Frosted Christmas Ornament

You will need the following to do this tutorial:

Bubble tube - download

Texturizer filter - download **

Unplugged Effects filter - click here to go to their download page. Make sure you download from one of the "Photoshop Compatible" servers, the others aren't compatible with PSP.

Topper tube - download **

** I cannot for the life of me remember where I got the Texturizer filter and the Topper tube. If anyone knows where the original files are, please let me know and I will link to them instead if required.

The pine branch tube in the above picture is courtesy of Roxie's Tubes.

This tutorial can be done in PSP 6 or 7 (instructions are given for each). I'm sure it would also work in ver. 5.

 
1. Open a new image 200 x 200 with a transparent background. Flood fill with a colour if desired. I prefer not to for mine. Add new raster layer.

2. On the new layer, using the selection tool set to circle, feather 0, antialias checked, make a circle at 100,100. Make it any size you want, I used 130.

3. Flood fill with the colour of your choice.

4. Effects--->plugin filters--->Unplugged Effects--->Snow (in PSP 6,  Image ---> plugin filters ---> Unplugged Effects ---> Snow). I set mine at 50 for this ornament. You can set it at whichever number you want for different effects.

5. Effects --->plugin filters--->Texture--->Texturizer (in PSP 6, Image ---> plugin filters ---> Texture ---> Texturizer). These are the settings I used, once again, using different ones will give you different effects.

6.  Add new  raster layer. Place the bubble tube in the centre of the ball, I set mine at 90%. Stretch the bubble to fit the circle using your deformation tool.

7. Reduce layer opacity, the amount depends on the colour. I find around 25-35% works well.

8. Make sure you are on layer 2. Selections--->select all.  Selections--->Modify--->Contract by 3. Selections--->invert. Hit the delete key. Do not deselect and click on layer 3 and hit the delete key again. Deselect. Doing these two steps gets rid of any jaggies you might have and also gets rid of any bubble that is outside the ball.

9. Turn off your background layer. Making sure you are on another layer, Layers ---> Merge visible. Turn your background layer back on.

10. With the mover tool, move the ball to the bottom of the canvas.

11. Optional (skip if you don't want to make a top part to your ornament) Add a new layer. With the selection tool, draw a rectangle on top of the ball. This will be the part under the topper. There are two ways you can fill it in. The most natural looking is with the clone tool. Select the clone tool, make sure hardness is set to 100, your brush size should be large, I used 32. Click on the Merged layer and then right click on the spot you want to clone. I used an area at the top to make it look natural. Then go to the top layer and left click and drag your cursor across the rectangle selection you drew. Deselect. If need be, you can move the rectangle into better position using the mover tool.

The other way you can do this top part is by flood filling the rectangular selection with the colour you used for the ornament or a darker shade of the colour, then repeating your texturizer and snow filters. You might want to use a lower setting on each.

12. Add another layer and put the topper on.  If necessary, use your deform tool to make it fit the top part, if you made one.  Merge layers and export as tube or add a background layer with the colour of your webpage and save as a transparent gif.

You can play around with some of the filter settings to get different looks. The ball below was done by reversing the order of the snow and texture filters and using a lower relief setting on the texturizer and a higher setting on the snow.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to email me. :)

Rosie's Tutorials

Rosie's Graphics

Tutorial and images © Margaret M. aka MsRosie of Rosie's Graphics 2000-2004 and may not be copied or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Please see my terms of use page. If you have any problems or questions regarding the tutorial, please email me.