Winter Candy (ftu)

This tutorial was written on November 18th 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.
This is fairly easy and beginner level of psp is all you need.

Supplies Needed

Tube of Choice, I used the artwork of Pinup Toons, you must have a proper license to use his work please visit CILM - HERE .
FTU Scrap Kit - 'Christmas Candy' by Pink Princess Scraps - HERE.
Template Used - Melissa Misfit Template Diamond and you can find this on the misfits latest template challenge - HERE.
Plugin Used - Eye Candy 4000, Gradient Glow.
No Mask Used.

Save the masks to your psp mask folder before we begin...

Lets Start.

Open the template, hit shift & d on your keyboard,this pastes the template as new image, close the original template. Delete info layer, go to image, select resize, choose resize 80%, choose smartsize and make sure the box resize all layers is checked.
If you want some extra room to work with your elements you can always go to image and select canvas size then choose new canvas size to your liking, remember to activate the bottom white layer first, and if you have any transparent image showing then choose white as your foreground colour in the colour tab then click on transparent area to fill with the white.

Activate the squares layer and go to selections, select all, select float, select defloat the paste a paper from the kit as a new layer, resize by 80% twice then go to selections again and select invert then hit delete on your keyboard, you can delete the original layer now and add a small dropshadow to the layer you just created.

Repeat the step above for the long rectangles layer, this time use a different paper from the kit and add the dropshadow as before.

Again repeat the step on the diamonds layer with different paper, this time i used 2 different papers for each diamond, no dropshadow added this time.

Activate the dotted lines layer and go to adjust, select brightness/contrast then move the brightness slider all the way to the right, this will change the dotted lines from dark to white, add a dropshadow to this layer.

Do the same with the diamond frames layer and then go to effects, select eye candy 4000, gradient glow and use the following settings to add a bold glow to the white frames :-
Glow Width - 3.00 .... Soft Corners - 25 .... Overall Opacity - 100 .... Colour - Black, move the slider to about half way along to the middle, click ok.

Now activate the bottom white layer and take element 60 or element 61 from the kit, whichever colour you choose and paste as a new layer above the white layer, resize this as needed till its showing all round the template layers.

Activate the top layer of your canvas now and paste your choosen tube as a new layer, resize by around 85% bicubic and place in centre nearer bottom of the canvas, add a dropshadow to the tube layer.

Decide which other elements you wish to use and paste each as a new layer, place around the canvas where you like them, add a dropshadow to the element layers and bring your tube layer to the top layer.

I used the Xmas tree, some ribbons, gingerbread and some candy & holly but you decide which elements look best with your tag.

Once you finish decorating your tag crop or resize if you didnt at the start.

Add your name in a bold font, add artist info & copyright.
Save as jpeg or .png.

And I think thats us about done.

Thanks for trying my tutorial and i hope you enjoyed it
would love to see your results,

hippiedaze@hotmail.com