Candy Cane Ornament

This tutorial was inspired by a favorite wood ornament that I have.

It was written for PSP 7.

It is an easy tutorial for vectors, but I have included selections if you want to do it that way. You can get the selections here.

This is the color palette. Right click on it and save it to your hard drive. Open it in PSP when you are doing the tutorial and use the eye dropper to select the colors.

Remember to save your work often.

1. Open a new transparent image 200 X 500 and add a new layer naming it candy cane.

2. Go to selections/load from disk and double click on the "candy cane.sel".

3. Flood fill with the white color. De-select.

4. Add a new layer naming it "stripes".

5. Make your foreground color the red.

6. Choose your draw tool with these settings:

7. Using the draw tool click past the left edge of the candy cane where you want to start, and then click past the right edge of the candy cane where you want the line to end, then right click and choose "quit node edit".

Here is an example:

8. Go all the way around your candy cane with these stripes. If you don't like where a stripe is just go to "edit/undo" and it will take that stripe off. You should have something like this:

9. Now go to selections/load from disk and load the "candy cane.sel" again.

10. Now do selections/invert and hit your delete key. There now the edges of your candy cane are smooth.

11. De-select.

12. Apply a gaussian blur of .50.

13. Let's add a very slight drop shadow just for some depth. Effects/3D Effects/Drop Shadow. Here's the settings:

14. Turn off layer 1 and merge visible layers.

15. Load the candy cane selection again and invert. Go to effects/3d effects/drop shadow and use these settings:

You been savin' your work???

16. Add a new layer naming it "highlight".

17. Grab your paintbrush and with the white and the settings below, draw a line down the middle of your candy cane.

18. Go to effects/blur/gaussian blur and apply a blur at 4.00.

19. Add a new layer naming it "antlers" and load the "antlers.sel" selection.

20. Flood fill with the tan color.

21. Selections/invert and apply a drop shadow with the same settings except lower the blur to 8.6.

22. De-select.

23. Add a new layer.

24. With your paint brush, same settings except size 2, and the white color, paint in some highlight in the middle of the antlers.

25. Effects/blur/gaussian blur at 2.00.

26. Turn the opacity of this layer down to about 37.

27. Add a new layer naming it "ears" and load the "ears.sel" selection.

28. Flood fill with the tan color.

29. Selections/invert and apply the drop shadow.

30. Selections/invert.

31. Add a new layer and paint some pink inside his ears. If it looks to strong just lower the opacity of this layer. De-select.

32. Add a new layer naming it "face" and load the "reindeer face.sel" selection.

33. Flood fill with the tan color.

34. Selections/invert and apply the drop shadow.

35. De-select.

36. Add a new layer naming it "nose" and load the "reindeer nose.sel" selection.

37. Flood fill with the light tan color.

38. Selections/invert and apply drop shadow.

39. Add a layer under the nose layer. With the paintbrush and black paint a line around the top of his nose and gaussian blur at 3.00. This will give some dimension to his face.

40. Give him eyes, nose, mouth, and cheeks of your choice. I highly recommend putting each element on a separate layer.

41. When you are all finished decorating him, merge visible layers.

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This tutorial and the graphics are the property of Lady TX/Midnite Design and may not be copied, placed on any website, or distributed in any way. If you would like to share this tutorial with someone please do it by sharing the url address. You may link to this tutorial for groups with prior permission. Please do not link directly to any graphics or files, thank you.