Bluebird's Tuts: So Blue

YOU WILL NEED:

* Paint Shop Pro and Animation Shop. You will need a good knowledge of both programs for this tutorial.

* Tube of choice. I am using the artwork of Jennifer Janesko. Jennifer's artwork is licensed and you can purchase it from CILM.

* My It's So Blue scrapkit HERE.

* Font of choice - I used Chocolate Box.

* My heart mask HERE.

* Sparkle tube of choice. You can make a sparkle tube from a tutorial by Dark Yarrow HERE or you can use the one I made HERE.

LETS START!

1. Set up your supplies ready for use. Open a new image 500 x 500 with a white background. Copy and paste Paper 1 from the scrapkit as a new layer. Apply the heart mask to the paper and merge the group.

2. Copy and paste Frame 2 (heart shape) from the scrapkit to your canvas. Resize to 75%.

3. Paste your tube between the mask and frame layers and resize and sharpen if necessary. I resized to 70% and moved the tube to the right as shown. I sharpened my tube using the settings below.

4. Activate your magic wand tool and click outside the heart on the frame layer. Selections - Modify - Expand by 2. Click on your tube layer and press delete.

5. Click on the frame layer. Copy and paste a ribbon to the canvas (I used the lighter blue one). Image - Free Rotate - 15 degrees left. Use your magic wand with a feather of 2 and select outside the heart frame. Click on your ribbon layer and press delete. If the edges still seem a little rough, use your soften brush to tidy it up.

6. Copy and paste your heart ribbon charm to the canvas. Position it to your liking and then using your freehand selection tool with a feather of 0, carefully trace around the middle bar but only where it is over the ribbon. The idea is to make it look like the charm is threaded on the ribbon. Apply drop shadow to your charm at the settings below. Merge the ribbon, frame and tube layers together and apply the same drop shadow.

7. Copy and paste a bow to the canvas. I used the large blue bow, resized to 70% and sharpened using the same settings as before. To make the colour more in line with the tube and the ribbon, Adjust menu - Brightness and Contrast - Brightness 40 Contrast 5. I also applied the same settings to the mask layer.

8. Add your copyright information and watermark. Close the white background layer off and merge visible. Hold the control key down and press C then V to crop the excess space from your canvas. Add a new raster layer and floodfill with white. Drag the white layer to the bottom and merge visible. Duplicate the layer.

9. Copy and paste the sparkle tube to the canvas. Resize to 40% and position over the top of the charm. Duplicate the layer and resize the new layer 80%. Position the smaller sparkle so that the middle of it is aligned with the middle of the larger sparkle. Change the blend mode for each sparkle layer to hard light. Merge a sparkle to each background layer.

10. Activate your text tool and using the settings below type your name. I had the foreground closed and the background colour was #819df4. Image - Free Rotate - 15 degrees left. Apply Inner Bevel at the settings below. Apply drop shadow at the same settings as before but change the blur to 6 and the colour to white. Duplicate your text layer and merge it to each of your background layers.