Wreath Clock Tutorial

Wreath Clock

Materials Needed:

PSP 8.x - Get it here - would also work in ver. 7

Pine tube - I am using the spruce.tub that came with PSP 7 - if you are going to use the same one, open it in PSP and brighten using the Brightness/Contrast feature - I brightened mine by 50 and then export as a picture tube.

Tubes to decorate the wreath with - I used the lights and pine cones from Jasc and my own frosted ornaments - you can download those here

Bubble tube - click here to download

A font of your choice - I am using EF Zapf Renaissance Antiqua H Book, available here

Note: whenever I say to add a new layer, add a raster layer. The screenshots have been reduced in size to improve loading time and therefore have lost quality - yours will look much better.

******I have made my image big because I find it difficult to work with smaller images. However, the numbers and hands do not resize well, so you may want to either make your image smaller or do everything else first, then resize and do the numbers and hands.

1. Open a new image 600 x 600 and flood fill with a colour if desired.

2.Add a new layer and name it "circle". With your shapes tool, anti-alias checked, retain style and create as vector UNchecked, foreground a colour of your choice (it will be deleted later), background null, draw a circle from 300, 300 and going out to about where you want your clock edges to be.

3. Add a new layer and name it "spruce". Using your spruce tube (I sized mine at 50%), add a row of spruce around the circle, trying to keep it fairly even on the inside. This gives you something to work with for your inner boundaries.

4. Continue adding spruce to thicken and enlarge the wreath.

You can now delete your line layer.

5. Go down to the background layer. Take your selection tool, antialias checked, create as vector unchecked, and make a circle selection from 300, 300 out to where you want your clock edge to be.

6. Take the image that you want to use for your clock face, copy it and paste as a new layer onto the clock face. Use your mover tool to move it so it is in the position you want then Selections--->Invert and hit the Delete key to get rid of the excess. Selections--->Invert again. Selections--->Load/Save Selection--->Save to Alpha Channel. Do NOT deselect!

Hint: I find it easiest to first resize the image to as close as possible the dimenstions of the circle before copying.

7. Add a new layer and flood fill with white. Lower the opacity on the layer to whatever works for you. I used 75%. Deselect.

8. Turn off your background layer and the spruce layer and merge visible the rest. Rename the merged layer "clock face"

9. Now we are going to put the numbers on the clock. You can do this on one layer, or use a different layer for each one, if you prefer and then merge later. I prefer to use separate layers, that way if I don't like the placement of the number, I can change it at any time.

Use a font of your choice. I used size 36 Bold.. For this image I have not rotated the numbers but if you want to do that, you can find instructions in my Grandfather Clock tutorial. When you are satisfied with the placement of your numbers, you can turn off all the other layers and merge visible the numbers layers. Rename the merged layer "numbers".

10. Add a new layer and name it Centre. With your shapes tool, same settings as before, except null for foreground and black for background, draw a small black circle in the centre of the face (starting at 200, 200)

11. Add a new layer and name it "big hand". Using your shapes tool, same settings, draw a small arrow, using Arrow 21, on 12:00.

Change your shape to rounded rectangle and draw a thin line from the bottom of the arrow down to the centre circle. Hint: if you have trouble lining them up, use separate layers and then move the rectangle to line up with the arrow.

12. Layers--->Duplicate. Rename the duplicate to "little hand" and resize by 75%. Make sure that "resize all layers" is UNchecked! Now, you can rotate your hands to whatever time you like, using the Image--->Rotate function.

13. Add a new layer and name it "second hand". Click on your pen tool, and set it to Draw mode, Segment Type - Line Segments, width, 2 antialias checked, vector unchecked. Make black your foreground and null your background and draw a very thin line for the second hand.

14. At this point, I decided to do a little tweaking. I felt my wreath was too far over the clock face, so I adjusted it with the deform tool. To hide the small gaps that caused, I added a new layer below the original spruce layer and added some more of the spruce tube, then merged visible the two spruce layers.

15. Turn off your background layer and your spruce layer and merge visible the rest. Turn your background and spruce layers back on. Make sure you are on your clock layer (it may help to temporarily turn off the spruce layer). Add a new layer and name it "bubble". Apply the bubble tube and use your deform tool to stretch it over the clock face. Do not worry about going over the edges.

16. Selections--->Load/Save Selection--->Load Selection from alpha channel and load the selection you saved earlier. Selections--->Invert. Hit your delete key to get rid of any of the bubble tube going over the edge of the clock face. Deselect. Lower the opacity of the bubble to whatever you like - I used 30%.

17. Make any final tweaks to the spruce - cover any gaps you may see that you don't want there.

18. Turn off your background layer and merge visible the rest. Now, you can decorate the wreath any way you like. Just use a different layer for each object ie. a layer for pine cones, a layer for lights, a layer for balls etc. When you are done, delete your background layer, merge visible the rest and you have a clock wreath to use in your Christmas room images!

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