Santas Helper (ftu)

This tutorial was written on November 21st 2009 by Susan aka Hippiedaze.
The idea for this tag is off my own head lol and any resemblance is purely coincidence.
General Knowledge of psp is required, tutorial was written in psp 9 but will work in other versions.

Supplies Needed

Tube of Choice, I used the artwork of Al Rio, you must have a proper license to use his work please visit CILM - HERE.
FTU Scrap Kit 'Xmas Candy Cane' by Lacarolia and you will find this fab freebie - HERE.
No Template Used.
Mask Used - WSL Mask #108 by Chelle at Wee Scots Lass Creations - HERE.
Plugin Used - Toadies, Blast 'n' Blur.

Save mask to your psp folder and open all supplies needed before we begin....

Ready... Lets get started... this tutorial is yet another quick and easy one, lol.

In your psp workspace open a new file by going to file and select new, choose 500x500 (or whichever size you prefer to work with) set canvas colour to white and click ok.

Take the round frame from the scrapkit and paste as a new layer, the elements are pretty big in this kit so you will need to resize, i resized mine by around 50% smartsize but this will depend on which size your working with, make sure that the tab resize all layers is unchecked before you click ok so that its just the frame your resizing and not the whole image.

Duplicate the frame layer and close the layer off for now we wil use this later on in the tutotial.

Click inside the transparent area of the frame with your magic wand tool and you should see the marching ants blinking, go to selections and select modify, choose expand and set to expand by 4 now take a paper from the kit and paste as a new layer, the papers are fairly big too so resize a little to your liking, once happy with size and placement go to selections and select invert then hit delete on your keyboard, this will erase any excess paper around the frame, now move the paper layer to below the frame layer.

Activate the top layer of the canvas now and take a tree from the kit then paste as a new layer, resize as needed and place in centre of the canvas/frame, add a dropshadow to the tree, i used settings :-
Vertical - 0 ... Horizontal - 0 ... Opacity - 100 ... Blur - 12... Colour - White, click ok.
I repeated the shadow once more to give a more hazy look to the tree.

Take the sleigh element from the kit and paste this as a new layer, resize as needed and place to lower left of your canvas, I added a dropshadow to this layer using the same settings as above but changed the colour to black and only used the shadow one time.

Paste your tube as a new layer, resize as needed so shes sitting on the sleigh, add the dropshadow again using the same settings and change the colour back to white.

Take the presents elements from the kit and paste as a new layer, resize as needed and place in lower left of your canvas see mine for placement, add the dropshadow once again changing the colour back to black.

Add a few other elements that you wish to use and resize as necessary, place where you like them on your tag and dropshadow.

Now lets go back to the copy of the frame layer that we made earlier, unhide the layer and move it all the way down to the layer just above the white bacground layer, go to effects and choose Toadies, find the Blast n Blur effect and use the default settings then click ok, your copy frame layer should now look like mine, go to adjust now and select add noise, set to monochrome and check guassian and set noise to 100 then click ok, it should look even more glittery now lol.

Again activate the bottom white layer and take the candy cane stars 1 element from the kit, paste as a new layer and resize to your liking, move to right side of your canvas, now go to layers and select duplicate then go to image and select mirror,I didnt add any dropshadow to these layers.

Choose a paper from the kit and paste as a new layer, resize as needed and then go to layers and select load mask from disc, find the mask that you saved at the start which is WSL Mask #108, use the following settings :-
Source Luminace - Checked ... Fit to Canvas - Checked ... Invert Transparency - Unchecked ... Hide all Mask - Checked, click ok then go to the layer palette and merge group. At this stage i grabbed my deform tool and pulled out the centre nodes a little all round so that you can see a bit more of the mask.

Now if you want to crop or resize the tag do it now before we add any text layers as resizing can sometimes make the text fuzzy.

Add your name in your font of choice.
Add artist info, copyright info and your own info.

All done.

Save your tag as a jpeg or png file.

Thanks for trying my tutorial, I hope you enjoyed it and as always id love you to send your creations, addy is over there on the right>>>>