and let your members download the supplies from my blog for themselves.

Scalloped Linen Fabric with Border

2008-05-18T14:00:00.000-07:00

Supplies: SK Scalloped Background, White Linen Solid.png and White Linen Rough.png all of which you can download HERE

* I was at an event last week and I was wearing a cream coloured linen blouse, which is where I got the idea for these papers. They turned out really great, so I thought I'd share the tut.

* All supplies are in .PNG format

1. Open up SK Scalloped Background from the zip. This image is about 1800 x1800. You can resize it to whatever dimensions you want.

2. Go up to the Selections tab at the top, choose Select All, then Float, then Defloat. You should have marching ants all around your scalloped image.

3. Next, go up to the Layers tab, and choose New Raster Layer.

4. Open up White Linen Solid from the zip and set it as your foreground pattern. Angle 0 and Scale 100.

5. Click on your Flood Fill tool on the left and fill your blank layer. You should have this now:

6. Go up to the Selections tab and choose Select None.

7. In the layers palette to the right, right click on your black scalloped image and choose delete.

8. Open up White Linen Rough from the zip and set that as your foreground pattern, Angle 0, Scale 100.

9. Go up to the Selections tab, Select All, then to Float, then down to Defloat. You should have marching ants all around your scalloped image.

10. Go back up to the Selection tab, down to Modify, then down to Select Selection Borders. Change your settings to the ones below in the picture.

* Depending on the number you type in, this will automatically give you a border around your image. Take a look at my preview window picture below to see what I mean. I've chosen a border of 3 pixels. Look on the right of the preview and it will show you the 3 pixel outline that we will be putting over the background linen layer. You can increase this number if you want a thicker border.

** Edit: I think I changed my mind and used a border of 4 or 5 after I had already taken the screenshot, so if you want the same thickness of border as in my preview pic, choose 4 instead of 3 for this part.

11. Go up to the Layers tab at the top and choose New Raster Layer.

12. Flood fill it with the foreground pattern White Linen Rough.

13. Go up to the Selections tab and choose Select None. You should now have an even 3 pixel border around your linen background, but on a new layer. I've turned off my linen layer so you can see the outline better.

* Now we are going to give it a bevel.

14. With your border layer active, (highlighted blue in the layer palette) go up to the Effects tab, then to 3D Effects, then over to Inner Bevel. Use these settings:

Here's what mine looks like after the bevel:

* I want my border to have a little bit of depth to it, so I'm going to put a slight drop shadow under it.

15. With your border layer active, go up to the Effects tab, over to 3D Effects, then to Drop Shadow and use these settings:

* I like to put my drop shadow on a new layer so that when I recolour it, I can turn off my shadow, recolour it, then turn it back on, but you don't have to have yours on a new layer if you don't want to.

Here's mine after the drop shadow:

That's pretty much it. Save this file as a PSP file with the layers intact so when you want to recolour it, you can do them separately.

If you don't know how to recolour images, go to my String tut HERE and near to the end of the tut it will tell you how to recolour images using the Manual Colour Correction option.

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means, send them here to my blog to get the supplies and tut for themselves.

Let's Make Some String

2008-05-18T13:52:00.000-07:00

Supplies: SK String.png Download Here

A few days ago, I was working on a Father's Day kit and was trying to make a very small texture for a frame I had just made. Well, it turned out kinda ugly on the frame and I decided not to use it, but I found out that it makes some pretty darn great looking string. I love creating things by accident lol.

This tut is written in PSP 8 but can be done in any version of PSP, or if you have a basic knowledge of PS or PSE, this is pretty simple to do in those graphic programs as well.

1. Start out by opening up a transparent canvas of about 800 x 800 or whatever size you want your string to be.

2. Open up SK String.png from the zip and set it as your foreground pattern. Angle is 0, and Scale is 100. Turn off your background materials box. ( click on the black circle with the line going through it that's under your background box)

* Disclaimer: Don't get your face too close to the screen trying to see my pattern, you might bang your eyeball on your monitor lol. There really is a pattern there.

3. Click on your Pen Tool on the left and use these settings:

create as vector is checked
mode is drawing
segment type is freehand
line style is solid
width is 8
anti-alias is checked

4. Draw a squiggly line. Here's what mine looks like

5. In the layers palette on the right, right click on Vector 1 and choose Convert to Raster Layer.

6. Go up to the Effects tab at the top, over to 3D Effects then to Inner Bevel and use these settings:

* It's looking a little to greyish for me so I'm going to lighten it up a bit using the Brightness/Contrast option.

6. Right click on your string layer in the palette and choose New Adjustment Layer, then choose Brightness/Contrast.

7. On the Adjustment tab, change the Brightness to 27 and the Contrast to -6 and hit OK.

8. In the layers palette on the right, right click on one of your layers and from the flyout choose Merge, then Merge Visable.

Yours should look like this: I also gave mine a small drop shadow.

* If you want different colours of string, here's a quick way to change them to the exact colour you want.

* I prefer not to have a drop shadow before I recolour but it still works if you have one on there.

1. Click on your Eye Dropper tool on the left. Hold it over your string image and find a medium shade of grey and click once to set it as your foreground colour. Mine turned out to be #E7E7E7. ( remember your number)

2. Make sure your string layer is active, go up to the Adjust tab, over to Colour Balance, then down to Manual Colour Correction.

Where it says Source, that is where you type in your number from step one above. ( click on the colour to get the colour box to pop up and type it in)

Where it says Target, that is where you type in or click on whatever colour you want your string to change too. Click OK when done.

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means, send them here to my blog to get the supplies and tut for themselves.

Wrap a Ribbon Curl Around a Frame

2008-05-18T13:34:00.000-07:00

Supplies: 1 frame, 1 ribbon, 4 straight eraser brushes. Download these HERE

I have provided a curled ribbon for the purpose of this tutorial, but if you are wanting to make your own ribbons curled around a frame at another time, you will need either AV Bro Page Curl or another plugin or program that will make the curls.

1. Start by opening SK Blue Frame for Tut and SK Blue Ribbon for Tut.

2. Copy and paste the ribbon TWICE onto your frame layer.

* This can get a little confusing, so I suggest you name your layers as Frame, Top Ribbon, and Bottom Ribbon.

3. In your layers palette on the right, place your 3 layers as: top ribbon is first, then frame, then bottom ribbon.

4. Drag your top ribbon over to the right and position it like in the picture below:

5. Drag your bottom ribbon over to the right and line it up perfectly with the top ribbon so it looks as though there is only one ribbon there like in the picture above.

6. In the layers palette, click on your top ribbon to make it active.

7. On the left, click on your Selection tool, set it to Rectangle, mode is replace, feather is 0, and anti-alias is checked.

* This is where it can get a little confusing. You need to decide what part of the ribbon is going to go over and what part is going to go under the frame.

8. I've decided the top portion is going to go under my frame, so with your rectangle selection tool, draw out a small rectangle and try to come as close to the edge of the frame as possible. See my example below:

9. Hit the Delete key on your keyboard, then go up to the Selections tab at the top, and choose Select None.

* You can see that the top portion of the ribbon we selected was cut away and it looks like part of the ribbon is now behind our frame. You can also see that there is a section of it still needing to be deleted.

10. Use your Rectangle selection tool again to get rid of that tiny piece. Select None from the Selection tab.

11. The next piece that needs to be deleted is right here:

12. Use your rectangle tool again to select this portion and hit Delete on your keyboard. Select None from the Selections tab.

* I'm going to zoom in really close so the picture is going to be blurry, but as you can see, I didn't get close enough to my outter edge of my frame when I erased my ribbon, and it will make a difference when you put on a drop shadow. It will be noticable and make it look unrealistic.

Here's where I like to use the eraser tool. You should have these brushes already in your brush dropdown list because they are PSP default brushes, but if you don't, I've included 4 .png files of the same brushes of my own in the zip.

13. Click on your Eraser tool on the left and find either the Line Vertical psp default brush, or if you are using mine, find SK Ribbon Erase 01. Leave it at it's default settings, but make sure the opacity is set to 100.

14. Make sure you are on your Top Ribbon layer, zoom into your image and position the brush as close to the outter edge of the frame as possible. Line up the outter edge of the straight brush with the outter edge of the frame and click once.

15. Do the same for the other secion of ribbon as well.

* We now have a ribbon swirling in and out of our frame. One important thing to remember is, do not merge anything untill the very last step. We still need layers to work with for putting the drop shadow down on both the front and back ribbons.

* I happen to like how the bottom ribbon comes out of the frame and hangs down over it so I'm going to leave it just like that. The top ribbon sticking out of the back of the frame is kind of hanging in limbo up there, so you can just cut it away using either the eraser brush or your rectangular tool, or give it an embellishment. I'm going to smack a couple flower up there. Next you need to shade it a bit.

16. Working on your Top Ribbon layer, click on your lighten/darken tool, or your dodge/burn tool. Size about 30, hardness 50, opacity about 20. The black arrows indicate where you should darken the rounded part of the ribbon. It's up to you how much or how little you want the shading to appear. I've used just a few short clicks on each section.

* I also like to shade just a bit where the ribbon meets Under the frame.

17. Using the same settings you used to darken the top curves of the ribbon, do the same for these next parts.

.

* You can also decrease the brush size to about 10 or smaller and do a bit around the edges of the ribbon as well.

* Your drop shadow will depend on what picture you are going to be using in your frame, so that part is up to you, but I would suggest always putting your shadow on a new layer so you can erase or delete it completely if you don't like it at some point. That way, you won't have to redo your entire frame over again.

* Also, save this as a .psp image with the layers intact so you can make changes at a later date.

TOU:

All supplies provided in this tutorial are for learning and personal use only. They serve the purpose of aiding you in doing this tut and are not to be used for commercial, monetary gain. You may use them for personal projects for yourself, but do not give them away as part of a kit or freebie, or share through email, groups ect......

Glitter Filled Shapes-Requested Tutorial

2008-05-13T10:06:00.000-07:00

This tutorial is for PSP users, but if you have a working knowledge of Photoshop, you can do this tut very easily as well. I've included all files needed for you.

Supplies: Star Shape (PSP & PS), my EC5 glass preset, my glitter swatches, my brush (for PSP & PS) Download These Here

The first supplies link seems to be giving some people an invalid link response, so here's a second link to the supplies:
Second Download Link for Supplies

Pracken's Silver SBP Preset from her Heart Jewels Tut: Download Here (This is optional, only if you are going to be using the SBP plugin) Link is posted with permission.

Super Blade Pro Demo:Download Here (this is optional)

Eye Candy 5 Impact: EC 5 Impact Trial

*Place the 2 EC 5 Impact Glass presets into the glass presets folder of your EC5 wherever you have it installed on your computer.

*Place the file for the PSP star shape into your preset shapes folder wherever it is on your computer.

*Place the 2 PSP files for the brush into your brushes folder wherever that may be on your computer.

*There is also a png file of the brush for those needing it.
*Feel free to recolour the glitter swatches to whatever colour you wish.

I'm going to be using a simple star shape for this tutorial, but you can use any shape you choose. If you want to use the same star shape that I am, I've included a PSP and PS shape in the zip.

1. Start by opening up a 400 x 400 transparent image.

2. Set your forground colour to #E4E0E0, and turn off your background colour. (under your background colour box, hit the circle with the line going through it to turn it off)

* By turning off the background colour, when we draw out our star shape, it will just give us an outline and the shape will not be filled with colour.

3. Click on your Preset Shapes tool on the left and find your star shape. Settings are Anti-alias is checked, Create as vector is checked, and use a width of 11. You can make this larger or smaller depending on your preference.

* I'm using a light grey colour instead of white (which is normally what you use when applying Super Blade Pro afterwards) because it is easier to see. If you are not using SBP, set your foreground to whatever colour you want.

4. Draw out your star shape. It should look similar to this:

* If you want a thinner or thicker border, in the layer palette on the right, click on the + sign next to Vector 1. Double click on SK Christmas Cookie Star and a box will pop up. Increase the Stroke Width to make it thicker, or decrease the Stroke Width to make it thinner.

5. Right click on Vector 1 and choose Convert to Raster Layer.

6. Click on your Preset Shapes tool again, and choose a shape for the ring that goes on the top. Normally you'd see a circle, but I'm going to use a heart shape.

7. Decrease your Width to somewhere around 3 or 4, and draw out your shape. Right click on Vector 1 and Convert to Raster Layer, and move it so that it is centered on the top point of your star. Make sure it is touching the star so that when we merge the two together there will be no spaces. Here's what mine looks like so far:

8. In the layer palette on the right, right click on one of your layers and choose Merge, then Merge Visable.

* This next part requires Super Blade Pro. If you are not using SBP for this, you can apply whatever plugin you wish and skip to step #11

9. Go up to the Selections tab, choose Select All, Float, then Defloat.

10. Go up to the Effects tab, down to Plugins, and find Flaming Pear's Super Blade Pro.

* You can choose any preset that you wish from here. I am going to be using a silver preset called pracken_heartsilver.q5q. This is not my preset, so I can't include it in the supplies, but the link to the preset is at the beginning of this tutorial. Here's what mine looks like so far:

11. Click on your Magic Wand tool, and click inside your star shape.

12. Go up to the Selections tab, down to Modify, then over to Expand and put in the number 3 and hit OK.

13. Go up to the Layers tab, and choose New Raster Layer.

14. Next, go up to the Effects tab, down to Plugins, and over to Eye Candy 5 Impact, then to Glass. Find SK Glass Star w Reflection in the User Settings, click it once to select it, then click on OK.

*I've also included the same glass preset without the reflection if you'd prefer that one. You should have what looks like this:

15. In the layers palette on the right, move your glass layer down below your silver star layer.

16. Go up to the Layer tab, and choose New Raster Layer. Move this layer down below your glass and your silver star layer.

* We aren't going to deselect to make our marching ants go away because when we fill our new layer, the marching ants will keep the shape of the star and prevent anything from going outside of it.

18. Working on your new blank layer, open up one of the glitter swatches from the zip and set it as your forground pattern.

* If you want to fill the entire star shape with glitter, just click on your Flood Fill tool and click once on your new blank layer. Your entire star will be filled with glitter.

* if you want only part of your star shape to be filled up with glitter then click on your Freehand Selection tool on the left. It may be hidden behind your Magic Wand tool.

19. Go up to the Selection tab at the top and choose Select None.

20. Make sure you are on your blank layer, take your freehand tool and draw an outline over the silver border of your star shape and down across the middle and then back to your starting point. Try and make sure you don't go outside of your star shape or inside the border of your shape or you will have blank spaces when we fill. This is what mine looks like:

21. Click on your Flood Fill tool on the left and then click once on your blank layer with the marching ants.

22. Go up to the Selections tab at the top and choose Select None.

* Now, you can leave it like this if you like how it looks, or you can use a brush to paint on some extra dabs of glitter to obscure the even line across the middle and make it look more jagged.

23. Click on your Brush tool, and in PSP find SK Rough Brush, in PS load SK Rough Edges of Square.abr. It's the same brush, just different names. Leave it at the default settings except change the brush size to somewhere around 43.

24. Go up to the Layers tab and create a new raster layer and place it above your glittered layer in the layer palette.

25. Using short clicks, click a few times along the smooth glittered edge to roughen it up a bit.

26. When you are satisfied with how it looks, turn off all layers except your 2 glittered layers. Right click on one of them, from the flyout choose Merge then Merge Visable. Make all other layers visable again by clicking the eye icon next to each one.

27. We need to give our glitter layer a slight drop shadow to give it a bit of depth so, make sure your glitter layer is active, go up to the Effects tab, then over to 3D Effects, then to Drop Shadow and use these settings:

This is what mine looks like at this point:

All that's left to do is make sure your silver star layer is first, your glass layer is second and your glitter filled layer is below those two in the layers palette, right click on one of them and merge visable and you are done :)

Here's a couple examples of other things you can fill shapes with:

*** A great little program to make glitter and sparkles is one called ArtRage2. You can make regular coloured sparkles, or metalic ones. It also has a stencil feature that you import any design you want into artrage, and you can then fill it with regular or metalic paint, sparkle and glitter ect..... It's also great for making textured papers. You can import any texture you wish, or use the may that come with the program. Here's the link if you are interested in it ArtRage 2

*** Note There is a free version you can download, but the glitter/sparkles option is not available for use with the free one. Here's a link to what the free version and the full version will do Feature Comparison

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share my supplies or tut through email, groups or any other means, send them here to my blog to get the supplies and tut for themselves.

Snap a Ribbon to a Frame

2008-05-13T10:01:00.000-07:00

This is a very quick "How To" on getting an even, sharp edge on your ribbons when snapping them to a frame. All supplies included in the zip file are in .PNG format, so i'm assuming this can be done in photoshop as well.

Supplies provided: sample frame, 2 sample ribbons, and a freebie bow. All can be downloaded HERE

* Before we even start, when doing this technique on a different frame, there must be NO DROP SHADOW on the frame or ribbon before snapping it to the frame, or you will not get a sharp even edge.

1. Open up your sample ribbon and your sample frame from the zip.

2. Copy and paste the ribbon on top of the frame layer.

* I've included 2 sample ribbons for you to try out. One is a straight ribbon, the other is a diagonal ribbon. Choose which ever one you want to try out first.

3. Place the ribbon in the direction you want it to appear on your frame, either straight across the bottom, or diagonally.

4. In the layers palette on the right, click on your Frame layer to make it active.

5. Click on your Magic Wand tool and change your settings to the following:

Mode is replace, Match mode is RGB Value, Tolerance is 4, Feather is 0, Anti-alias is checked.

6. Click once with your magic wand somewhere on a blank space OUTSIDE of your frame. You should have what looks like this:

7. In the layers palette on the right, click on your Ribbon layer to make it active.

8. Now hit the Delete key on your keyboard. The extra pieces of ribbon on the sides of your frame should now be gone.

9. Go up to the Select tab at the top, and choose Select None to get rid of the marching ants.

* Darken the edges a bit to make it appear like the ribbon is folding around the sides of the frame. You can use either the Dodge/Burn tool, or the Lighten/Darken tool. I prefer the Lighten/Darken tool.

10. Click on your Lighten/Darken tool on the left. Choose the default soft round brush, size 20 and an opacity of around 38.

11. Make sure your ribbon layer is still selected, and just give the edges a stroke or two. Since our ribbon is mostly white, we don't want it to dark, just something very subtle. Here's mine:

You can also have diagonal ribbons, add a bow or some other elements and you've got yourself a nicely decorated little frame.

TOU:

All supplies provided in this tutorial are for learning and personal use only. They serve the purpose of aiding you in doing this tut and are not to be used for commercial, monetary gain. You may use them for personal projects for yourself, but do not give them away as part of a kit or freebie, or share through email, groups ect......

Ribbon Through Eyelet

2008-05-13T09:54:00.000-07:00

These 2 quick tuts will show you how to use the warp mesh tool to thread a ribbon through an eyelet, with 2 different results.

Supplies provided: 1 eyelet and 1 ribbon. You can download those HERE

1. First open up both the eyelet and the ribbon png from the zip file.

2. Create a new transparent image, 500 x 500.

3. Copy both the ribbon and eyelet onto that new canvas.

4. Place the ribbon layer on top of the eyelet and position the ribbon about half way across the eyelet like in the picture below:

5. Click on your Mesh Warp tool on the left. Change the settings along the top to these:

mesh horozontal is 20
mesh vertical is 20
symmetric is checked
show mesh is checked
edge mode is background
draft quality is high
final apply is best quality

* Yours should now look like this:

6. Put your cursor on the top node (indicated by the black dots in the example picture below) and pull downward half way down the ribbon. Then put your cursor on the node below that one and pull up to meet the first node. See the 2 example pictures below:

7. Click the Apply button to accept the warping. The apply button is the blue checkmark at the top beside your mesh horozontal setting.

8. Click the Mover tool to get rid of the mesh warp grid on your canvas.

9. You should have something that looks like this:

10. Click on your Selection tool at the left and set it to rectangle.

11. Make sure your ribbon layer is the active layer, and draw out a rectangle like in the picture below:

12. Hit the Delete key on your keyboard to get rid of that extra piece.

13. Go up to the Selections tab at the top and choose Select None to get rid of our rectanlge. You should have something like this now:

Then just give the cut edge a little darkening with your Burn tool or your Lighten/Darken tool, give it a bit of a drop shadow and you're done :)

Here's a slightly different way to thread your ribbon through an eyelet.

1. Follow the steps 1 through 13 from the above tutorial.

2. Click on your Eyelet layer in the layer palette to make it the active layer.

3. Click on your Magic Wand tool. Mode is replace, match mode is RGB, Tolerance about 4, Feather is 0, and Anti-alias is checked, set it to Outside. Click once on a blank space in the middle of your eyelet. You will see marching ants all around the inside of the eyelet, and they will also be on a section of your ribbon. See picture below:

4. Click on your Ribbon layer to make it active, and then hit the Delete key on your keyboard.

5. Go up to the Selections tab and choose Select None. You should have something like this:

Then you can just use your Warp Brush ( hidden with the paint brush and air brush) not the Warp tool, and smooth out the inside edge a bit and give it a little bit of a burn with the dodge tool or lighten/darken tool, and add a slight drop shadow.

TOU:

All supplies provided in this tutorial are for learning and personal use only. They serve the purpose of aiding you in doing this tut and are not to be used for commercial, monetary gain. You may use them for personal projects for yourself, but do not give them away as part of a kit or freebie, or share through email, groups ect......

Tulip Paperclips

2008-04-30T16:13:00.000-07:00

Supplies:

Eye Candy 5 Impact: Free Trial CLICK HERE
My zip: Paperclip preset shape for PSP and PS, SK Paperclip Bevel, Sample patterns DOWNLOAD HERE

* Place the SK Paperclip Bevel.f1s into the Bevel folder of Eye Candy 5 Impact.
*Copy and paste the psp paperclip shape into your Preset Shapes folder, wherever that may be on your computer.
* I've also included a paperclip PNG file in the zip as well for anyone who can't use the PSP or PS shape. Just turn it into a brush and follow the tut.

* This tut is done with coloured swatches to use for a pattern over your paperclip. You can download some coloured tiles from various sites on the net, or you can use my striped paper tut to make your own. You can also just use a plain colour or a gradient instead of a pattern, but I think using a pattern is more interesting. I've included a few sample swatches for you to use with this tut for now.

* First, we'll make the basic paperclip, then we'll move on to the tulip topper.

1. Open up a 400w x 550h transparent image.

2. Choose a pattern from one of the sample images in the zip. I'm using my All Day Sucker pattern for this tutorial.

3. Set it as your foreground and background pattern in the materials palette. I've chosen to use a scale of 50% and an angle of 40 for this. You can decided for yourself what settings you think you'd like.

4. Click on your Preset Shapes tool on the left, and find SK Paper Clip from the dropdown box. Anti-alias is checked, Create as vector is checked, line style is Solid, and a Width of 1.

5. Hold down your Shift key and drag your cursor from the top left corner, and release the mouse when your paperclip reaches the size that you want it to be. Be sure to leave enough room at the top to fit in our tulip topper. Here's my example:

6. Now, we'll give our paperclip a shiny bevel. Go up to the Effects tab, down to Plugins, and find Eye Candy 5 Impact, and choose Bevel. Find in the list SK All Day Sucker Paperclip, click it once to select it, then hit OK. This is what I have so far:

That's it for that part, now on to the tulip topper. I used Whisper's EZ Tulip tutorial to do the flower topper. You can go to her site Whispers Corner, and do pages 1 & 2 to get the tulip made.

* The colour I used for my topper is #CA3166.

7. When you've completed the tulip tut, I tubed mine so that I could resize it to the proportions that fit the size of my paperclip. Next, just copy and paste it onto your paperclip layer, center it on the top of the paperclip, and merge visable your layers.

That's it, we're done :)

* Tip: You can also do patterns for your tulip topper.

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means, send them here to my blog to get the supplies and tut for themselves.

The tulip image on the top of the paperclip is not my design. It belongs to Whisper's Corner and I can not find any terms of use on it, so to be on the safe side, do not use it for commercial purposes.

Yellow Spring Frame

2008-04-30T15:45:00.000-07:00

This is what we'll be making:

Supplies:

My Zip Includes: tube, striped swatch, my EC 5 Impact Bevel. DOWNLOAD HERE.
Mura's meister clouds plugin: DOWNLOAD HERE
EC5 Impact Free Trial: CLICK HERE
Texturizer Plugin: DOWNLOAD HERE

* Place the SK Yellow Frame Bevel.f1s into the folder named Bevel in the Eye Candy folder on your pc.
* Place the Mura's Meister plugin into your plugins folder on your pc.
* Place the Texturizer plugin into your plugins folder on your pc.

1. Open up a transparent image large enough to fit whatever size frame you want.

2. Set your foreground colour to #F0DC99 and your background colour to #F8E7B2. I'm using 2 shades of yellow here, but feel free to use your own colours.

3. Open up a 400 by 400 pixel transparent image. We'll be using this as our frame pattern.

4. Go up to the Effects tab, down to Plugins, then find Mura's Meister and choose Clouds. Click the Reset button in the bottom right hand corner to get the default settings, and use those. Click OK. You should have this:

5. Go up to the Effects tab, down to Plugins, then find Texture and choose Texturizer. Use these settings:

6. Set your new yellow texture as both your foreground and background pattern; Angle 0 and Scale 100%.

7. Click on your Preset Shapes tool on the left and set it to Rectangle. Anti-alias is checked, Create as vector is checked, Line Style is Solid, and Width of 1.

8. On your large transparent image we opened up in the beginning, draw out a square or rectanlge the size you want your frame to be.

9. In the Layer Palette on the right, right click on Vector 1 and choose Convert to Raster Layer.

10. Go up to the Selections tab, choose Select All, then Float, then Defloat. You should have marching ants all around your image.

11. Go back to the Selections tab, down to Modify, and then choose Contract.

* The number of pixels you enter, will depend on how thick of a border on your frame you want. I've contracted by 50 pixels. If you want a thinner border, then choose a smaller number, if you want a thicker border, use a bigger number. Hit OK.

12. Hit the Delete key on your keyboard. You should have something similar to this:

13. Deselect your image. (Selections tab, Select None)

14. Now we are going to give it a bevel. Go up to the Effects tab, down to Plugins, then fiind Eye Candy 5 Impact and choose Bevel. Find my yellow frame bevel, select it, then click on the OK button. This is what you should have so far:

15. Open up SK Yellow Spring Swatch from the zip and set it both as your foreground and background pattern. Scale is 100 and Angle is 45.

16. Click on your Preset Shapes tool on the left and set it to Rectangle. Draw out a square or rectangle, making sure it covers part of your frame edges and the top an bottom. See picture below:

17. In the Layers Palette on the right, right click on Vector 1 and choose Convert to Raste Layer.

18. Move that layer below your frame layer.

19. Make sure your striped layer is the active one in the layers palette (hightlighted blue), and go up to the Selections tab, Select All, down to Float, then to Defloat.

20. Back up to the Selections tab, down to Modify and choose Contract.

* Again, the number you put in here is entirely up to you. I've set mine to contract 40 pixels, but feel free to choose your own number.

21. Hit the Delete key on your keyboard to get rid of the middle section. This is what mine looks like at this point:

22. Now, we need to give it a slight bevel. Go up to the Effects tab, over to 3D Effects, then to Inner Bevel. Use the settings below:

22. Click once on your striped layer to make it active, then go up to the Effects tab, down to Plugins, then to Texture, and then to Texturizer and give it the same texture as in step #5. Here's mine so far:

23. We need a tiny drop shadow between our frame and striped layer, so click on your Frame to make it active.

24. Go up to the Effects tab, then to 3D Effects and over to Drop Shadow and use these settings. Make sure to have the checkmark in the box that says Shadow On A New Layer.

25. Click on your Eraser Brush in the palette on the left. Use the default round brush at the default settings.

26. Click on your shadow layer in the layers palette on the right to make it the active layer. Erase all around the edges of your frame to get rid of the extra shadow that was created. We don't want any of that on there.

* At this point, your frame is pretty much done. All you need to do now is put a few embellishments on it and merge visable all layers.

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means, send them here to my blog to get the supplies and tut for themselves.

The flower pot and ladybug images are not mine. I do not know who's they are, they had no tou's attached, so to be on the safe side, if using this tut for commercial purposes, do not use these 2 images.

Pink Roses Frame

2008-04-30T15:33:00.000-07:00

Supplies:

Eye Candy 5 Impact: Free trial CLICK HERE
Texturizer plugin: Download Here
My zip: swirl brush, pink rose, flower tube, green spring frame.f1s bevel Download Here

* Place the green spring frame.f1s into your EC 5 Impact bevel folder.
* Tube your 2 flower images
* Make a brush out of the swirl image.

1. Open up a 400 by 400 transparent image.

2. Set your foreground colour to #77B26E and your background to #B8D3B1.

3. Go up to the Effects tab, down to Plugins, then to Mura's Meister, then choose Clouds. Use these settings:

You should get something very similar to this:

4. Go up to the Effects tab, down to Plugins, over to Texture, then choose Texturizer and use these settings:

5. Open up a new transparent canvas, as big as you want your frame to be.

6. Set your foreground and background as the green textured image we just created. Angle 0 and Scale 100.

7. Click on your Preset Shapes tool on the left and set it to Rectangle. Anti-alias is checked, create as vector is checked, line style is Solid, and a width of 1.

8. Draw out a square or rectangle the size you want your frame to be.

9. In the layers palette on the right, right click on Vector 1 and choose Convert to Raster Layer.

10. Go up to the Selections tab at the top, choose Select All, Float, then Defloat.

11. Go back to the Selections tab, down to Modify, and then to Contract. Set the number of pixels to whatever looks good to you. I'll be contracting mine by 50.

12. Hit the Delete key on your keyboard.

13. Go up to the Selections tab and choose Select None.

14. Now for the bevel. Go up to the Effects tab, down to Plugins, find Eye Candy 5 Impact, and choose Bevel.

15. Find SK Green Spring Frame from the list, click it once to select it, then hit the OK button. This is what I have so far:

16. Go up to the Layers tab at the top, and choose New Raster Layer.

17. Click on your Brush tool, and from the dropdown menu, find your swirl brush from the zip. Choose a size appropriate for your frame. I'm using a size of 75 and make sure the Opacity is set to 100%.

18. Set your forground colour to #69965E.

19. On your blank layer, click down in the same spot twice to get a nice clear swirl.

20. Copy and paste as a new layer, that swirl onto your canvas 3 more times. You should always click on the Original, then copy and then paste, click on the original, then copy and paste ect..... It's just better to duplicate the original than to continuously copy a copy. (hope that made sense lol)

21. With your Mover tool, place each one in a row along the top portion of the frame. Don't worry if it's not even just yet, you'll be fussing with the spacing later. This is what I have so far:

22. I didn't want all of my swirls to be going the same way, so I've mirrored every second one of them. Click on the second swirl and go up to the Image tab and choose mirror. Put it back into it's place. Click on the last swirl and do the same. Here's the changes:

23. Click on your Brush tool again and change the Rotation to 85. We are not going to be copying and just rotating the first swirls we did because when you rotate something, it tends to blur and become less sharp.

24. Go up to the Layers tab and choose New Raster Layer.

25. Working on the Right side of the frame, click twice with your swirl brush.

26. Copy and paste that Original swirl 4 more times onto your canvas.

27. Again, mirror every second one of those swirls.

28. Go up to the Layers tab and choose New Raster Layer.

29. Make the swirls the same way for the Left side of your frame.

30. This time, you need to mirror the First one in line on the left side as well as the third one.

31. Click on your Brush tool again, and change the Rotation to 185.

32. Go up to the Layers tab and choose New Raster Layer.

33. Place your brush on the bottom of the frame and click in the same place twice.

34. Copy and paste that Original swirl 3 more times onto your frame and move them into place.

35. Mirror the First and Third swirls. Don't worry about the last swirl not matching up, it is going to be hidden behind our flower. So far, mine looks like this:

Here's where you need to even out all of your swirls. You can turn on your grid to help you out with that, but I just did mine manually.

36. When you've got all of your swirls placed the way you want them, turn off the Frame layer and Merge Visable your swirl layers.

37. Now we are going to put a small drop shadow behind our swirl layer to make it a little more 3D and not so flat on the frame. Go up to the Effects tab, over to 3D Effects and then to Drop Shadow. Use these settings:

38. Click on your Picture Tube tool at the left and find the single pink rose from the zip.

39. Resize the tiny pink rose to somewhere between 15 and 20, whatever looks good to you.

40. Create a new layer over your frame image and just randomly, but evenly spaced, put some of the tiny pink roses in and around the swirls. Make sure you put each one on a new layer so that you can move them separately.

41. When you are satisfied with your placement, hide the frame and the swirl layer and merge visable all of your tiny roses.

42. Go up to the Effects tab, over to 3D Effects and then to Drop Shadow. Use the same drop shadow as in step #37, but change the colour from dark green to #221D12. Here's mine so far:

43. When done that, click on your Picture Tube tool again and find the pink roses cluster from the tube list.

44. Create a new layer again, resize the rose cluster appropriately for your frame and plop it down onto your blank layer. Move it to the bottom right hand corner of your frame. I also erased off a leaf or two and part of the baby's breath.

45. I rotated mine 80 degrees to the right, but you don't have to. Go up to the Image tab, over to Rotate, then to Free Rotate. Put the green dot beside the word Right, the dot beside the word Free and type in 80.00 and hit OK.

46. The image becomes a bit fuzzy when rotating anything, so use the Unsharp Mask to clear it up. Go up to the Adjust tab at the top, down to Sharpness, then over to Unsharp Mask. Use these settings:

47. Give it a little shadow too. Use these settings:

48. Right click on any layer in the layer palette and Merge Visable your layers.

And we're done :)

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means, send them here to my blog to get the supplies and tut for themselves.

The 3 rose cluster was a random tube that was sent to me a while ago and I do not know where it came from, so it's up to you if you use it for commercial purposes.

Silk Patterned Papers

2008-04-25T17:25:00.000-07:00

Supplies:

SK Floral Swatch which you can download HERE

1. Open up a new transparent image to whatever size you want your background paper to be.

2. Set your foreground colour to white and your background colour to #918573.

3. Click on your background properties box and then click on the Gradient tab at the top.

4. From the list of gradients, choose the one called foreground-background, Style is linear, and Repeats to 8, Angle is up to you, but I have mine set to 166.

5. Click on the flood fill tool on the left and fill your canvas with your gradient. Your canvas should now look like this:

6. Click on your Mesh Warp tool on the left and set the Horozontal and Vertical at 3, Symmetric and Show Mesh are both checked, Edge Mode is background, Draft Quality is High, and Best Quality is checked.

*Note that the nodes that are all around the top, bottom, and sides can't be moved inward or outward.

7. Put your cursor on one of the square nodes not around the outside of your canvas and pull up, down, or to the side slightly, and watch your canvas change. Do this a few more times with a few more nodes to smoosh it around a bit on the page.

* Hold down your Ctrl or Shift key while moving a node to shift the placement of the node on the canvas. This is what I have so far:

8. When you've done that a few times, up top, to the left of your Mesh Horozontal settings, you will see a blue checkmark. Click that to accept the changes made on your canvas. If you don't like what it turned out to be and want to start over, click the red x and redo it. Don't worry too much how it looks, because this is just the first step, we aren't done smooshing it around.

9. Now, click on your Warp Brush from the palette on the left. Warp Mode is Push, Size about 500, Hardness 0, Strength is 67.

* You can play around with these settings once you get the feel of what we are doing here.

10. Open up the SK Floral Swatch from the zip file and set it as your foreground pattern.

11. Go up to the Layers tab and create a New Raster Layer.

12. Flood fill your blank layer with the floral pattern.

13. In the layers palette on the right, change the Blend Mode of the floral pattern layer to Multiply.

This is what mine looks like now:

14. In the layers palette, click on your gradient filled layer to make it active.

* You may want to duplicate your image here just incase you warp it way too much and don't like it. You can then just use the original to start over.

15. Click on your Warp Brush agian, same settings and start warping your image around slightly to see the changes. Make sure you are NOT on the floral layer or your pattern will get distorted.

* Don't forget to click the blue checkmark at the top every once in a while to accept your changes on your canvas, because if you don't and you click the undo button or the red x, you will loose whatever changes you"ve made to your canvas.

I'm working with a 450 x 450 image in order to get these screenshots to fit on my page, so I just smooshed my image around a little bit, but this is my result.

16. When you're satisfied with what it looks like Merge Visable your 2 layers.

* The floral patterned swatch we used is a pretty light colour and the background colour we used to fill the warped layer wasn't very dark either. If you were to use a darker patterned swatch, you would have to make the background colour to fill the warped layer a lot darker so it will show through on your pattern layer.

* Play around and see what you can come up with.
* add a faint texture
* apply a filter
* duplicate the image, change that blend mode to muliply, merge layers, and change the brightness/contrast to get a darker version like in the picture below:

Use my Striped and Geometrical Papers Tutorial to make matching papers.

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means, send them here to my blog to get the supplies and tut for themselves.

Old Paper

2008-04-25T17:07:00.000-07:00

Supplies:

Place both of these plugins into the plugins folder, wherever that may be on your computer.

Download Mura's Meister Clouds HERE
Download texturizer plugin HERE

1. Open up a fairly large transparent canvas, a bit bigger than you want your paper to be so we have some room around the edges.

2. Click on your Selection tool, and draw out a rectangle shape the size that you want your paper to be.

3. Set your foreground colour to e2c9a0 and your background colour to f9ebd7.

4. Go to the Layers tab and choose New Raster Layer.

4. Go up to the Effects tab at the top, then down to Plugins, then find Mura's Meister,then choose Clouds. Use the settings below:

You should have something similar to this:

5. Go up to the Select tab, and choose Select None.

* Now we are going to make the edges a bit jagged, and add a few tears.

6. On the tools bar at the left, click on your Freehand Selection tool.

* You may want to add a new layer and put a darker colour background behind your paper layer in order to see your paper edges better.
This next part is totally up to you to decide how much or how little you want your paper to have jagged edges and tears. I'm just going to tear off a corner, and maybe take a few little pieces out here and there.

7. Make sure your paper layer is selected in the layers palette. Click and hold down your Freehand Selection tool once on the outside of your paper layer and just drag your cursor to outline the top left corner of the paper. It doesn't matter what the lasso looks like on the outside of the paper corner, but the part that is actually touching the paper is how jagged it will look once you delete the actual corner.

8. Hit the Delete key on your keyboard.

9. Go up to the Select tab, then to Select None.

10. Repeat these steps as many times on different parts of your paper to get the ripped or jagged look that you want. I did a few more and this is what I ended up with.

11. Select your Lighten/Darken tool, use the Default soft round brush, increase the brush size to somthing like in the picture below.

Hardness is 27, Step 25, Density and Thickness is 100, Opacity is 30. Just give your canvas a few strokes to give it a bit of shade. Use your Right click for the darkening shade.

13. Still working with your Burn tool, decrease the brush size to about 30 and change the Opacity to about 38%. Do some swipes around the edges of your paper to burn those. This is what I ened up with:

* Stains, scratches, and dirt brushes are a good way of grunging up your paper a bit, so it doesn't look so smooth. I downloaded these brushes from ariadne-a-mazed at deviantart to get some waterstains. They are in .abr format, which is a photoshop brush file, but if you go to my PSP Tutorial Blog it will explain how you can use .abr photoshop bruses with PSP.

14. If you haven't already, load the stain brushes. Don't switch to your paintbrush, we are still going to be using the Lighten/Darken tool with these.

22. With the Lighten/Darken tool still selected, choose a stain brush to use, select an appropriate size for your project, and position your brush somewhere on your page and click your mouse about 4 times in the same spot.

* Take a look at your page, if you want it darker or lighter, click the Undo button under the Edit tab 4 times to undo your water stain and try again. This is what I ened up with:

16. Continue on with your stains and scratches to dirty up your page.

17. Give your paper a texture. Go up to the Effects tab at the top, down to Plugins, then to Texture then to Texturizer, and use these settings:

This is my final result:

* You can use this technique to make old frames, polaroids, ect......... and try using other textures such as crumpled paper.

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory.

Picket Fence Frame

2008-04-25T16:39:00.000-07:00

Supplies: 2 wood textures, guide photo, line style, photo slide, Download Here

* The line style amc round ended solid.sld is not mine and I don't remember where I got it from. If it is yours, let me know.

1. Open up a 500 x 800 transparent image. You may want to add a coloured background layer in order too see your fence post better.

* We are going to create just one picket and duplicate that to make our fence, so it's up to you how big or small you want to make this picket, but it does need to be quite long initially because there are 5 different sizes to the pickets in this frame, and we are going to be chopping the bottoms off of some of them, so make this first picket the length you want your longest picket to be. Take a look at #1 in the guide photo in the zip to understand what I mean.

2. Set your forground and background pattern to SK white wood vertical, Angle is 0, and Scale is 100%.

3. Click on your Preset Shapes tool and choose the triangle. Anti-alias and create as vector are both checked.

4. Draw out a small triangle to use as the tip of the picket. Don't make it too long or it will elongate your tip and it won't look right.

5. In the layer palette on the right, right click on Vector 1 and choose Convert To Raster Layer.

6. Click on your Preset Shapes tool again and this time choose the Rectangle. This next part is a little tricky.

7. Draw out a rectangle as long as you want your picket to be, and as wide as the triangle you drew. Make sure it is perfectly even with the width of the triangle and doesn't go past the edges. You may want to zoom in to see it more closely. Use the Object Selection tool to pull or push it in or out a bit.

* Don't worry if your fence pattern isn't lined up, we will fix that too.

8. In the layers palette, right click on Vector 1 and from the flyout choose Convert to Raster Layer.

9. If you've added a coloured background layer, hide it, and right click on either the triangle or rectangle layer and choose Merge Visable.

* You can clearly see that our wood pattern isn't lined up properly, so we need to do a bit of cloning.

10. Click on your Clone tool, Size appropriate to the size of your picket, I'm useing Size 10, Hardness 50, Step 5, Density and Thickness 100% and Opacity 100%.

11. Right click once just under the top line of our rectangle, then Left click several times horozontally directly on the line to clone it out. Then use a few vertical strokes downward to clone any missed parts. This is what mine looks like:

* Minimize this for now, we will use it a bit later on.

* If you take a look at the guide photo from the zip, you'll see that we need 2 end posts, and 2 horozontal slats. First, we'll do the 2 end posts.

12. Open up another 500 by 800 transparent image.

13. Click on your preset shapes too and choose Rectangle, and draw out a long rectangle about the same length as your single picket we just did, but make it a little bit thicker.

14. Right click on Vector 1 in the layer palette and choose Convert to Raster Layer.

15. Next, we'll give it a bevel. Go up to the Effects tab, and over to 3D Effects, then to Inner Bevel. Use the settings in picture 1 for PSP, and the settings in picture 2 for PS.

16. Click on your Preset Shapes tool, and choose Ellipse, and draw out a circle for the ball on top of your post.

17. Right click on Vector 1 in the layer palette and choose Convert to Raster Layer.

18. Give it the same bevel as the post in step #15. So far this is what I have:

19. Click on your Pen tool on the left. Create as vector is checked, Mode is drawing mode, Segment Type is Line Segments, Line Style is Amc Round Ended Solid, Width is 11, and Anti-alias is checked. Draw out a straight line not quite as wide as your post. See pic below:

20. Right click on that layer in the layers palette and Convert to Raster Layer.

21. Repeat drawing a line 2 more times with the same settings, but make each line a little smaller than the other, convert each to raster layer.

22. Give each of these 3 lines the same bevel we have been using.

23. Position these lines on top of each other, turn off all other layers and Merge Visable these three lines.

24. Position your 3 pieces one on top of each other to assemble the post and turn off your background layer if you have one and Merge Visable these 3 layers.

* The last 2 pieces are the 2 horozontal slats, but before we do those 2, you need to determine how wide your fence frame is going to be. So, open up a large transparent canvas, big enough to have a bit of room on all sides.

25. Copy and paste your Post onto your new canvas and position it to the far left of your new canvas, and close to the top of your page. We need extra room at the bottom for later.

* You may want to turn on your grid (view tab, choose grid) to get these to line up evenly.

26. Copy and paste your post again onto your canvas and position that one over to the right of your page to determine the length of your picket frame.

* I have 11 pickets inbetween my 2 posts, but you don't have to have that many, or you can have more if you choose, but take a look at the guide photo from the zip file. Each numbered picket on the left, has to match up with the length of the same numbered picket on the right. Don't do any cutting just yet. We need to put them in place first.

28. Unminimize your single picket and copy and paste that onto your new canvas and place it beside your post on the left.

29. Copy and paste the original picket 10 more times ( or less) and place each one evenly with each other inbetween the 2 end posts. Here's what mine looks like

* Now we need to make the last 2 horozontal slats.

30. Set your foreground and background pattern to sk white wood horozontal, Angle 0, and Scale 100%.

31. Working on your canvas with the other pickets, with your preset shapes tool set to Rectangle, draw out a long horozontal rectangle about the same width as your pickets, and to a length that fits in between your 2 end posts.

*You can click on your Object Selection tool on the left and use the nodes to drag the rectangle inward or outward to get the correct length. This is what mine looks like:

32. Right click on the slat layer in the layer palette and choose Convert to Raster Layer, then move that layer to the top of the pile.

33. Move that slat about half way down your pickets. See picture above.

34. Copy and paste that slat layer onto your canvas and move it down to the bottom of the pickets, leaving just a little bit of space. Here's what mine looks like at this point.

* Now we need to adjust our pickets. Take a look at the guide photo from the zip and look at the placement. Turn on your Grid (View tab, Grid) so you can get these even with each other.

35. Pull the 3 middle pickets down so that just a quarter of the top is showing.

36. There's no way really that I can give you instructions on how to posititon the rest other than to say keep your grid on and just look at the guide photo to help you out with the placement of the others. Here's what mine looks like now:

* You may want to duplicate this and save it just incase you don't like what you've done and you can just start over from here.

* Now we are going to cut away the bottoms of the pickets that are sticking out from our frame. Before we do that though, if you are inserting the 3 slide frames into the fence, you need to move the 2 horozontal slats so that it will fit your slides snuggly. Open up the photo slide from the zip just to get an idea of how big you want those slides to be and move your 2 horozontal slats accordingly.

37. Click on your Selection tool on the left and set it to Rectangle. We need to cut away the extra pieces at the bottom, but we also need to make it so that when we bevel our pickets, the bottom of them rest nicely on top of the second horozontal slat. Draw out a rectangle like in the picture below. I've turn off most of the pickets so you can see how close we come to the top of the slat.

38. Now, in the layers palette on the right, select 1 of the picket layers and hit the delete key on your keyboard. The bottom should have disappeared. Repeat this for each of the PICKET LAYERS ONLY. Yours should look like this

Hang in there, we are almost finished. We only have to do some beveling, a bit of burning, and drop shadows and we are done :)

39. Go up to the Selection tab, and click Select None.

40. Now we need to bevel the pickets and the 2 horozontal slats. Click on the first picket on the left in your canvas to select it. Go to the Effects tab at the top, then over to 3D Effects, then to Inner Bevel and give it the same bevel as we used on the 2 posts. Screenshot is below:

41. Click on the next picket on your canvas, ( we're gonna use a shortcut here for the rest of the bevels) hold down the Ctrl key and hit your y key on your keyboard. By hitting Ctrl and y on your keyboard it just repeats the last command you did, which was our bevel. Repeat these steps untill you have beveled all of your pickets, as well as the 2 horozontal slats.

42. We are going to slightly move each picket upward a litlle bit so that the bevel at the bottom is just touching the bottom slat. Select your Mover tool and push each of the 11 pickets up a tad so that the shading from the bevel shows through a little. Here's a closeup of what I mean:

43. Next is the shading part. Select your Lighten/Darken tool on the left. Use the Default soft round brush, select an appropriate size for your project, Hardness is 50, Density and Thickness is 100, and an Opacity of about 20 to 30. We just want to darken in places where the picket meets the slats. Click on each picket one by one, and run your darken tool above and below the first horozontal slat, giving it a little bit of shading. Do this for each one.

44. Next, is our drop shadow. Click on the Post on the Left to activate it. Go up to the Effects tab, over to 3D Effects, then to Drop Shadow and use these settings:

45. Click on the first picket and use our shortcut to put the drop shadow on; Hold your Ctrl key and hit the y key on your keyboard. Do this for each picket, the post on the right and both the horozontal slats.

46. If you have a background layer, hide it and right click on one of the files in the layers palette and choose Merge, then Merge Visable.

YAY, we're done.....................

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means, send them here to my blog to get the supplies and tut for themselves.

Glassed Alpha's and Elements

2008-04-22T23:36:00.000-07:00

This tutorial is written in PSP8 for PSP users, but can be done in PS and PSE too I'm pretty sure.

If you came to this tut from my freebie blog and are looking to make the capitol letters for the alpha included in the Mother's Day kit, the font I used was called Christie. Unfortunately, some of the capitol letters for that font are will not work with this tutorial. The beveled outline gets screwed up and squished into each other because the caps are swirly. Try using a different fatter font instead.

Supplies:

EyeCandy 5 Impact:Download Free Trial Here
SK mday rose swatch.jpg, my EC 5 Impact bevel setting, my EC 5 Glass setting, all of which you can download Here

* Copy and paste SK Pink n White Roses Alpha Outter Pink Bevel.f1s to wherever you have installed the EyeCandy 5 Impact program. Mine is in Program Files/ EC 5 Impact/Settings/Bevel.

* Copy and paste the SK Pink n White Roses Alpha Glassed.f1s to the same place except instead of the last folder being bevel, put it into the Glass folder.

1. Open up a 500 x 500 transparent image.

2. Set as your foreground and background, the SK mday rose swatch.jpg.... Angle is 0, and Scale is 50%.

3. Either install or just open up the font provided in the zip, and click on your Text tool and select it in the font dropdown list. Create as Vector, Size is 300, Stroke is 0, and Anti-alias is checked.

4. Type out your capitol letter onto your canvas.

5. In the layer palette on the right, right click on Vector 1 and from the flyout choose Convert To Raster Layer. You should have this:

6. Go up to the Selections tab at the top, then to Select All, then to Float, then down to Defloat.

* You should have marching ants all around your letter.

7. Go back to the Selections tab, then to Modify, then to Expand, and set the number of pixels to 5 and hit OK. You should have this now:

8. Go up to the Layers tab, then to New Raster Layer.

9. Click on your Foreground Colour and change it to #E9B7B7, and flood fill your blank layer.

10. Go up to the Selections tab, down to Modify, then over to Contract. Set the number of pixels to 7 and hit OK.

11. Hit the Delete key on your keyboard. You should now have a 5 pixel pink border around your letter like in the picture below.

12. Go up to the Selections tab and choose Select None.

13. In the layers palette, move your pink outlined layer below your letter layer.

14. Working on the Outlined layer, go up to the Effects tab at the top, down to Plugins, then find EyeCandy 5 Impact, then go to Bevel. Click on SK Pink n White Roses Alpha Outter Pink Bevel then hit OK. Your outline should now be beveled.

15. Click on the rose patterned letter layer, go up to the Effects tab, down to plugins, then to EC 5 Impact, then go to Glass. Click on SK Pink n White Roses Alpha Glassed and hit OK.

16. Right click on one of the layers in the layer palette and choose Merge Visable and we are done :)

* You can use this tutorial to make brads, beads, and shapes other than an alpha.

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means, send them here to my blog to get the supplies and tut for themselves.

Frame or Page Border

2008-04-22T23:20:00.000-07:00

This tut is mainly to show you how to make frames, but it can also be used to make page borders. I've already done a page border included in my Mother's Day Kit, and this tutorial is to show you how to make a matching frame from the supplies that I have provided for you. Feel free to use your own though.

* This tut gave me more trouble than any other. I had to redo it several times or more because of stupid things. If you find any mistakes, please let me know.

This tut can be done in any graphics program, but only PSP users can use the script to extend our pattern, so there's no need to download that.

Supplies:

My supplies provided are in the zip HERE.
Script: Pattern Extend by Joske: which you can get HERE. (Extract the script to your Scripts-Restricted folder wherever that may be on your computer)
Birgits Chaos: Download Here We will be using the one called Embroidery only.

1. Start off with opening up mother's day frame lightened.jpg from the provided supplies. (Make sure it is titled the lightened one and not the original)

2. Go up to the Effects tab, down to Plugins, then up to Birgit's Chaos, and click on Embroidery. Use the settings in the picture below:

* I wasn't planning on turning this into a tutorial, so I didn't keep a record of any of my settings for any of this, so it may look a tad different than the page border from the kit, but not much.

You should end up with your swatch looking like this:

* You can leave this as is, but I found that it was too wide to make a frame and wanted something a bit thinner so I did a little cutting.

3. Pull out the edges of your canvas so you can see all sides:

4. Click on your crop tool and position it like in the picture below and crop this portion:

5. Open up Mother's Day Frame Original.jpg from the supplies and set it as your foreground pattern, Angle 0 and Scale 35.

6. Pull out the sides of your canvas again, and click the Selection tool on the left, set it to Rectangle.

7. In the layers palette, right click on your layer and choose Promote Background Layer.

8. Carefully draw out a rectangle surrounding the white portion of your swatch, then hit your delete key on your keyboard.

9. Go up to the Selections tab at the top and click on Select None.

10. Go up to the Layers tab at the top, and create a new raster layer and drag it so it is below your swatch layer.

11. We need to expand our canvas for this next step, so go up to the Image tab, then down to Canvas Size.

12. Our current canvas is around 131w by 250h (give or take a few). Let's add on another 75 pixels to each. It doesn't matter if your numbers are a little off from mine, just add 75 to your dimensions. Write them down before you increase the canvas because we need to change it back later. Make sure it is set to pixels in the dropdown box, then in the New Dimensions section, change the width to 206 and the height to 325. Click on the middle box indicated by the red outlined square to set your new dimensions in place and click OK. See settings picture below:

13. Click on your flood fill tool on the left and fill the blank layer we added earlier with the rose pattern.

14. Use your Mover tool to position the 3 roses evenly in the middle of the two long pink stripes. Mine looks like this at this stage:

15. Now, we are going to decrease our canvas back to what it was originally. Go up to the Image tab, then down to Canvas Size. In the width and height, put in your original settings before we increased it. (or use your crop tool and crop it very closely, leaving no spaces. You should have something like this:

* You can clone out any parts of the green leaves that are sticking out from behind the 2 pink stripes if you don't like that look.

16. Right click in the layers palette and Merge Visable your 2 layers.

* Now, this is where we use the script to extend our pattern length to make page borders or in this case, a frame. Photoshop users, you are going to have to manually copy and paste to extend it vertically.

17. Go up to the menu bar at the top and in the scripts section, find Pattern Extend-joske from the dropdown menu, and push the play button.

18. The first box that pops up asks you to set the resolution. I set mine for 300, so put the number 3 in and hit OK.

19. The next box asks you which way you want to extend your pattern. We only want to extend our vertically, so put a number 2 in.

20. The next box asks for the new height. Choose 3 for custom.

21. Entering a number of 6.000 will extend it to 1800 pixels long. That's big enough for us for this frame, we can crop it to whatever size we wish.

22. The next popup shows us what our new dimensions will be. 131 wide by 1800 long is good. Yours may be slightly different. That's fine. Make any changes in the height or width now if you are not happy with them as they are.

23. Click OK on the next popup, and your materials palette should have poped up for you. From the patterns dropdown list, find your original striped image and change your Scale back to 100% from the 35 it was at from before and click OK.

* You should now have a seamless, extended pattern 1800 pixels long.

24. Save your stripe, then hold down your Shift key and hit the letter d on your keyboard to duplicate it and close out the original.

25. Open up an 1800 x 1800 blank page, and copy and paste your striped image onto your canvas. Rename it Original.

26. Select your Mover tool, and move your image down a bit from the top.

27. At this point, it is up to you how big you want your frame to be. Click your Selection tool (rectangle) and drag out the rectangle to the selected length you want your frame to be.

28. Go up to the Edit tab and choose Copy, down to Paste, then over to Paste as New Layer.

29. Go up to the Selections tab and choose Select None. This is our Left side of our frame.

30. Right click on that layer in the layer palette and rename it Left.

31. In the layer palette on the right, right click on Left layer and from the flyout choose Duplicate. This will be our Right side of the frame.

32. Right click on that layer and rename it Right and hit the eye icon next to it to turn it off for now.

33. Again, right click on Left layer and choose Duplicate. Rename this one Top, and turn off that layer.

34. Right click on Left layer again, and choose Duplicate. Rename this one Bottom and turn off that layer.

* You can also turn off the 1800 pixel layer as well.

35. Move the Left layer over to the left side of your canvas, leaving about an inch or 2 of space from the edge.

36. You'll notice that we have one pink stripe a little bigger than the one with the thicker green stripe. It will look better if the thicker stripe is running along the outsides of your frame, rather than inside, so make it the active layer, and go up to the Image tab, then choose Mirror. Move it back to the left side of your canvas.

37. Unhide the layer named Top, and click it once in the layer palette to make it active, and mirror this one as well.

38. Go up to the Image tab, then to Rotate, then to Free Rotate. Use the settings below:

39. Move the layer named Top over to your Left layer, and position it so that its edges are even with the the Left layer. See pic below:

40. Click on your ERASER tool from the palette on the right, and choose the Line Left brush. Change the size to about 200 and leave the rest at it's default settings. These are PSP default brushes, so you should have them in your brush options. If you don't, you can very easily make one yourself.

41. Position your brush like in the picture below. Make sure the brush's edge is as close as possible to the top corner of the top layer. Hold down your mouse button, and in one long stroke erase the lower portion of that image.

* You should now have evenly matched stripes, joining up the left side and the top. Use the Mover tool to adjust it slightly if needed, or you may need to reposition it and undo and redo if it's out of wack a lot. I also cloned out the tiny portion of the flower that was cut in half by my erasing.

* We are making a perfectly square frame here, but if you wanted a portrait frame, at this point you would take your rectangle tool and select a portion at the end of the Top layer to trim it down to the size you wanted, and then hit your delete key to get rid of it.

42. Unhide the layer named Right from the layer palette. No need to mirror this side since it is already the way we want it.

43. Repeat the same steps for erasing as you did in the top layer, but this time change the eraser brush to Line Right.

44. Unhide the layer named Bottom and click on it once to make it the active layer. Go up to the Image tab, then to Rotate, then to Free Rotate and use the same settings as before.

45. Move it to the top of the pile in the layers palette and position it into place and do the erasing again, using the appropriate Left and Right brushes.

* Before you merge your layers, if you want to clone out or clone in any partial flowers affected by our erasing, do so now. Also, take a look and see if any extra pieces are sticking out from behind any layers. If there are some, click on it's layer and erase them.

46. In the layers palette, you can delete our layer named Original, then right click on one of the layers and merge visable.

* If you've made a frame, you can also use a PSP bevel or Eye Candy bevel on it to give it a nice look.

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means, send them here to my blog to get the supplies and tut for themselves.

Background Papers - Stripes and Geometrical Designs

2008-04-14T09:49:00.000-07:00

I've gotten a few requests for tutorials on creating background papers, so here's one method I came up with to make some striped, plaid, and geometrical papers. It can be done in either PSP, PS, or any other graphic program I'm assuming, since all the filters used are in .8bf format.

Supplies Needed:

Birgit's Chaos filter which you can get HERE. We will be using the one called Embroidery only.
Sample test jpg which I've zipped up and you can get HERE
Simple filters which you can get HERE. The 4 we will be using from the 10 available are: 4 way average, diamonds, center tile, and pizza slice mirror.

* Copy and paste all filters into wherever you have your PSP filter folders on your computer.

*When you are doing this tutorial and not using the sample graphic that I've provided, you need to find a photo that has some pretty colours in it. It does not matter what the photo is actually of, just the colours that are in the photo itself. I've taken a graphic I've found on the net and just cropped out a piece of the middle that has the bright, bold colours that I was looking for. Your cropped image must be square or this will not turn out properly. I've found that 250px by 250px works the best. If your photo isn't that size, crop out the part you want to use and try and get it as close to 250 pixles as you can, then just go up to the Image tab at the top, choose Resize, uncheck Lock Aspect Ratio, and enter 250 in the width and height in the Pixel Dimension section, to get it to exactly the right dimensions.

1. Open up HK.jpg from the zip file. This one is already sized 250 x 250 for you.
2. Go up to the Effects tab, down to Plugins, then find Birgit's Chaos, and click on Embroidery.
3. Increase the viewing size to 100% and change your settings to match the one's in the picture below.

* Your graphic should have now turned into stripes like this pic.

4. Duplicate your new striped image and save the original.

* This is a seamless swatch you can now use for filling paper, tags, borders, elements ect..... Just set it as your foreground pattern in the materials box. I have made a folder called My Seamless Swatches that I keep all of these newly made fills in, along with the original graphic that i used.
5. Working on the duplicated swatch now, go up to the Effects tab, down to Plugins, then find your Simple Filter, and from the flyout choose Diamonds. You now have a diagonal striped image to use for pattern fills.

6. Duplicate this swatch and save the original in your folder.

* Now, there are several different plugins in the Simple Filter, but the main ones that I use are 4 way average, center tile, diamonds, and pizza slice mirror. Each time you choose a new one of these to use on your swatch, it will bring up a different pattern. The pattern is determined by the combination of which of these you use on each swatch. For example, working with out diagonal pattern.....

7. If you choose the 4 way average filter on the diagonal swatch, you will get this plaid pattern:

8. If you used the Center Tile filter on the diagonal swatch you will get this diamond pattern:

9. If you stay on the diamond pattern, and use the Diamond filter again, you get this square pattern:

I think you get the idea here. Each filter will produce a different pattern on each swatch you choose to use.

Don't forget to save the individual swatches and the original graphic you used. They come in handy when you are creating co-ordinating items for your kits.

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means, send them here to my blog to get the supplies and tut for themselves.

Smooth Brad

2008-03-13T18:58:00.000-07:00

Creating a Smooth Brad

This tutorial on creating a brad uses no outside plugins, just Paint Shop Pro. The second part of this tutorial is creating the outter ring, and that requires EyeCandy 5 Impact.

Supplies May Be Needed:

** I'm pretty sure that the first 2 are included with PSP as a preset already, but if you don't have it, it is in the zip file Here

Preset_BallsandBubbles_Goldball.PspScript: which goes into your presets folder. (mine is located in my documents/my psp8 files/my presets.)

Gold.jpg: which goes into the environment maps folder. (mine is located in my documents/my psp8 files/my environment maps.

SK Smooth Brad.f1s: Which goes into your Bevel folder of the main alien skin folder. This is optional and only used for the second part of the tut if you are using EyeCandy 5 Impact to create the outter circle.

*I'm going to be using the colour green for this tutorial, but don't worry if you don't like it. We are just using it for a template. You'll see what I mean later on.

1. Open up a 300 x 300 new transparent image. Your brad will pretty much fill up the entire canvas, so if you want one that is bigger or smaller, open up an image appropriate for the size you will need. I think it's best to use all the same settings I am using for this tutorial the first time you do it so that there are no inconsistencies.
2. Go up to the Effects tab, then to Artistic Effects, then to Balls and Bubbles. In the preview drop down box at the top, choose the preset called gold ball.
3. On the Shape tab, put your settings like in the picture below.

4. Switch over to the Surface tab, change the colour to #349634, and make sure the other settings are the same as the picture below.

5. On the Maps tab, use the same settins as in the picture below.

6. On the Illumination tab, click on Light 2 and change the colour to #496E42 and again, make sure the other numbers are the same as the picture below.

* You can save this as a preset if you want by clicking the little icon at the top that looks like a square floppy disk.

7. Now hit the OK button and you should have what looks like this....

*It doesn't look that great right now as it is, but we're going to fix that by smoothing it out and making the lighting less harsh.

8. Go up to the Selections tab, click on Select All, go to the Selections tab again, click on float, back up to the Selections tab and click on Defloat.

* Do not deselect the layer untill I tell you to do so.

9. Go to the Layer tab and create a new raster layer.
10. Change your foreground colour to this light green #A0CA98, and flood fill your new layer, then move the Opacity slider down to 25.
11. Right click on one of the layers and choose Merge, then Merge Visable. Yours should look like the picture below.

12. Go up to the Layers tab and choose New Raster Layer.
13. You should still have #A0CA98 set as your foreground colour, if it isn't change it back to this.
14. Activate your Airbrush tool and use these settings:

Brush is the Default Round (should be the very first brush in the list)
Brush size is 147
Hardness is 5
Step is 1
Density is 100
Thickness is 100
Rotation is 0
Opacity is 45
Blend Mode is Normal

15. Hold your cursor in the centre of the white highlight in the bottom right corner and click once with your airbrush. The white should appear to be a very light grey now. See picture below.

16. Right click on one of the layers in the layer palette and choose Merge then Merge Visable.
17. Right click on the new merged layer and from the flyout choose Duplicate.
18. In the Blend Mode (where it says Normal) click the arrow pointing to the right and from the dropdown box choose Soft Light.

19. Merge Visable those 2 layers.
20. Go up to the Layers tab, and choose New Raster Layer.
21. Fill with the same light green #A0CA98.
22. Using the Opacity slider, move it down to 25.
23. Right click on one of the 3 layers and choose Merge then Merge Visable. This is what yours should look like at this point.

24. In the layer palette, right click on your merged layer and choose Duplicate.
25. Go up to the Adjust tab, choose Blur, then choose Gaussian Blur. Set the radius to 5 and click OK.
26. Merge Visable those 2 layers, and then Deselect. (Selections tab, Select None)
27. Go up to the Image tab, then down to Greyscale and hit OK.
28. Go back up to the Image tab, choose Increase Colour Depth, then choose 16 Million Colours.

This is what yours should look like now:

* This is where we need to save this as a template for you to use whenever you want a coloured brad. But first, hold down your Shift key and hit the D key to duplicate the image for us to use now. Now save your original as a .pspimage somewhere on your computer.

* Now we are going to colour it using the Manual Colour Correction Option. I like this way of recolouring because you can get the EXACT colour that you want. The way this option works is, you have a Source colour (which is the colour your brad is now) and a Target colour (which is the colour we want it to change too).

* I'm using PSP8, but in later versions of PSP, the manual colour correction option may be hidden. Go to this site Khiba's, and scroll down to where it says Custominze! Retrieve Unused PSP 9 Tools and watch her little viewlet. It will show you how to unhide the maual colour correction option.

* As you can see, our brad has been greyscaled, and has darker and lighter shades of grey blended together. I've found it's best to choose a medium shade of the grey for our Source colour.

29. Activate the eyedropper/colour picker tool on the left. Click somewhere in the area indicated by the red arrow in the picture below.

That colour should now be your foreground material colour. Click once in the foreground colour to find the number value of it. Mine turned out too be #A5A5A5.

* Write this number down or copy and paste it to your clipboard.

* Now you need to choose a colour you want to turn your brad into. Pick a colour from a kit or just a random colour from the colour palette. I'm going to use a pale green #AFD4A8. Now we have our 2 colours needed for the next step.

30. Go up to the Adjust tab, go over to Colour Correction, then down to Manual Colour Correction. Put all your settings the same as the picture below. Hit the "Eye" icon under the preview picture to see what your brad will look like on your canvas. If you don't like it or want a new shade, change the Target colour to a lighter or darker shade, then hit the OK button when you are satisfied.

That's it :) We started with a gold ball, learned how to smoothed it out, and recolour it to match anything your project needs. Continute on to the next part if you want to learn how to make the outter edge.

Creating the Outter Edge of a Brad

This part of the tutorial uses EyeCandy 5 Impact and one of my presets for it. I've included it in the zip file at the top of this tutorial.

Our newly created brad has filled the 400 x 400 layer, so we need to make room on our canvas for the outter edge, by increasing the canvas size all around our brad.

1. Go up to the Image tab, then down to Canvas Size. In the New Dimensions section, change both the width and height to what our canvas size is now, which is 400, and set it to pixels as well. I think increasing the canvas to 500 x 500 will give us enough room to use.
2. In the New Dimensions section, change the width and height to 500 pixels each and click on the OK button. Here's my settings. Make sure yours are the same. If the number 50 doesn't appear in the Placement section for the top, bottom, left and right, in the little boxes to the left, click on the middle box that has a diamond icon on it.

* Next, you need to decide what you want to use for the pattern on the outter edge of your brad. You can choose a paper pattern from one of your kits, or a texture pattern of any kind. You may need to crop it into a smaller 400 x 400 square to use as your pattern.
3. In the Materials Box, click the Pattern tab and set your chosen swatch as your pattern.
4. Go up to the Selections tab, choose Select All, then up to the Selections tab again, choose Float, then back up to the Selections tab and choose Defloat.
5. Go up to the Selections tab, choose Modify, then choose Expand.

* Depending on how wide of the outter edge you want on your brad, set the Number of Pixels accordingly. For this tutorial, we are going to use 15.

6. Set the number of Pixels to 15 and hit the OK button. There should now be marching ants all around your brad like in the picture below.

7. Go up to the Layers tab, and choose New Raster Layer.
8. Click on the Flood Fill tool on the left, and fill the New Layer with your pattern.
9. In the layer palette, move the pattern layer down below your brad layer. It should look like this now:

10. Make sure your Pattern layer is the active one (highlighted blue in the layer palette) and go up to the Selections tab and then down to Modify and this time choose Contract.

* By expanding the first time 15 pixels away from our brad, (giving us the width of our outter edge), this time we want to contract them by 19 pixels (to give us our inner edge). That's 4 more pixels than when we expanded. The reason for this is, if we only contracted by the same amount we expanded, there would be a space showing between the brad and the under section of our outter edge. If that's confusing, you'll understand better once we DELETE the unneccessary part of our patterned circle away, leaving only our complete outter edge.

Once you've contracted by 19 pixels, this is what you should have.

* The marching ants should be showing the extra 4 pixels into our brad layer.

11. With the Pattern layer still the active one, hit your Delete key on your keyboard. (You won't see a change in anything yet)
12. Go up to the Selections tab and choose Select None.

* Click the Eye icon on the brad layer in the layer palette to turn it off so you can see what we just did. By expanding and then contracting our pattern layer, then deleted the unwanted middle of the pattern, we've created the template for our outter layer.

13. With the Pattern layer active go up to the Effects tab, down to Plugins, then to EyeCandy 5 Impact, and choose Bevel.
14. If it isn't already, click on the Settings tab, then in the Users Section, look for SK Smooth Brad and click it one to select it, then hit the OK button.

* Now you can see that we have some jagged edges around our brad, so all you do is, in the layer palette on the right, move the patterned circle layer on top of our brad layer and they disappear. This is the reason in step #10 we contracted by 19, making the circle outter edge 4 pixels bigger than our brad so that it could cover up any uneven edges on our brad.

All that's left to do is to merge visable the 2 layers and that's it :)

Instead of using a pattern and EyeCandy 5 Impact for our outter edge, you can also just flood fill with white and use SuperBlade Pro, which has tons of downloadable presets to choose from, there's many many filters you can experiment with to achieve different looks.

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means, send them here to my blog to get the supplies and tut for themselves.

Fill an Alpha

2008-03-13T18:39:00.000-07:00

This tut is for paint shop pro users, but can also be done in photoshop with a few minor adjustments.

This tutorial will show you how to fill an alpha with whatever you want to fill it with, but I'm going to use flowers from my pastel spring kit. I did a lower case alpha for that kit, and if you wanted some upper case letters, this will show you how to do it.

Supplies Needed: Greyscaled flower, font, my EyeCandy 5 Impact glass setting (this is optional. put this into your EC5 Impact glass folder) All of which are in the zip file Here.

1. First we need to make our striped pattern for the outline. Open up two 400 x 400 transparent images. Choose a colour and set it as your foreground. In my lower case spring alpha, I used 5 pastel colours. If you are making capitol letters for that, here are the colour values I used:

Pink: #FDC3D6
Green: #B8D8B8
Blue: #7CB5E0
Purple: #B0A2EA
Yellow: #F9E390

2. Flood fill one of the layers with your chosen colour.
3. Next, go up to the Effects tab, choose Texture Effects, then choose Blinds and use these settings:

This is what you should have ended up with.

4. Set your new pink blinds layer as your pattern in the foreground materials box. Angle is 0, and Scale is set to 100. Turn off your background layer. (click the circle with the line going through it to turn it off)

* You can minimize that blinds layer, we don't need to see it onscreen for anything.

5. Double click on the font from the zip and minimize that as well. You don't need to install it because PSP will recognize it from just being open.
6. Click on your text tool and find your font in the dropdown list and use these settings:

Create as: vector
Size is: 300
Stroke Width is: 15
Anti-alias is checked

7. Click once near the bottom left hand corner to position your text starting point and type out the letter you want. We are going to be using A. Click the apply button if it is positioned properly without any part of the letter going off canvas.

* If you don't like the thickness and want to change it to something wider or thinner, go up to the Objects tab at the top, choose Convert Text To Curves, then choose As Single Shape. In the layer palette to the right, click the little + sign beside Vector 1, then double click the layer with the letter A. The vector property box will pop up and you can increase or decrease the stroke width. Also, make sure Visable and Anti-alias are both checked. See picture below.

8. When you are satisfied with what it looks like, in the layer palette, right click on Vector 1 and from the flyout choose Convert to Raster Layer.

* Now we need to give this a bevel. I wanted a squareish one and for whatever reason, PSP seems to give a slight puffiness to bevels and I haven't yet figured out what settings will give me just a slight squared off bevel, so I used Photoshop for it instead. The closest I could come to the same thing in PSP were these settings. If using Photoshop for this, go to the bevel and emboss section, use the defaults except change the depth to 1.

Take a look at the picture below and you'll see what I mean about the slight puffiness to PSP's bevels.

* Now that we have our outline ready, we need to recolour our flowers. We are going to be using Manual Colour Correction for this. If you did my tutorial for Smooth Brads, (it's right above this tut) you will already be familiar with how this recolouring technique works. But don't worry if you don't know how to do it this way, it's not that hard.

9. Open up Flower for Alpha.png. It's a greyscaled image so we can recolour it as many times as we want, to whatever colour we want.
10. Duplicate this image twice by holding down the Shift key and hit the d key on your keyboard and close out the original. Minimize one of the flowers for later use.

* I'm using PSP8, but in later versions of PSP, the manual colour correction option may be hidden. Go to this site Khiba's, and scroll down to where it says Custominze! Retrieve Unused PSP 9 Tools and watch her little viewlet. It will show you how to unhide the maual colour correction option.

* Take a look at the picture below of the Manual Colour Correction box. On the right you will see Source and Target. Source is the colour that we want to change and Target is the colour that we want to change it to.

11. Now we need to pick a shade of grey from our flower to set as the source colour to change. Click on the eyedropper/colour picker tool on the left. Pick a medium shade of grey and when you find one, click once with your eyedropper tool to set it as your foreground colour. My shade of grey is #5F5F5F.

* If you chose a different shade, write it down because we need it for the next step.

12. Go up to the Adjust tab at the top, then over to Colour Balance, then down to Manual Colour Correction. Take a look at the picture just below step #10 and change your settings to the same and click OK. If you used a shade of grey other than #5F5F5F, set that as your Source colour.

* You should have a nice green flower like in the picture below.

* Now we need to change the middle of the flower to something more colourful. The way we are going to do this is to repeat the recolouring process on the second greyscaled flower that you have, so go ahead and unminimize it.

13. Choose a colour for your middle. I'm going to use a nice bright yellow #EFED54. Repeat steps #11 and 12 to change it from grey to yellow. With your eyedropper tool, click on a medium shade of grey in the middle of the flower, I chose #929292, set that as your Source colour, and change your Target colour to #EFED54.
14. You should now have 2 flowers, one yellow and one green. Click on your green flower to make it active and copy and paste it onto your yellow flower layer.
15. Click on your Eraser tool and use these settings:

Default round brush
Size is 10
Hardness is 50
Step is 25
Density is 100
Thickness is 100
Opacity is 63

* Just start erasing the middle very carefully with short clicks of your mouse untill you have the middle erased and the yellow is revealed. When satisfied, merge visable the two layers.

16. Tube your image. Go up to the File tab, down to Export then over to Picture Tube. Give it a name and click OK.

* Do this for as many flowers as you want to use for your project. If you are making the capitols for the alpha, the colours that I used to change the flowers to are listed under step #1 at the top. Let's continue on to how to fill the alpha.

17. After you have completed all of your flowers and tubed them, go back to your letter A image we did at the beginning of this tut.
18. Click on your Magic Wand tool. Mode is Replace, Match Mode is RGB Value, Tolerance is 17, Feather is 0, and Anti-alias is checked.
19. Click once on a blank space in the middle of your A. Marching ants will appear all around the inside border.

20. Next go up to the Selections tab at the top, then to Modify, then to Expand and set the number of pixels to expand at 5 and click OK.
21. Go up to the Selections tab, click on Load/Save Selection and click on Save Selection to Alpha Channel, then click the Save button.

* We are going to have several layers of flowers, and each layer needs to have drop shadows, so doing it this way with the alpha channel will save us from having to keep changing over to the magic wand tool then back again. You'll see what I mean in the coming steps.
22. Next, go to the Layers tab, and choose New Raster Layer.
23. Click on your Picture Tube icon on the left and select your first flower.

* I used a size of 20 and under to fill my alpha. I started with 20 and then just varied the size as I went along.

24. Set your size to 20 and make 3 or 4 clicks with your tube randomly. Make sure you are on your blank raster layer and that it is above your letter A layer. Don't forget that you need to put flowers so that there will be no blank spaces showing between our outline and the flower layer. Don't be afraid to get too close to the edge of the outline, you can always erase with ease since we are on a seperate layer and it will not affect your outline.
25. Using the same flower, set your size to 16 and plop a few more flowers around randomly.
26. Change the size again to 11 and do a few more.
27. Next we are going to put a slight drop shadow on our flowers, but first we need to take the marching ants selection off or the shadow will go around the marching ants themselves instead of on our flowers. Go up to the Selection tab at the top and choose Select None.
28. Now, go up to the Effects tab, then to 3D Effects, then to Drop Shadow. Use these settings:

This is what you should now have:

29. Choose a new colour of flower and repeat steps #21 to #28. Use these quick rundown of the steps below.

* selections tab, load/save selection LOAD selection from alpha channel, click load
* layer tab, new raster layer
* flower size is 20, plop some down 3 or 4, decrease the size and fill in spaces
* selections tab, select none
* effects tab, 3d effects, drop shadow and use same settings

*Repeat with new coloured flowers untill there are no spaces showing beneath like in the picture below.

30. In the layer palette to the right, turn off the bottom layer that has your A on it. (click the eye icon beside that layer to turn it off.)
31. Right click on one of the remaining layer and from the flyout choose Merge, then Merge Visable.
32. In the layer palette, move your newly merged flower layer behind your letter A layer. Your outlined A should now be on top of your flower layer.
33. Next we are going to put a slight drop shadow on the A layer. So make sure the A layer is highlighted in the palette on the right. Go up to the Effects tab, then to 3D Effects, then to Drop Shadow and use the same setting for the shadow as we did in step #28, but this time put a check mark in the box at the bottom that says Shadow on a New Layer.

*All we want is the shadow that is in the inside of the A, not the one showing up on the outside.

34. We need to erase the outter shadow, so click on the eraser tool. We are using the same settings as we used when we erased the green middle of the flower to let the yellow show through, so your tool should still be at those same settings. Make sure your active layer is the shadow layer, and go ahead and erase all around the outter edge of the A. Yours should end up looking like this when done.

Just right click on one of the layers and merge visable and you are done. If you want to make a glass looking cover for it, don't merge your layers yet.

Make the merged flower layer active, open up EyeCandy 5 Imapct, go to glass, find my glass preset called SK Perfect Glass Setting, select it and press ok when done.

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means, send them here to my blog to get the supplies and tut for themselves.

Extending a Line Brush to Make an Overlay

2008-02-16T15:25:00.000-08:00

This tutorial is for PSP users only. It uses a script that is not for use in Photoshop.

Supplies Needed:

My striped line brush which you can get Here.
Script: Pattern Extend by Joske which you can download from Here. Extract the script to your Scripts-Restricted folder
MuRah's Meister Copies: Download the plugin Here.

I have 2 sets of different line brushes, which you can download from:

Set #1
Set #2

These brushes are all 500 pixels in length, which, unfortunately, is the size limit for psp brushes, at least it is for PSP8 which is what I use. This tutorial will show you how to extend them using a script to give you a perfectly seamless overlay of any size for creating background papers. If you haven't already, install your brushes now.

** If you are installing all of these brushes, copy and paste all into your Brush folder, wherever that may be on your computer. Each PSP brush always has 2 files for one brush. One will be called BrushTip_BrushNameHere.PspScript and the other is BrushNameHere.PspBrush. If you are installing just a single brush (we are going to be using SK Lines 17 for this tutorial), then you have to copy both of these files into your brush folder (BrushTip_SK Lines 17.PspScript and SK Lines 17.PspBrush).

** When the rest of this set becomes available for a freebie on my blog, these are the dimensions of each brush. It is easier and a lot less work for you if you know the exact dimensions of the brush we are going to extend, so here are the dimensions for brushes 1 to 18:

SK Line Brush 01: 8 x 500
SK Line Brush 02: 14 x 500
SK Line Brush 03: 23 x 500
SK Line Brush 04: 16 x 500
SK Line Brush 05: 15 x 500
SK Line Brush 06: 18 x 500
SK Line Brush 07: 25 x 500
SK Line Brush 08: 35 x 500
SK Line Brush 09: 11 x 500
SK Line Brush 10: 17 x 500
SK Line Brush 11: 21 x 500
SK Line Brush 12: 26 x 500
SK Line Brush 13: 23 x 500
SK Line Brush 14: 25 x 500
SK Line Brush 15: 34 x 500
SK Line Brush 16: 25 x 500
SK Line Brush 17: 45 x 500
SK Line Brush 18: 30 x 500

Let's get started.....

1. Open up a new transparent image 45 x 600. I know our brush is 500 pixels in length, but it's easier if we have a bit of space at the top and bottom.
2. Set your foreground colour to black and go up to Layers, New Raster Layer. Position your line brush evenly at the edges of your canvas and click once. You should have this:

Now, since we are only going to be extending this image vertically, it does not matter if there is extra space at each of the sides, but there CAN NOT be any extra space at the top or bottom or it will show in your final product. See example below

3. So now we need to crop the space away. Click on your Crop tool and position it so that it is just going to crop off a tiny bit from the top and bottom edge. See example below.

4. Make sure your active layer is the one with your brush on it. Go up to the Scripts panel and find PatternExtend-joske and select it from the drop down menu.

*If you are not familiar with Scripts, look up at the top of your screen for the section that looks like this

5. Next, push the arrow pointing to the right to start the script. The first box that pops up is the resolution box. I got into the habit of setting it at 300 so that's what I usually do. Pick your resolution and click OK.

6. We are only extending this vertically, so set the number to 2 for just vertical.

*This next part is where we set the new height. The script uses inches, and I usually just use pixels so it took a bit of trial and error to find out what it converted to.

7. Set this next number to 3 for Custom.

*Another box pops up and you can input whatever height you want. If you are like me and use pixel values, setting the custom number to 1 will give you a height of 300, setting it to 2 will give you a height of 600, setting it to 3 will give you a height of 900, and so on and so on. It uses a mulitple of 3.

8. We are going to make this 1800 pixels high, so set your custom number to 6 and click OK.

*This next box shows you the dimensions that you have chosen. 45 pixels wide, 1,800 pixels wide, with a resolution of 300. If you want to change anything, you can do so now by typing in new numbers and clicking OK.

9. This next little pop up tells you to find your original image in the materials box. When you click on OK, your foreground materials box should pop up automatically with the pattern tab open. From the drop down box, find your brush image you are working on here and click OK.

*The script will automatically extend your brush pattern to the dimensions that we previously had set. You should now have a 45 x 1800 pixel even strip :) If yours is not seamless vertically, then you may have left a space in there when you cropped it.

*If you are continuing on to the next part, don't delete your brush off of your canvas.

*That's how to extend a Line Brush vertically. You can either use it this way and copy and paste it onto a new, larger background paper, spacing it that way OR continue on and I'll show you how to entend it evenly across the page using this script, and also another way using MuRah's Meister Copies plugin.

Extending the Brush Horozontally Using Pattern Extend:

Since this brush is already the height that we want it, we aren't going to touch that. We just need to reproduce it across our page horozontally. In order to do that, we need to decide how much space we want inbetween each set of stripes.

1. Go up to the Image tab at the top and then down to Canvas. At the top of the box that pops up is our original width and height of our canvas, 45 x 1800. Below that is where we type in what we want our new canvas to be. To make things easier, in the width column, change it to 45 right now. That way, we just add on the number of pixels we want and there is no confusion. We are leaving the Height at 1800, but now we need to decide how many pixels we want in between each of our block of striped lines. I'm going to choose 75 pixels. See picture below.

2. So, I would add 75 onto the 45 in the width column, which would give me a number of 120 in the width column. Make sure the Lock Aspect Ration is unchecked because we are only changing the width. Don't hit ok yet.
3. In the next part where it says Placement, click the arrow I've highlighted in red. The number 75 should appear beside the column that says Right. That means that we are going to have 75 pixels of space to the right of our line brush on the canvas. Now click on OK.

Yours should now look like this:

This is where we use the Pattern Extend script.

4. Go up to the Script tab, it should still have the Pattern Extend script in it and push the arrow pointing to the right to start it up.
5. Choose your resolution
6. Choose 1 for the horozontal option.
7. Choose 3 for the custom option.
8. Choose your new width. If you are using pixels, like in the vertical tutorial, 1 will give you a page width of 300, 2 will give you a page width of 600 ect....... I want an 1800 x 1800 page, so I'm going to choose 6.
9. Find your canavs in the patterns tab and hit ok.

You should now have an 1800 x 1800 page with evenly spaced stripes across :)

*You can also go up to the Edit tab, choose Copy, and paste that onto a blank 1800 x 1800 page and it will center it so that there is equal space at each of the sides if you like that look better.

Extending Horozontally Using MuRah's Meister Copies:

This is a much quicker way to spread it across the page once you have extended your brush to the verticle length you wanted it.

1. Open up a new transparent canvas 1800 x 1800.
2. Copy and paste your 1 extended brush onto the page. It will automatically be centered in the middle of the canvas.
3. Go to the Effects tab, then to Plugins, then find MuRah's Meister, then to Copies. Put your settings like the ones in the picture below

*At the top, I've indicated the Number slot with a red arrow. If you change that number to something higher, more copies of your line brush will appear on your page. Change it to something lower than 9, and less will appear. Just hit OK when you are satisfied, and you are done :)

The full set of 18 Line Brushes are now up on my blog. You can download them from HERE

Textured Overlay

2008-02-16T15:15:00.000-08:00

This is not a tutorial teaching you how to make textures, this is a tutorial showing you how to use premade textures you find on the net. It will show you how to use the blend modes to get different effects for textured paper.

There's tons of high resolution texture sites out there. All you need to do is google for them, but here's a few sites that have free downloadable textures for you to use. I've included a 500 x 500 sample texture to use for this tutorial, but if you were creating a background paper that was anywhere from 1800 pixels to 3600 pixels, obviously the 500 x 500 texture file would be too small to use. You would have to resize it to the exact same size as your page, or find a high resolution texture somewhere on the net for your project.

Morguefile.com
cg textures.com
Texture King
Texture Warehouse

I've included a 500 x 500 sample texture to use for this tutorial. You can download it Here.

1. Start by opening up the 500 x 500 texture for tut.png from the zip file.
2. Create a new 500 x 500 transparent canvas.
3. Decide what colour you want your paper to be and set that as your foreground colour in PSP. I'm going to use Red #C00000.
4. Flood fill your transparent canvas with your chosen colour.
5. Click on your texture canvas to make it the active one, and go up to the Edit tab, and choose Copy.
6. Click once on your coloured canvas to activate it, then go up to the Edit tab and choose Paste, then Paste as New Layer.

Your grey texture layer should now be over top of your coloured layer. Now we need to change the Blend Mode so we can see the textured layer over the coloured layer.

7. In the layer palette on the right, if it isn't already, make your textured layer the active one (It should be the one called Raster 2 and be the top layer). Where it says Normal, that is the Blend Mode section.

8. Click on the arrow that is beside the word Normal and a drop down box should appear with all of the different blend modes.

Click each one and watch how your texture changes. It blends in with your chosen colour of your paper. Each blend mode will give you a different look. It will also change with whatever colour you have as well. Some blend modes look better with certain colours than others, so you'll have to experiment and see what looks good to you. You can also play with the Opacity slider on the texture layer.

When you find something that looks good, just right click on one of the layers and merge visable.

Make a Sparkle Brush and then a Tube

2008-02-16T14:59:00.000-08:00

Making the Brush:

1. Open up a 400 x 400 transparent image.
2. Set your forground and background to black.
3. Select your Preset Shapes tool, and choose Rounded Rectangle.
4. Draw out your rectangle in the middle of the page.
5. In the layer palette to the right, right click on Vector 1 and choose Convert to Raster Layer.
6. Go up to the Effects tab, then to Geometric Effects, then to Perspective Horozontal. Use the settings in the picture below.

7. Now we need to do the same to the opposite side, so go up to the Image tab, and choose Mirror.
8. Go to the Effects tab, Geometric Effects, Perspective Horozontal, use same settings.
9. Mirror the image.
10. Go to the Effects tab, Geometric Effects, Perspective Horozontal, use same settings.
11. Mirror the image.
12. Go to the Effects tab, Geometric Effects, Perspective Horozontal, use same settings.
13. Mirror the image.
14. Go to the Effects tab, Geometric Effects, Perspective Horozontal, use same settings.
15. Mirror the image.
16. Go to the Effects tab, Geometric Effects, Perspective Horozontal, use same settings.

Phew, finished that part.

17. Now, we need the ends to be a little bit narrower and a bit more transparent. So, go up to the Effects tab and choose Distortion Effects, then Wind. Use these settings.

18. Mirror the image and go to the Effects tab, choose Distortion Effects, then Wind and use the same setttings.

You should end up with something like the below picture. If your's is fatter, then you may have missed doing one of the perspective horozontal steps.

Hold down your shift key and hit the D key to duplicate our canvas for later use. You can minimize it for now.

We need to put this first horozontal line in the middle of our canvas, so...

19. Go up to the Edit tab, choose Cut, then back up to the Edit tab, and choose Paste as New Layer.
20. Now we need a vertical line to overlap that one. Go up to the Edit tab, this time choose Copy, then back up to the Edit tab, and choose Paste as New Layer.

You won't see much of a difference on your canvas because both these line are in the exact same place. We need to rotate the second line into a vertical postion.

21. Go up to the Image tab, choose Rotate, then choose Free Rotate. Use the settings in the picture below.

You should now have what looks like a cross on your canvas.

Unminimize our duplicated canvas. The lines that criss cross the star are usually shorter in length so we need to resize this just a bit smaller.

22. Go up to the Image tab, choose resize and use the setting in the picture below.

Now we want to copy and paste that onto our Cross layer...

23. Make sure the smaller resized layer is your active layer and then go up to the Edit tab, choose Copy.
24. Click on your Cross canvas to make this one the active canvas, then go back up to the Edit tab, choose Paste as New Layer.

Again, you won't see a difference on your image because it is in the same spot as the longer horozontal line.

25. Go up to the Image tab, choose Rotate, then choose Free Rotate. Use the settings below.

26. Go up to the Edit tab again, and choose Paste as New Layer. The final smaller line is now on your canvas in the horozontal position.
27. Go up to the Image tab, choose Rotate, then choose Free Rotate. Use the same settings, but put the green dot beside the word LEFT this time. You should have what looks like this:

At this point, if you want to make a white tube out of this, hold down your shift key and hit the D key to duplicate this image. Minimize it for a bit later.

You can leave this brush as it is, to use as a main template for your sparkle brushes, and then you can click on your airbrush tool, and choose a soft round brush and plop a dot in the center. To finish off the brush, in the layer palette to the right, right click on one of the layers and choose Merge Visable. Then go to the File menu, go to Export, then to Custom Brush. Give it a name and click on OK and you're done.

Turning This Brush Into a Tube:

I've used a red background just so you can see the white star better.

If you haven't already, merge visable all layers. Go up to the Adjust tab, at the bottom choose Negative Image. Your black brush has now turned into a white image which you can save as a template and decorate as many sparkles as you want. Then to tube it, crop off the extra space all around, go to the File menu, choose Export, then choose Picture Tube, give it a name and your done :)

Polka Dot Pattern Fills

2008-02-16T14:54:00.000-08:00

This tutorial will teach you to make your own seamless polka dot pattern fills and overlays.

Supplies Needed:

MuRa's Meister Copies which you can download Here.

1. Start out by opening a 200 x 200 transparent image.
2. Choose a colour for your background. I'm going to use Pink #FED2E1, and flood fill your canvas with it.
3. Next, choose a colour for your polka dots. I'm going to use white. Set your foreground and background to your chosen polka dot colour.
4. Click on your preset shapes tool, and set it to ellipse, and draw out one single dot.
5. When you get it to the size you like, right click on Vector 1 in the layer palette to the right and choose Convert to Raster Layer.
6. Now, we need this dot to be exactly in the center of your canvas, so make sure your dot layer is active (highlighted blue), and go up to the Edit tab, choose Cut, then choose Paste, then Paste as New Layer. It should now be in the exact middle of your canvas like this:

7. Make sure your Dot Layer is active, go up to the Effects tab, choose Plugins, then find MuRah's Meister and choose Copies. Put your settings like the one in the picture below. I've changed my dot to black so you can see it better in the preview pic.

8. You should now have on your canvas a full dot in the center, and a partial dot in each of the 4 corners like below.

9. In your layer palette to the right, right click on one of the layers and from the flyout choose Merge, then Merge Visable.
10. Set your new polka dot pattern fill as your foreground pattern and fill a 500 x 500 transparent image as a try out. Keep in mind, that you don't have to use just polka dots, you can use pretty much any shape you like. Now on to the Overlay part.

Overlays:

This is very simple. Follow the steps 1 through 8 from the above tutorial. Don't Merge the layers. All you do is delete every layer EXCEPT the polka dot layer. Just set that as your foreground pattern and fill as many pages as you like. Simple huh :) Save it as a .psp file and use it as a template for other projects.

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory.

Downy Furry Fibers

2008-01-25T20:56:00.000-08:00

Supplies Needed:

My PSP Brushes: Which you can Download Here. There is an image pack included for those using Photoshop.

1. Open up a 500 x 500 transparent image.
2. Click on your Brushes tool and choose one of the SK Furry Fiber brushes. I'm going to use brush 4. Leave the settings at it's default but, I've resized it down to 43 for a smaller fiber. It just looks better.
3. You need to choose a colour for your fiber. If you want it all one colour, set your foreground to a dark shade and your background to a lighter shade of your foreground. For this tutorial, I am going to use #800000 for my forground and #C00000 for my background. If you want a 2 toned fiber, set your colours to whatever you want.
4. Now we need to change the variance on the brush in order to get it to go right, so hit your F11 key. On the right, your Brush Variance palette should have appeared. Hit the maximize button so you can see all the buttons clearly.(the maximize button is the square right inbetween the minus sign and the x sign)
5. Change your settings to the one's in the picture below and start experimenting on your canvas by dragging your cursor across your page.

*The higher the number you put into the Position Jitter, the more spikey your fiber will become. I like it set at 36 though.
*The first red example is brush 4 with the settings in the above picture.
*The second purple example is brush 3 with a purple gradient set at sunburst.
*The third pink example is brush 2 with a pink gradient set at linear with 1 repeat.
*The fourth green example is brush 1 with a green foreground and white background.
*The fifth orange example is brush 5 with a orange foreground a white background.
*The sixth blue example is brush 7 with a blue forground and lighter blue background.

Play around with the settings and see what you can come up with. Try using gradients as well, and try out different brushes other than the one's I made for you.

When you are done with your brush, in your Brush Variance palatte, in the bottom right hand corner there is a little square with an arrow pointing to the left. Click on that once. It will set your brush back to the default settings so it does not spin the next time you use that brush for something else.
Hit your F11 key to make your Brush Variance palette disappear again also.

TIP: If you want to make a straight line with your brush, click once on a starting point, hold down your SHIFT key and click once at an ending point.

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means, send them here to my blog to get the supplies and tut for themselves.

Swirly Suckers

2008-01-25T20:44:00.000-08:00

Supplies Needed:

MuRa Meister Clouds:Download Here
Eye Candy 5 Impact: Download Free Trial Here
Rounded End Line Style: Download From Here
Scroll down to where it says Tool Presets, and in the list of Styled Lines download the one called Rounded End.

1. Start out with a 400 x 400 image with a WHITE background.
2. Set your foreground to whatever colour you want your sucker to be. For this I am using this shade of pink #F08CB5.
3. Set your background to the same colour but a few shades lighter. I will be using #F5C8DA.

To give you an idea of the shading difference, take a look at the picture below.

4. Go up to the Effects tab, down to Plugins, choose MuRa's Meister, then Cloud. Use these settings:

Make sure your colours are like the one in the picture; white, then the dark pink, then white again. Hit the OK button when satisfied.

Your canvas should now look something like the picture below. We wanna see some darker shades of pink, some light, and some white all mixed in together.

5. Next, go up to the Effects tab, then to Distortion Effects, then down to Twirl. Set the Degrees Number to 720, and click OK.
6. Repeat step #5 once more.
7. After 2 twirls, your canvas should now look like this:

Now we need to make our circle shape for the sucker.

8. Click on your Selection tool, and change it to Circle. Put your cursor in the middle of your canvas, hold down the shift key and draw out a circle.

Now we need a bigger transparent canvas to paste our sucker onto and long enough to have the stick in there too.

9. Open up about a 800 x 800 transparent canvas.
10. Make your pink sucker image active then go up to the Edit tab and choose Cut, then back to the Edit tab and choose Paste as New Layer and paste it into your 800 x 800 image.

Move your circle near to the top of the page so we have room for the stick. And you can get rid of the layer that we cut the circle out of too.

11. Go up to the Effects tab, down to the Plugins tab, then to Eye Candy 5 Impact, then to Glass.

On the Basic tab use these settings:

On the Lighting tab use these settings:

On the Bevel Profile tab choose Button and hit OK. Yours should now look like this:

12. Now for the stick. Set your foreground and background to white.
13. Click on your Pen tool and use these settings: Segment type is Line Segments, Line Style is amc round ended solid, Width is 13. Depending on the size of sucker you made, your line may need to be bigger or smaller.
14. Put your cursor a quarter of the way up into your sucker, hold down your shift key and draw out your line.
15. In the layer palette, right click on Vector 1 and choose Convert to Raster Layer.

You can bevel this any way you want to, with the bevel option in psp, but I used EC5 Impact Bevel for my sticks.

On the Basic tab:

On the Lighting tab:

In the Bevel Profile tab choose Button.

Center your stick with your sucker and merge visable layers. That's all there is to it. Try cutting different shapes out of the swirly layer other than just circles. Instead of using the selection tool for the circle, choose a preset shape, draw it out on your swirly layer, and position it to whatever looks good to you. In the layer palette, convert it to raster layer. Go up to the Selections tab, choose, Select All, Float, then Defloat. Now delete the preset shape layer in the layer palette. Your marching ants are still holding the shape you chose, so just select Cut from the Edit menu and paste into a new canvas and finish off with the plugin.

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory.

Tin Frame

2008-01-21T12:52:00.000-08:00

This is what we will be making. A frame that has a tin look to it. Miss Daisy from Scrapped Memories has translated this tutorial into Spanish. You can view it on her tutorial page MissDaisy.blogspot.com/Tutorials

Supplies Needed:

Eye Candy 5 Impact: Download Trial Version Here
MuRa's Copies: (optional) Download MM Copies Here

1. Start out with a 500 x 500 transparent image.
2. Set your foreground and background to #F5C1D2 or whatever colour you choose.
3. Click on your preset shapes tool and choose the rectangle. Create as vector and Anti-alias are both checked, line style is solid, line width of 1.
4. Hold down your shift key and draw out your square.
5. In the layer palette to the right, right click on Vector 1 and from the flyout choose convert to raster layer.
6. Go up to the Selections tab at the top, then to Select all, then to Float and then to Defloat. Marching ants should now appear all around your square image.
7. Go up to the Selections tab and choose Modify, then Contract, and set the number to about 25. The part of the square that is OUTSIDE of the marching ants is going to be how thick your frame is, so you may want to adjust the number to something higher for a thicker frame or to a lower number for a thinner frame. Yours should look like this so far.

8. Now hit the Delete key on your keyboard. The middle of the square should now be transparent.

9. Go up to the Selections tab and choose Select None.
10. Set your foreground and background to black.
11. You can use any shape you want here, but I'm going to be using hearts since it's close to valentines day. Click on your preset shapes tool and choose your shape.
12. Hold down your Shift key and draw out your shape. Make sure it isn't too big and doesn't come too close to the top and bottom line of your frame because when we use the plugin on it, it gives it a bevel and the shape will cut right through like in the picture below.

13. Right click on Vector 1 in the layer palette, and choose Convert to Raster Layer.
14. I'm going to use a repeating shape for this. Place your new shape near the center of your canvas so you can see it in the preview window in the next plugin we are going to use.
15. Go to the Effects tab, down to Plugins, and choose MuRa's Meister, then to Copies. These are my settings, yours may be different, depending on what shape you chose to use.

I ended up with a straight line of 7 hearts, but I only want 4 of those in a row, so I took my Selection tool, and drew a rectangle around 3 of the hearts then hit my delete key to get rid of them.

16. Place your 4 hearts centered along the top of your frame like this:

17. Make sure your 4 hearts layer is the active layer and go up to the Edit menu, choose Copy, then choose Paste as New Layer. You should have a second row of hearts on your canvas.
18. Go up to the Image tab, choose Flip. The second row should have now turned upsidedown.
19. Place your second row of hearts evenly along the bottom of the frame. You may want to turn on your Grid to get the top, sides, and bottom even with each other. (View tab, then Grid)
20. Go up the Edit tab again and choose Paste as New Layer. A third set of hearts is now on your canvas.
21. We need to turn these sideways, so now go up to the Image tab, choose Rotate, then choose Free Rotate.
22. Put the green dot beside the word Right, a green dot beside the word Free, and change the number to 90.00. At the bottom, make sure All Layers and Rotate Single Layer Around Canvas Center is not checked off. Now hit OK.
23. Your third layer of hearts should now be running vertical. Place them on the right side of the frame.
24. Go up to the Edit tab, select Copy, then select Paste as New Layer. A duplicate of the third layer of hearts should now be on your canvas.
25. Go up to the Image tab and choose Mirror. Place those hearts on the left side of your frame.

So far you should have something similar to this:

26. The corners look a little bare. Make your heart layer at the top of your frame active. Click on your Selection tool and set it to rectangle.
27. Choose one of the hearts, and make a rectangle selection around it. Don't get any of the other hearts in your selection.
28. Go up to the Edit tab, choose Copy, then choose Paste as New Layer. One single heart should be in the middle of your canvas.
29. Go to the Selections tab and Deselect.
30. Next we need to rotate this to fit into the corners of the frame. Go to the Image tab, choose Rotate then Free Rotate.
31. Leave the settings as they were before but now change the number to 35.00 and hit ok. Move your single heart into the top right hand corner.
32. With that new heart layer active, go up to the Edit tab, choose Copy then choose Paste as New Layer.
33. It should be a duplicate of the heart in the top right of the frame we just did. Go up to the Image tab and choose Flip. Place this heart in the bottom right hand corner of the frame.
34. Go up to the Edit tab, choose Paste as New Layer.
35. Go up to the Image tab and choose Flip, then back up to the Image tab and choose Mirror. Place that new heart into the bottom left corner of the frame.
36. Go up to the Edit tab and choose Paste as New Layer, then to the Image tab and choose Mirror. Place that new heart into the top left corner. You should have what looks like this now:

Now at this point, I would hit your Ctrl and D key to duplicate your image just incase something doesn't go right and you won't have to use your undo key 20 times to get back to this point to fix it. Minimize your duplicate.

37. Now we need to merge all the black hearts together into one layer. Turn off your pink frame layer (hit the little EYE icon next to the pink frame in the layer palette to the right). Make sure you have your hearts placed how you want them.
38. Right click on one of the other layers in the palette and choose Merge, then Merge Visable.

You should now only have 2 layers in there, one called Merged and another called Raster 1 or 2.

39. Make sure your layer named Merged is active, and go up to the Selections tab, choose Select All, then Float, then Defloat.

All of your little black hearts should now have marching ants around them.

40. Hit your delete key, and the little black hearts should now be gone. Don't worry if there's a black outline showing, we will get rid of that soon.
41. Click on your other layer named raster 1 or 2 to make it active in the layer palette. Now hit your delete key again. You should now have all little heart holes in your frame like in the picture below:

42. Click on the layer named Merged and right above it and to the right is the delete icon (looks like blue square and a white overlapping square with a red X through it). Hit that button to delete the Merged layer. It had those little black outlines on them.
43. Go up to the Selections tab and hit Select None.

Next we are going to put a texture on it.

44. Go up to the Effects tab, choose Artistic Effects and then choose Half Tone and use these settings:

This is where you should be right now:

Now we are going to put the tin effect on it with EC5 Impact. Are you still with me? I bet your left butt cheek has gone to sleep huh? Mine has. We're almost done here.

45. Go up to the Effects tab, choose Plugins, then choose Eye Candy 5 Impact, then Bevel. In the Basic tab, use these settings:

In the Lighting tab use these settings:

In the Bevel Profile click on Custom Profile and try and get as close as possible to this wonky shaped line. Click with your mouse to get the extra nodes in there.

Before you click on OK, on the Settings tab, down at the bottom click on the Save button and name this Tin Frame so you can use it again on something else. And that's it, you're done :)

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means. If you are using this or any of my tutorials for your groups or as part of your own tutorial, please post a link to the tut on my blog and let your members download the supplies from my blog for themselves.

What Does That Plugin Do????

2008-01-17T16:01:00.000-08:00

This page is going to be dedicated to some of the plugins, scripts, and programs that I use often, and what effects you can achieve using them. I will be updating it continously, adding more as I find and use new ones, so check back to see what's new.

Pixara Twisted Brush: View Product Here

This program produces great textured papers. The example below are just a few of hundreds of textures it offers. Just fill your canvas with a colour, gradient, or pattern in PSP or PS then save it as a .jpg. Open it up in Twisted Brush and choose a texture from the Filter menu. There are 4 main texture categories at the bottom of the filter dropdown, and then 4 categories under each of the main ones. The two that I use most is Texture Emboss and Texture Bump. Each texture will produce a different look depending on the colour you've chosen or pattern. If you have a light blue canvas and a dark green canvas and try the same filter on each, it will come out looking different from each other so experiment with all different shades a patterns.

Unfortunately, with the free version of this program, you can't use the texture filter. But I'm sure if you know where to look, you can find a working version.

Redfield: Ripples Magic

This plugin makes some flowers out of any circle shape. You can layer the shapes, use patterns, or gradients, then add embellishments. This is not a free plugin, but again, search and you'll find a working copy. I'm not positive, but I think there is a free demo version in the link above.

It also gives your background papers some quick folds.

Alien Skin Xenofex 2: Fully Functional 30 day Trial

This plugin can do many things, most of which i don't care very much for the reslults, but I do like the Rip Open effect. You can rip holes in things or rip and curl a straight section of paper.

ABR Viewer: Download it Here

This is not a plugin or a filter but a great little program called ABR Viewer. There are tons of great brushes for photoshop out there, and with this program, you can open up the photoshop .abr brush file, and export them to png images, then use those images in PSP to export as brushes. Below is a scaled down image of ABR Viewer

Install the program, then double click the icon to open it up. On the left, where it says thumbnail size, the default is set at 80, which is pretty small for viewing, backspace that out and change it to the maximum size of 270 and then hit Enter on your keyboard.

On the left again where it says File, click that, then scroll to Open Brush Sets. Navigate to where you have saved some .abr photoshop files and click once to select a set and click Open. All the previews of each brush in that set will appear on the right in the preview panel.

To export those brushes into .png files, RIGHT click on the name of the brush file you are viewing, (in the above preview, it is where it says SK Easter Set #2 2008) then click on Export Thumbnails. A "Browse For Folder" popup box will appear. Navigate to where you want to save the images, and click OK.

They will all save as .png images into the file of your choice. All you do next is open up your PSP program, open up one of your new exported .png image files, go to File, Export, then to Custom Brush. Give your brush a name and you are done. Be sure to give the proper credit and name to the original maker of the brush though.

PLUGINS:

Alien Skin Eye Candy 5 Impact:

You can get a free fully functional trial for 30 days here ~Click Here~

EC5 Bevel:

This is great for creating buttons, text or puffy stickers. You can choose any of the preset bevels or make one yourself by playing around with the custom bevel settings.

EC5 Chrome:

This is kind of self explaining. It turns things into silver or chrome creations.

EC5 Glass:

With this glass option, you can create any shape and make it look like a transparent, glass shape so that your background is visable through it, or you can give a solid shape a glass overylay look.

MuRa's Meister:

Copies: Download It Here

This plugin will take a single image, or tube and create duplicates of it in different shapes and designs. Make a single bead wave vertically or horozontally, a single flower petal and duplicate it to form a circle of petals, put a tube into a single line.... You choose the spacing, number of images, angle, rotation, and many more options. These are just a few things that MM Copies can do. Play around in it and see what you can do.

Redfield Jamma 3D: Download It Here

There's a bunch of differnt settings in here, most of which I don't use, but you can poke around in the setting and come up with a few good ones.
I've made one that I use to make parts of my ribbons transparent so the background paper shows through.

Xero Porcelain:

This plugin will make your element have a soft hazy look to it. You can download it for free Right Here

Texturize Plugin:

With this plugin, you can apply a texture to anything you want; tags, ribbons, papers, borders ect..... Place it into your plugins folder. There are 4 default textures that come with this, but you can make your own textures from images or textures found on the net. They must be saved as a .pdf in order for them to work with this plugin. I've already mentioned texturizer in my tutorial "Tag From Images", so rather than uploading it a second time, I'm going to give you the link to those supplies. The texturizer plugin is in that zip. You can Download It Here

SCRIPTS:

Tea Bag Folding Script: SuzShook Tea Bag Folding Script Here

This script takes any square image you choose, it could be patterned or plain, and assembles it into 1 of 7 different shaped designs. It also gives you the option to bevel it during the script run.

Unzip the folder, find ss-TeaBagFolding-00.Pspscript and copy and paste it into your "Restricted Scripts" folder. In PSP, open up a square image you want to use. (There are 7 different designs to choose from, and option 1, 3, 5, and 7 take one image and for options 2, 4, and 6, you must have 2 images open in order for that one to work, so, do a little experimenting first). Go up to the tool bar at the top and find ss-TeaBagFolding-00 from the dropdown arrow. Next, push the single arrow that's pointing to the right to start the script.

Colour Chip Maker Script: SuzShook Color Chip Maker Script Here

This script takes whatever colour you have set as your foreground, and makes a strip of lighter and darker shades for you to choose from for your projects. Place the script into your "Scripts Restricted" folder. See pic below.

Pattern Extend Script: Pattern Extend by Jos Script Here

This script takes any small seamless pattern and extends it horozontally and or vertically to whatever dimensions you want. It saves you a lot of copy and paste work when trying to make a large seamless background or even a repeating ribbon design. See the link for examples and instructions.

Vector Tube Script: This script takes a vector object and paints the outline edges of the object with a TUBE of your choosing. The vector objects can be something drawn with the pen tool, any preset shape, or just some text. You choose a tube, adjust the size and step settings so that the tube is spaced evenly, one after another, then select the vector object that you want to paint and run the script. The picture below is just a heart preset shape drawn out in black on my canvas. Do not convert to raster because the script will not work. I choose a rose coloured bead tube, and ran the script. It outlined my heart with the beads perfectly. The script puts the tube outline on a seperate layer so you can just use the ouline if you want. Unzip the script and place it in your Scripts-Restricted folder. It can be downloaded Right Here

Vector Paint Script: Like the vector tube script, this script takes a vector object and paints the outline edges of the object with a PAINT BRUSH of your choosing. The vector object can be something drawn with the pen tool, any preset Shape, or just text. Just set the paint brush settings how you want, select the vector object that you want to paint and run the script. Unzip the script and place it in your Scripts-Restricted folder. It can be downloaded Right Here

Gingham From Colour: Download Here

This script will give you a 120x120 seamless square of coloured gingham for background fills, ribbons, borders, anything you can think of to use it on. You have the option of choosing up to 3 different colours, or just one or two, your choice. You can also use gradients or patterns instead of just a colour. This script goes into your Scripts Trusted folder in PSP.

Using EC 5 Impact with Shapes

2008-01-15T09:31:00.000-08:00

This tutorial will show you how to get a very pretty smooth plastic look for buttons and buckles.

Supplies Needed:

Eye Candy 5 Impact: Download Trial Version Here
Mura's Meister Copies: Get It Here This plugin is optional. It's used to duplicate the polka dots, but it's not mandatory for this tutorial.
Button/Buckle Shapes: You can download my shapes from my blog:

Buckles Here
Buttons Set #1 Here
Buttons Set #2 Here
Buttons Set #2 Here

1. Open up a 500 x 500 new transparent and set your foreground and background to whatever colour you choose, or you can use a gradient for this as well. I'm going to be using this baby blue #9CDDFE.
2. Click on your Preset Shapes tool, and choose one of the button or buckle shapes. Hold down your Shift Key, and draw out your shape.

It's pretty flat, plain and boring, so I'm gonna spiff it up with some polka dots.

3. In your layer palette, right click on Vector 1 and choose Convert to Raster Layer.
4. Change your foreground to a darker shade of blue. I'm going to be using #1DB6FD. And change your background colour to white.
5. Click on your background colour again, navigate to the Gradient tab, and scroll down till you find Foreground-background and click on that. Set the properties to: Style is Sunburst, Angle and Repeats are both set to 0, Horozontal and Vertical Center Points are both set at 50. Your palette should look like this:

6. Click on your Preset Shapes tool, and set it to Elipse. Draw out a tiny circle (the size you want your polka dots to be) onto your button layer. Move the dot to someplace close to the middle of your canvas, so you will be able to see it in the view tab of this next plugin we are going to use.
7. In the layer palette to the right, right click on Vector 1 and convert it to a raster layer.
8. Go up to the Effects tab, then to Plugins, then to MuRa's Meister and click on Copies. Change the settings to what I have in the picture below. Depending on the size of your button, you can change the spacing of the dots by moving the Number slider up or down.

9. Now you have a perfectly straight line of dots. From the Edit tab, copy and paste the line, as a new layer, over and over onto your button layer as many times as you like to get the look that you want. This is what I ended up with.

10. When you are satisfied with the spacing of your dots, turn off the button layer, (click the tiny Eye icon next the the layer that your button is on in the layer palette), and then right click on one of your dot layers and from the flyout choose Merge then Merge Visable.
11. Turn your Button layer back on. Now, click on your eraser tool, and erase all the extra dots that fall outside of your button. Make sure that the merged dot layer is highlighted blue in your layer palette to the right and not the button layer.
12. When that's done, merge visable all of your layers.
13. Go up to the Effects tab, choose Plugins, then choose Alien Skin Eye Candy 5 Impact, then choose Bevel, and use these settings.

On the last tab labled Bevel Profile, choose Button.

If you like this setting and want to reuse it at another time, on the Settings tab, click the Save button and give your new preset a name.
This is what I ended up with:

This small round button uses EC5 Impact as well, I've just added some ribbon thread to the middle

This is a Christmas charm I made out of a heart shape, one tear drop shape, and an oval shape. I just added some snowflake tubes and some text. The tut I used is called Winter Ice and you can view it Here

TOU:

If you do this tutorial, your end result is yours to do whatever you wish; give it away as a freebie, use it as part of a kit, or sell it for profit. You may not make this into an action or script to give away as a freebie or to sell for a profit. A mention or a link back here would be appreciated but is not mandatory. Please do not share the supplies or tut through email or any other means, send them here to my blog to get the supplies and tut for themselves.

Using Patterns on a Preset Shape

2008-01-15T09:25:00.000-08:00

There are thousands of ways to decorate a preset shape with bevels, patterns, textures, gradients ect.... But here's a few different looks you can do with PSP. I'm using PSP 8, so the screenshots may look a little different if you are using another version, but these should work with any version of PSP. This tutorial will show you how to apply a pattern to a shape.

A little info first off. Textures and patterns can be found on tons of sites on the net. All you have to do is a little google search and you are all set. Here's a few sites that I've found very usefull:

Fabric Patterns
Fabric Patterns
Mayang's Texture Site
Textures
cgtextures

Textured and patterned samples come in various sizes, so you'll need to adjust it according to your project's needs, either by cropping, enlarging, or making it a seamless tile if possible. Keep all of your downloaded patterns and textures in one folder some place on your computer. You should NOT put them into your default PSP program's file. If you do, it will take forever to load when you startup the program. They don't have to be installed for you to use them in a project. When you need one, all you do is open it up from the file menu in psp, and then you can minimize it, and you will be able to use that way. That goes for fonts as well. Anyway, on to the fun stuff.

We are going to start off with a simple flower preset shape and a denim pattern. I've included both for you in THIS ZIP FILE. Feel
free to use your own though.

1. Open up a 500 by 500 new transparent image.
2. From the File menu, open up whatever pattern you've chosen to use and minimize it so it's not in the way.
3. Turn off your foreground colour by clicking on the tiny icon below it that looks like a circle with a line going through it.
4. Now, click once on the background materials box and find the Pattern tab. Use the down arrow and find your pattern you have selected to use. You can change the angle to whatever you wish, but for this, I'm going to leave it set at 0 and a Scale of 100. Click OK when you are done.
5. Go to your Preset Shapes tool and choose the 5 sided flower with the hole cut out of the middle. (I don't remember if this shape came with psp or where I got this, but I've included it in the zip just incase.) Create as vector and Anti-alias are both checked.
6. Place your cursor somewhere near the top left corner of your canvas, hold down the shift key, and draw out your shape. You should have this:

7. In the layer palette to the right, right click on Vector 1 and choose Convert to Raster Layer. It looks kinda flat so we are going to give it a simple bevel to make it a bit more 3D.
8. Go up to the Effects tab, then to 3D Effects, then to Inner Bevel. For a slight bevel, use the settings below:

Before clicking the OK button, fool around in there a little bit by changing the bevel settings to see what else you can come up with. If you find a particular setting you like, at the top you will see an icon that looks like a tiny square floppy disk. Click on that, and a box will pop up that will allow you to save all those settings to use another time. Give your preset look a name, and click ok. When you want to try that out on another project, just click on the drop down arrow at the top, beside where it says presets and find the one you want and click ok. It saves you a lot of work on resetting the numbers every time.
If you've used my settings from the above picture, this is what you should have:

9. You can choose anything you want for the middle, but I'm going to put a pearly bead tube I've made in there. You can download my pearls on my blog Here

Simple Staple

2008-01-14T14:37:00.000-08:00

SUPPLIES NEEDED:

Get the Silvery Gradient I used here Scroll down to where it says SET 7 for all versions, and download that folder. It is called pj7-silvery grey. Put this into your Gradients Folder.

Rounded end line style: In the Zip. Download it Here Put this into your Styled Lines Folder. I can not find where I downloaded this from, so if anyone recognizes the name on it, please let me know so I can give proper credit and a link.

EyeCandy 4000: Eye Candy Trial Version Here

Just a side note about the above link. Since EC 4000 is a paid program, I cannot include it in this tut. The link above provides you with a full version of Eye Candy 3, and a demo of EC 4000. I think it insalls both versions onto your computer. It's the only link I could find. If you can find a better one, let me know.

1. Start out by opening a 200 x 200 transparent image.
2. Choose a silvery gradient similar to the one in the picture below, or use one of your own.
3. Set pj7-silvergrey gradient to both your foreground and background. Linear Style, Angle and Repeats are set to 0. Your material palette should look like this:

4. Click on your Pen tool. Create as vector is checked, Line type is Line Segments, Line style is Amc round end solid, Anti-alias is checked and a Width of 8.
5. Hold down your shift key, and draw a straight, horozontal line the size you want your staple to be.

I've used a green background so you can see it better. The ends of the line you drew should be rounded.

6. Go up to the Effects tab, then to Plugins, then to Eye Candy 4000 and choose Chrome. Use these settings:

Yours should now look like this:

To make it look realistic, we need to put a small shadow at each round end, and a slight drop shadow to give it some depth.

7. Activate your Airbrush tool. Set it at the Default Round brush, Size is 11, Hardness is 50, Step 25, Density and Thickness is 100, Rotation is 0, Opacity is 50, and your foreground colour to #131111.
8. Make a new layer and move it under your staple layer. Now, we don't want this shadow to go too far past the end of the staple or it's just going to look unnatural. Position your airbrush tool somewhere on your canvas and click it once.
9. Activate your mover tool, and move the shadow dot under the left end of the staple just so it is slightly visable. Copy and paste the shadow dot back on to your canvas and move it under the right end of the staple.
10. You should end up with something like this:

11. Activate the layer that has your staple on it. Go up to the Effects tab, choose 3D Effects, then choose Drop Shadow and use these settings.

That was pretty simple wasn't it? Try making paperclips, brads, or eyelets too.

Tag from an Image

2007-12-12T15:57:00.000-08:00

In the zip: SK Tag 14.pspshape, Christmas Kids.jpg, SK Eyelet, Texturizer Plugin. Download Zip Here There's also in png format the tag shape and eyelet.

SK Tag 14.pspshape: place this into your Preset Shapes folder.
SK Eyelet: Tube this yourself if using PSP.
Texturizer.8bf: Place this into your Plugins folder.

1. Start out by opening a new transparent image, 600 by 600 pixels.
2. Set your foreground and background to black. Although it doesn't matter what colour it is set to, black is just the easiest to see against the background of your transparent image.
2. Click on your preset shapes tool, and choose SK Tag 14. Line Width is 1, Anti-alias and Create as Vector is checked, and draw out your tag shape. Leave space at the top, bottom and sides.
3. In the layer palette to the right, click on Vector 1 and choose Convert to Raster Layer, and rename it to Black.
4. Go up to the Selections tab, choose Select All, up to the Selections tab again, choose Float, then back up to the Selections tab and choose Defloat.

Your tag image should now have marching ants all around it.

5. Open up your Christmas Kids.jpg from the zip file. Go up to the Edit tab, and choose Copy.
6. Click on your canvas with the tab shape to make it active and go up to the Edit tab and choose Paste, then Paste As New Layer. Name this layer Kids 1. Your canvas should look like the picture below

7. Use your Mover tool to position the kids picture evenly inbetween the marching ants, making sure to leave a little bit outside the marching ants on the right side and bottom. See above picture.
8. Go up to the Selections tab, and choose Invert. Your marching ants should still be all around your tag, but now, they also should appear all around the border of your canvas as well.

9. On your keyboard, hit the Delete Key. Those extra parts of the Kids picture should have now disappeared like in the picture below.

10. In the layer palette to the right, click on the layer named Black to make it the active layer. Go up to the Selections tab and click on Select All, up to the Selections tab again choose Float, then back up to the Selections tab and choose Defloat. The marching ants should now appear all around the black tag image only.
11. Click on the Kids 1 layer in the layer palette, then go up to the Layer tab at the top, and choose New Raster Layer. Name this layer Kids 2.
12. In the layer palette, click on the small eye icon next the the layer named Black to turn it off, and merge visable the 3 remaining layers.

You should have only 2 layers in the layer palette now. Merged and under that should be Black (which is still turned off). You can turn this layer back on if you like, it doesn't really matter. Now, we need to use the clone tool to fill in the empty space at the top of the tag.

13. Click on your Clone tool and use these settings: Brush is Default Round, Size is 40, Hardness is 50, Step is 25, Density, Thickness, and Opacity are 100.

We want to fill in the top of the tag with just the plain purple with the small white snowflakes, so the best place seems to be on the left where I've indicated with the red circle.

14. Make sure the layer called Merged is highlighted and active. Right click in our selected space (doing this tells psp to use this section as our fill pattern), then using your left mouse button, click and drag upwards, filling in your empty portions.

You will need to right click, then left click and drag upwards several times to fill the entire top portion. Make sure you go around the edges of the tag a few times to be sure that there are no missed spaces. And don't worry, the marching ants will prevent you from putting colour outside of your tag shape. When you get to the part where the little girl has the glow above her head, make your brush smaller, right click on a target section then left click in small spots all around her glow so it does not show visable darker shades of colour. You can also turn down the opacity to about 50% for that part, and use the Soften tool to blend around it. Don't worry if you can't blend it perfectly. When we add a texture to it, you won't even notice.

Use your imagination. Add some snowflakes of your own, some stars or sparkles ect.... One of my favourite tools is the Lighten/Darken tool. Activate the Lighten/Darken tool. Set your brush at an appropriate size for your tag, Hardness and Step are 25, Density and Thickness 100%, Opacity at about 80%. Right Click and drag on portions of your picture such as the red on the little boys hat, the little girls dress and hat, and the black on the panda bear and boys shoes. The Darken tool just brings out the colour so much more. Look at the difference in colour between the picture above and the one below.

15. In the layer palette, delete the layer named Black, then go up to the Selections tab and select Select None.

Texture and Bevel:

PSP and Photoshop have built in texturizer features for you to use, but I mainly use an additional plugin called Texturizer. I don't remember where I got this from, but I've included it in the zip if you would like to try it. It has 4 main textures, brick, burlap, canvas, and sandstone, but you can import your own textures that you've found on the net or that you've made yourself. Handy little plugin to have.

Same goes for the Bevel. PSP has tons of settings to choose from, you just need to play around and find one that suits your needs. In the picture below I've used the Texturizer plugin and a PSP bevel.

Next, we are going to make the eyelet: (my eyelet used is included in the zip)

1. Change your foreground and background to white. Click on your Preset Shapes tool and set it to Ellipse. Hold down your shift key and draw out a small circle the size you want your eyelet to be.
2. In the layer palette, right click on Vector 1, and choose Convert to Raster Layer.
3. Go up to the Selections tab, choose Select All, up to the Selections tab again and choose Float, then back up to the Selections tab and choose Defloat. Marching ants should now be all around your white circle.
4. Go up to the Selections tab again, then choose Modify, then Contract. Set the number of pixels to 10 and click ok. Now hit your Delete key. Go to the Selections tab and Select None.

At this point, it's up to you how you want to design your eyelet. You can use Super Blade Pro, or some other plugin to create it.

5. I've just used a simple silver eyelet that I made with SBP. Once you've done that, postion your eyelet evenly onto your tag, and click on the Tag layer itself. Activate your Eraser tool and set the brush size to about the same size as the middle of your eyelet and just start erasing.
I've put a very small drop shadow under my eyelet as well. V and H is 1, Opacity is 32, Blur is 7, Colour is #221D12. That's pretty much all there is too it. I've showed you a few key points in this tut such as the Lighten/Darken aspect, Cloning, Trim off the excess to shape around a tag ect...... You can apply these to other projects as well. And don't forget to USE YOUR IMAGINATION!!!