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Easy Decorated Eggs
by Maureen Williams
Whether your passion
is carving, lacework or decoupage this quick tutorial will allow you
to create your own decorated eggs with a minimum of fuss and no
broken shells!
Inspiration for this
tutorial came from the
Elegant Carved Egg tutorial by Moon's Designs,
which was created in PSP 8 using the Balls & Bubbles effect.
After obtaining permission to share this tutorial with the EggersPSP
group I felt some members
who may not have version 8, might feel left out of the fun as Patti's
tutorial can't be done in version 7.
So I experimented with PSP 7 to come up with a suitable alternative
and this tutorial is the result.
Although the 3D effect achieved with the Balls & Bubbles is more
pronounced,
once you learn
the basic principals in this tutorial the variation possibilities are endless.
It is assumed you have a working knowledge of PSP.
You will need:
PSP 7
although with a few modifications to the instructions it can also be
done in PSP 8.
You can download a free 30-day trial of PSP from
HERE.
A textured image of
your choice.
Basically you can use any type of image with this tutorial for a
variety of effects.
Optional: Eye Candy
4000 - Glass
Note: the Glass & Shadowlab plugins are two of the workable
options in the Demo version.
Now let's get started.
Don't forget to save frequently.
If you want to use the
textured tile I am using, which is Iron-58 from the Pack #8 of Free
Textures
from Flaming Pear, the creators of Super Blade Pro, right click on the
image and save to your drive.
Step One
Open a new transparent image 500 x 500.
This will give you
plenty of room to move around.
Choose a suitable colour for your background - I have used a pink
gradient.
Step Two
Open your desired image - Shift+D to copy. Close the original.
Note: depending on your starting image you may need to increase
the colour depth
(if using a black & white image) to 16 million colours.
Step Three
Go to Effects, Geometric Effects, Circle.
Note: if you don't get a transparent background around your
circle
you will need to promote the background to a layer.
Step Four
Go to Effects, Geometric Effects, Perspective - Vertical.
I have used a % difference of -39 but you could vary this as
desired.
Step Five
CTRL+C to copy this image.
Click back on your transparent image to make it active and
paste the copied image as a new layer. (CTRL+L)
Step Six
Click on the Deformation Tool
 and drag the top of
the egg upwards
to obtain a better perspective for your egg. Click Apply when happy with
the shape.
Step Seven
In the Layer Palette right click and select Duplicate.
As we will be working with the duplicate layer for the time being,
click on the glasses on Layer 2 to turn it off.
Select the Magic Wand
 with the Tolerance
set to 50.
Click on one of the black areas in the pattern and then go to
Selections, Modify, Select Similar.
Hit Delete to remove the black areas.
Step Eight
Select Layer 2 (the original image layer) to make it active and
using the Magic Wand click outside the
image to select it. Go to Selections, Invert and then Selections, Modify,
Contract by 2 pixels.
Click on the Flood Fill tool and fill with your chosen background
colour.
Note: the following steps are
optional as they are purely personal preference
and will depend on whether your original image requires this attention.
Step Nine
Click on the lace layer and go to Colours, Colourize.
I have used a Hue of 1 with a Saturation of 80 for a slight pink tint to
my lace layer.
Step Ten
Depending on how particular you are, you may wish to remove any
jaggies in your lace layer.
This can be done by using the Retouch Tool set to Soften, with a brush
size of 1.
Gently go around each area where you have problem pixels.
Keep in mind, this is purely personal preference and once you have reduced
the size of your final image chances are you won't be able to see them any
way.
However, I know jaggies may distress some fanatics!
You will need to zoom in to enlarge your image to be able to do this
step.
You can see in the picture below where I have softened the edges on
the left
Step Eleven
Another optional step is to use the Eye Candy, Glass plugin to
add a bit more realism.
Turn off Layer 1 and Merge Visible on the other two layers.
Go to Effects, Plug-in Filters and locate the Eye Candy plugin.
I have used the Clear Glass preset from Eye Candy 4000
with the default settings. I changed the colour to white.
This is one of the active plugins in the demo version.
Step Twelve
Add a base using a tube or a dingbat if desired.
Resize and Crop your image to remove background areas.
Add a Short Perspective drop shadow from the Eye Candy Shadowlab
plugin if desired.
Variations
Click on an egg for a larger
view.
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Petal design
using a background
texture from
Eos
Development |
Virtual
decoupage using a jpeg.
Features a dingbat base. |
Black & white
gif pattern |
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Gradient fill
with contrasting dingbat |
Tile used for
the Petal design above. |
Dingbat pattern using my
tutorial. |
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I hope you have fun
creating your own virtual eggs in PSP. If you have any queries
email me. |
