Striped Christmas Candle

PSP 7.x - Get it here

Pine tube - I got mine here

Jasc's Holiday tubes - available here

Note: When I say to add a new layer, add a raster layer.

1. Open a new image 100 x 100. Flood fill with your dominant colour. I used green #008000.

2. With your selection tool, antialias checked, feather 0, draw a rectangle from 0, 0 to 100, 20. Flood fill with a contrasting colour. I used red #E83030.

3. Draw another rectangle from 0, 47 to 100, 53 and flood fill with your contrasting. colour. Draw two more rectangles and flood fill them with contrasting colour, the first one from 0, 58 to 100, 63 and the second from 0, 68 to 100, 73.

4. Open another image 300 x 325. Flood fill with a colour if desired. Add a new layer and with your selection tool, antialias checked, feather 0, draw a rectangle from 100, 90 to 200, 280.

5. Change your selection tool to Ellipse and holding down the Shift key, draw an ellipse from 150, 90 to 199, 100.

6. Once again, hold your shift key down and draw an ellipse from 150, 280 to 199, 290.

7. Flood fill the selection with the Metallic gradient with these settings and keep selected:

8. Colours--->Adjust--->Brightness/Contrast. Enter 15 for Brightness, 0 for contrast. Play around with the brightness if you like - the higher the number you use, the less shadowing.

9. Add a new layer and flood fill with the stripe pattern you made using an angle of 45. I sized mine at 50%. Change your layer blend mode to multiply.

10. Turn off your background layer and merge the other two. Rename the merged layer to "candle" and turn the background layer back on.

11. On your Candle layer add a new layer and name it "wick". With your selection tool, same settings, draw a very thin rectangle at the top of the candle and flood fill with black.

12. Add a new layer and name it "flame". Use your fire tool that came with psp and place a flame on the wick. I sized mine at 30%.

13. Go to your candle layer and add a new layer, naming it "pine 1". Place a few pine sprigs around the bottom of the candle.

14. To give it a bit of depth, go to the background layer and add a new layer, naming it "pine 2" and add a few more sprigs.

15. Add a new layer and name it "pointsetta". Add a few pointsettas from the Jasc tubes. I scaled mine at 25%.

16. Turn off your background layer and merge visible the rest. Now, you can tube your candle for use in your holiday images! If you used the same colours as I did, save your final image that you use the candles in as a .gif so that the red and green doesn't look "mottled".

Enjoy!

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