Siggy Rotator

I have finally updated and reposted my much requested Siggy Rotator tut. You can find it here.

3 New Tags

I did these 3 tags yesterday from a tutorial challenge on Creative Addictions. 

This first one is from a tut by my good friend Fiona. You can find it here.

This next one is from Kimberly at Scrap Rebellion. You can find it here.

This last one is also from Scrap Rebellion, you can find it here.

New tag, Extras & Matching Stat

This is a new tag I just made tonight. I used an exclusive scrapkit that was made just for the members of the CDO Diamond Club. There are extras to be had by clicking the tag above. And if you click the stat preview below, you can download the imf file. 

Autumn Lake

This tut was written in PSP X3, but can be done in other versions too. This is a rewrite of a tutorial that I wrote back in 2006.

I used the awesome artwork of Meredith Dillman. You must have a license to use her work. I purchased this tube from CILM before it closed, unfortunately I don't believe she's currently selling anywhere.

Supplies needed:

Tube of your choice, something with pretty fall colors would work well

2 Masks: dmsk0264 here, and Vix Mask 31 here

Font of your choice, I used Harrington

Reflet Program here

Reflet is a stand alone program. Make a folder for it in your program files and unzip the files there. Then right click on the exe file and make a shortcut to put on either your desktop, in your start menu, or in My Documents

Animation Shop

Open a new 550 x 550 transparent workspace. Flood fill white. Open the 2 masks and your tube in psp, minimize for now. Remember to save often.

Select 2 colors from your tube. I used #b5561a for the foreground and #ffe558 for the background. Then click on the foreground box and click on Gradient and use these settings.

Add a new raster layer and flood fill with your gradient. Go to Layers, New Mask Layer, From Image. Find the dmsk mask in the drop down box and click ok. Merge group. Resize 90%, all layers unchecked.

Now click on your foreground box again and click the box to invert the gradient. Add a new raster layer, flood fill with the inverted gradient and this time apply the Vix mask. Merge group. You should now have something like this.

Now give both mask layers a slight drop shadow of 1, 1, 40, 2. This gives our trees a bit of depth.

Activate the top layer in your palette and copy your tube and paste as a new layer. Use the mover tool to arrange it where you want it to go. Give your tube a darker drop shadow of -2, 2, 50, 8.

Now activate the white background layer. Click on your crop tool and click Snap Crop Rectangle to: Layer Opaque.

Now you're going to click the bottom center node and drag it up cause we're going to cut off the bottom part of  the trees. If it's going to remove too much of your tube then click on your mover tool and move your tube and then go back and crop again. 

Drag the top middle node down too to get rid of the excess white on top. Double click to crop the excess. Make sure you don't cut off any part of the top of the masks. You should now have something like this.

Activate the top layer in your palette again. We're going to resize the entire thing 70%, all layers checked. Go to Adjust, Sharpness and click Sharpen one time. Just on the tube layer.

Now add your copyright information, and watermark if you use one. Select your font and add your name. You can use the same colors you used for your gradient or pick different colors from your tube. Give it any effects if you want, I gave mine a drop shadow of 1, 1, 70, 2.

When you're all done Shift D to make a duplicate. Working on just the duplicate, hide all the top layers above your tube. Mine has 4 layers, the copyright, the licence, my watermark and my name. Merge all and save as jpg, doesn't need a fancy name, it's just temporary. We do this so we don't alter our original in case we need to go back and make changes. 

Open up your Reflet program. Click the folder icon and open your jpg you just saved. I saved mine on the desktop to make it easier to find. You can click on the middle icon to play the animation to see how it looks. If satisfied, click on the 3rd button, looks like a disk. Use these settings.

Click ok, notice it's being saved as a gif this time. When it asks if you want to create an html page for test, just click no. You can now close Reflet, we're done with it.

Open up Animation Shop. Open your little gif that you just made in Reflet. Select All and then go up and click on Propogate Paste.

Now let's go back to psp and our tag with all the layers still intact. Let's start with the top layer that should be your name. Copy and go to AS and paste as a new animation. Then your going to click on your name, and drag it onto your tag and drop it where you want it to go, would look best if it's approximately the same location you have it in psp. If you goof, you can undo and start over. Make sure though before you drag and drop again that all frames have been selected. We want it to put the name in all 5 frames.

Now back to psp. Repeat this process with the copyright, license and watermark layer(s).

Play your animation to see how it looks, then save as a gif. Congrats, you're all done!

Tutorial ©2006, 2011 Queina. All rights reserved. Any simularities to any other tutorials is purely coincidental.

CDO Tagger of the Month

Wow this is so exciting! I've been picked as the CDO Tagger of the Month. I'm so thrilled and honored to be chosen. You can see the post on their blog here.

New Tutorial, Extras & Matching Stat

This tag is from a new tutorial that I wrote today. You can find the tut here. I also have a set of extras and matching Incredimail Stat. Click the tag above to go to my fotki to download the extras and the stat preview below to download the stat.

Hocus Pocus - PTU

This tut was written in psp X3. It can be done in other versions with minor modifications. I used the art of Ed Mironiuk, you must have a license to use his work.

Supplies:

Halloween Template 2 by Kristen at Toxic Desirez

Pumpkin Pie Scrapkit by Kia Glitz. You can buy it here

Bats and Tree element from FTU Halloween Party kit by Kittz Kreationz

Tube of Choice.

Eye Candy 4000

Font of Choice. I used A Charming Font Extended

Open template in psp. Shift D to duplicate and close the original. Delete the Credits and background layers. Now with the exception of the bat and tree elements, all papers are from the Pumpkin Pie kit.

Activate Orange circle layer. Select all, float, defloat.

Open paper 24, duplicate and close the original. Resize 65%, all layers checked. Copy and paste as a new layer on your canvas. Move into position where you like it over the circle. Invert selection and hit delete on your keyboard. Deselect. Delete the original circle layer.

Activate the Square Left 2 layer. Select all, float, defloat. Open paper 6. Duplicate, close original. Resize 50%. Copy and paste as a new layer. Move over on top of the square till it's where you like it. Invert selection and hit delete. Deselect.

Duplicate this layer, mirror, then flip. Move this layer above the Square Right 2 Layer. Delete the orange Square Right 2 and Square Left 2 layer.

Activate Circle Left layer. Select All, float, defloat. Open paper 2. Duplicate, delete original. Resize 50%. Copy and paste as a new layer and move over the circle till you have placement as you like it, invert select and delete. Deselect.

Duplicate this layer, mirror. Move this layer above the Circle Right layer. Delete the original Circle Right and Circle Left layers. You should now have something like this.

Activate the Glitter Square Right layer. Click on your Manual Color Correction tool. The source color is #f05400, right click on a color from your tube or one of the papers to change the target color. I used #2e133e. Make sure Manual target color is checked and click ok. Repeat with the Glitter Square Left. 

Do the same process to change the color of the Doodle Left and Doodle Right layers, you can do the same color or a different color to suit your tube.

Activate the Dottled Circles layer. Select all, float, defloat. Open paper 11. Duplicate, close original and resize 75%. Copy and paste as a new layer. Invert selection and hit delete. Deselect. You should now have something like this.

Resize your entire workspace down 80%, all layers checked. Image, Canvas Size, and change the dimensions to 650 x 550, placement center.

Open the Bats element from the Halloween Party kit. Duplicate and close original. Resize by 55%. Copy and paste as a new layer on your canvas. Move this layer above the large circle layer. Rotate 15% to the left and place it where you like it. 

Open your Spooky Tree element, duplicate and close original. Copy and paste as a new layer on your canvas. Place it where you like it best and move it below the Glitter Circle layer. Now I chose to use my selection tool to remove the parts of the tree that stick out below and to the top right of the circle, so it's only showing on the top left. 

Now activate the top layer in your layer palette, should be the Circle Stars layer. Copy and paste your main tube as a new layer. Resize if needed, all layers unchecked.

Now we're going to add drop shadows to our layers. Starting with the top layer, your main tube, -3,-3, 50, 5.

Next layer down to add shadow is Circle Stars Back, 1, 1, 50, 5. Repeat same shadow with Words Back and bats layers. 

For the Glitter Circle layer, first do 2, 2, 50, 5, then repeat again with the horizontal and vertical at -2. Repeat this last shadow with the tree layer.

Circle Right layer, do 1, 1, 50, 5. Repeat with the circle left but change the Vertical to 1 and the horizontal to -2.

Glitter Square Right is 2, 2, 50, 5. Glitter Square Left is same except the horizontal and vertical at -2. 

Doodle Back Left and Doodle Back Right are both 1, 1, 50, 5. 

Now activate the top layer in your palette again. Add your copyright information and watermark.

Click on your text tool and choose your font. Foreground and Background colors from your tube/tag. Add your name. Give it the inner bevel below. 

Go to your Eye Candy 4000 plugin and choose Gradient Glow with the settings below. Then give it a drop shadow of 2, 2, 50, 5.

Click your crop tool and drag it around your tag, adjusting the borders as needed to avoid cutting anything off. Surest way to ruin a tag is by cropping off drop shadows or part of the tube/tag. 

Resize again if desired, all layers Checked. Merge Visible and save as a png, or merge flat and save as a jpg. Congrats, you're all done!

©2011 Queina. All rights reserved. Any simularities to any other tutorials is purely coincidental and not done on purpose.

I've made a decision

I have a separate website that I have most of my tuts on. I pay for the domain and the hosting. They bill me every six months and I forget about it every single time and it's always inconvenient for me cause I'm always tight on money every time. So I made a decision to close my site and am going to be moving all of those tuts to my blog here. I might move some of them to Creative Addictions also.

Couple new tags

I did two tuts by Vanessa at Leather and Lace Tuts. You can find them here and here. They both use FTU kits and I love the results from both.

New tag

Just got done making this one. It's from a tut by Christy at x-clusively christy designs. You can find it here.

New tag

This tag set is based on a tut by my good friend Fi. The tut doesn't include an avatar but it was easy to make a matching one. You can find the tut here.

Challenge tag

This is for the monthly tag contest in one of my yahoo groups. We had to do either a Autumn tag or a Spring tag. I chose Autumn. This is based on a tut by Heidi at ScottishButterfly Creations. You can find it here. Then I added on to it by using a few filters that my friend Linda is very fond of, gives it that dreamy look. This tut does call for PTU scraps but it's currently on sale 40% off!

Challenge tag

I only did one of the challenges this past week. I just didn't have any inspiration for the 2nd one. So for this challenge we had to do 1 of 2 tuts by oohbabelicious. I chose her Painted tutorial. I love this tube that I used. I chose it as my free tube for this month for being a CDO Diamond member.

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updating blog

Please bear with me while I get my blog layout updated. I accidently deleted something I wasn't supposed to and am in the process of fixing it.

Challenge tags

The two CDO yahoo groups that I am both do a lucky tag draw. You can win free tubes. These are my two entries, one for each group.

This one is from a tut I've been wanting to do for a long time. Finally got a chance. It's from Graphics Funhouse. You can find it here. And for some reason the animation won't work unless I show the image full size. So to see what it looks like, just click on the tag. I've fixed it so it'll open in a new tab/window so you won't leave this page.

This is one of  Vix's tuts. I like the "old school" feel of it. Scraps are great but sometimes it's nice to revert to the old ways.  Again animation doesn't seem to be working right. I wonder if this is an issue with Blogger cause I never had a problem until the last day or so. Would be curious to know if anybody else is having similar issues. 

Challenge tags

Challenge 1 this week, we had to use this tut by Just Fi and/or just this template. This one has so many possibilities and it's been so cool seeing all the different tags people are making in the group.

Challenge 2 we had to use 3 shapes, 2 filters and a mask. I found this tut on Vix's site and OMG it's a hard one. I applaud anybody who can do this thing from start to finish cause it was a challenge all in itself. LOL

Challenge tags

Challenge 1 last week was to create a tag had a ribbon, a flower, sparkles and the color pink and had to represent 1 of the 4 seasons. So here's mine. I forgot about the seasons part but I think Summer fits, I mean daisies are a Summer flower right? LOL  So this one from a tut by Vix, she has awesome tuts. You can find it here.

Challenge 2 was to do any tag we wanted. A friend had posted a link to a tut recently and had trouble with the animation so I decided to try it myself. It's also one of Vix's tuts. You can find it here. I had the same problem with the animation she did. No matter what I did, it would not look like Vix's tag. So I made some adjustments and I really like how mine looks. Though I'm not sure if the animation is showing properly. Blogspot is being finicky tonight.

New tag

Just finished this tag though I'm tired as hell from only getting 5 hours sleep last night and ran all over town today. This is from a tut by my friend Fi, you can find it here.

2 new tags

2 new tags made today (well yesterday since it's technically Monday now lol). This one is from a tut at Chatita's Corner. You can find it here.

This next one is from a tut by Lyn at Angel's Tuts. You can find it here.

Several new tags

I made 3 new tags today. This first one is from a tut by Heidi at Scottish Butterfly Creations, you can find it here.

This next one is by my friend Bobbie at Rebelle Doll Designs. You can find it here. It does use a PTU kit but it was on sale when I bought it.

And finally the forum set below is by Tracy at Freebie Friends. You can find it here.

Siggy Showoff

My friend Wanda made this tag from my Slats tut. She did a fantastic job, I just had to show it off.

Several new tags

I've made several new tags lately. This first one above was from a tut by Sharon at Tagalicious Tags and Tuts. You can find it here.

This next one is from a tut by Carol at Hugahav's Haven. You can find it here.

This last one is from a tut by Tori at Tori's Titbits Tutorials. You can find it here.

Challenge tags

For challenge 1 this week we had to use this template from Crazy Cakes Scraps. I might tut this one, I really love how it turned out.

For challenge 2, we had to use this cluster frame. It's on this "tut" page, but it's not a real tut IMO.