PTU - Mother Nature

This tutorial was written on 10/20/2013 and assumes you have working knowledge of PSP. Any simularities to other tuts is purely coincidental and not done on purpose.

For this tutorial you will need:

PSP - I use X3 but most versions will do

Eye Candy 4000 Gradient Glow

Tube of choice, I used the art of Martin Abel

You can purchase this tube at CDO. Do not use without purchasing a license first.

Inspired by scrap kit by Abstract Creations. Available for purchase at CDO.

Mask 2 from Moonbeams & Spiderwebs

 Font of choice, I used Lainie Day

Open a new image 750 x 750, flood fill white. Copy frame 1 and paste as a new layer.

Click on your freehand selection tool, set to Point to point, feather and smoothing at 0 and you're going to carefully go around the frame like so:

Open a paper of choice, I chose paper 1. Duplicate and close the original and resize down 70%. Copy and paste onto your workspace. Move this layer below the frame and arrange it so it fits. Invert selection and press delete. Keep selected.

Copy your tube and paste as a new layer. Move this layer under the frame and arrange it where it would sit best. Duplicate this layer and move the duplicate above the frame and hide for now. Activate the original and press delete. Deselect.

Activate your frame layer and give it a drop shadow: 0, 0, 80, 10. Activate the top tube and give it a drop shadow of -3, 3, 70, 10. Then repeat the drop shadow at 1, -1, 50, 5.

Now you're going to lower the opacity of this tube to about 40%. Zoom in about 400% and you're going to carefully erase any part of the lower section of the tube that sits on top of the bottom part of the frame. Pretty much from about waist/hips down. Don't erase any of her arms/hands, those stay on top of the frame. You want to be able to see the branches and leaves of the frame above the tube.

When you think you've got it all, return the opacity of the tube to 100% and hide and unhide the tube a few times while still zoomed in so you can remove any stray pixels you missed. Once you got them all, zoom back out to 100% again.

Now it's time to add elements, see my tag for reference on placements. Don't forget to add dropshadows after you add each item.

Element 16, resized 50%. Duplicate, mirror and move lower down. Element 10, resized 50%. Element 2, resized 40%, mirrored. Element 3, resized 30%, mirrored.

Activate the white layer and paste a paper of choice. I used paper 5. Apply your mask from image and merge group. With your mask layer still active, click on your crop tool and click on Snap crop rectangle to: Layer Opaque. Make sure it won't cut off any parts of tubes or drop shadows. Drag out any nodes if needed, then double click or click the green check mark to crop.

If you're going to resize your tag, now is the time to do it. I resized mine 75%.

Activate the top layer in your palette and add your copyright, license and tagger's mark.

Add your name using font of choice, colors from your tube/kit. I rotated mine 45 degrees to the left, gave it an inner bevel, gradient glow and drop shadow of -2, 2, 50, 5.

All that's left to do is to delete the white background layer, merge visible and save as a png or merge all and save as a jpg. Congrats, you're done!