Dreaming of Spring

For this tutorial you will need the following: Paint Shop Pro, any version should work, I am using PSP X Template 20 by Artmama which you can find at the Xeracx Stalker Creations blog. We have creation challenges at the Offical Xeracx Stalker forum each month for templates and scrap kits, and these are from one of those challenges. EBD Mask 4 by Rachel at Enchanted by Darkness Scrap kit of your choice. I am using a PTU kit by Kimmie's Kreations from AMI called Summertime Fun. Tube of your choice. I am using the wonderful artwork of Ismael Rac which you must have a license to use. You can find his work also at AMI. Font of choice. I used licorice. Plugins: Penta.com Color Dot, Xero Porcelain Let's get started! Remember, you don't have to use the papers or elements I use, they're just a suggestion. Make it yours. I originally started out wanting to make a tag with this template and was going to recolor the orange in the template the colors of the kit, but it wasn't working quite right for me, and I wanted to use this kit... so I recolored some bits of the kit. Open your template, resize all layers by 80%. Adjust canvas size to 700x700 so you have some room to work. If you like to have a white background layer to be able to see a little better, add a new raster layer, drag it to the bottom and flood fill with white. Delete her credits layer (named delete) Make the square layer active, selections, select all, float, defloat, invert. Open paper 14, copy and paste as a new layer, click delete on your keyboard and deselect and delete the original layer. Make the rectangle layer active, add a new raster layer, flood fill with #efa601 and deselect, delete the original rectangle layer. Make sure you are still on that layer that you just filled. Take your selection tool set on rectangle and draw out a small rectangle across the top of it (see my tag for reference). Leave selected and apply Penta color dot with the following settings Value = 90 Distance = 10 Color R = 255 Color G = 255 Color B = 255 and then deselect. Do the same to the bottom of the rectangle layer. Make the rectangle frame layer active, selections, float, defloat and add a new raster layer. Flood fill with #ee7c35. Adjust, add/remove noise, add noise, check gaussian and monochrome, amount at about 40. Delete the original frame layer. Make the dotted triangle layer active, selections, select all, float, defloat, add a new raster layer and flood fill with #efa601. Drag it below the original layer, and then on the original layer drop the opacity to around 55 or 60, depending on how much you want the color to show through. Take your tube close up, and if needed, resize it larger. Arrange it under the frame how you'd like it and then erase the bits that show around the frame. Duplicate and on the top layer apply gaussian blur set at 20 (you may have to erase some of it that goes beyond the frame) and change the blend mode to soft light. On the original tube, apply Xero Porcelain with the default settings. Drop the opacity of the bottom tube to around 90. Add whatever elements you'd like and resize as needed. I also recolored some things. Open paper 24, copy and paste as a new layer, drag it to the bottom. Open your mask and apply as a new mask layer from image, once applied, delete the mask and merge the group. If it's not dark enough, you can duplicate it and merge the two together. If it's too light, just drop the opacity down. Add your name and copyright info/credits. Delete your white background layer, crop and resize if necessary. Save as a .png file to have it transparent or whatever other file type you want .jpg or .gif, etc. and you're done!