Mystic Moon

Snaggable versions of this tag in my Fotki album

For this tutorial you will need the following:

Paint Shop Pro, I am using PSP X7, you should be able to use any version.

Tube of choice, I am using the artwork of Charmaine Flannery (Mystic Moon tube)

which you need a license to use.  

Font of choice, I am using Snap ITC

Plugins: Visman Extravaganza - Transmission

Xero - Fritillary

Just remember that my choices of papers and elements is just a suggestion, change it up and make it yours! You don't have to follow mine exactly.

Add a drop shadow of your choosing to tubes & elements throughout. I usually use 1, 1, 50, 5 unless otherwise noted.

Let's get started!

Banner Tag

Open a new canvas 600 x 250 pixels with a white background

Copy and paste your tube as a new layer, resize by 38%

Add a new raster layer below the tube, flood fill with #338aa9

Take your selection tool set on rectangle, draw out a wide rectangle covering about 1/3 of the center of the canvas

Apply Visman Extravaganza - Transmission with the following settings

Line Width = 6

Offset = 191

Contrast = 85

Deselect

Take your selection tool set on rectangle again, and select the middle 1/3 of the top section

Apply Visman Extravaganza - Fritillary with the following settings:

Granularity = 5

Aggression = 30

Tessilation = 15

Variation = 45

promote to layer then deselect

then  duplicate

move one to the center of the bottom 1/3 of the tag

Merge these 2 layers together, take your magic wand, click outside of the rectangles with the fritillary

then selections, invert, modify, expand 3 

add a new raster layer below it, then flood fill with #075e7d

then merge these two layers together, add a drop shadow

Once I got to this part and tried to drop opacity, I noticed the top part didn't get lighter, so I hid the layers and realized that the fritillary was still on the background layer at the top, so I hid the tube and the fritillary layers and erased it at the top, then clicked on it with my magic wand, expanded by 2, and flood filled it with #338aa9

Then, unhide the tube and the fritillary layers, and change the opacity of the fritillary layer to 35

Now make sure you are on the white background layer, 

take your crop tool and crop the tag with the tool set on snap crop rectangle to layer opaque

selections, select all, modify, set selection borders, set at 5

make a new raster layer at the top and flood fill with #338aa9

then deselect

add your copyright and credits as needed

add your text and save

Avatar

Open a new canvas 200 x 200 or whatever size you need for your forum

Copy and paste the background from the banner

copy and paste the tube from the banner

crop the same way you did for the banner

make a border the same way you did for the banner except change the width to 3

add your copyright and credits as needed

add your text and save