Supplies:
Paintshop Pro (I use V9)
Tube of choice, mine is by Wen-Xi Chen and used with personal permission.
A colourful royalty free image, I got mine from BigFoto, the smarties in miscellaneous, page 5.
Plugins:
Andrews Filter 56- Blurred Bits and Pieces
Color Rave Atmospherizer
AAA Frames- Foto Frame
AB06- Rearranging the paintings
AAA Filters-AAA Options
Alf's Border FX
Xero- Porcelain
Font(s) of choice, mine are Showcard Gothic and Saginaw

You can make a forum sized siggie plus avatar and a tag with this tut.
For the forum sized siggie open a new canvas 600x250, **floodfill with any dark colour, open the tube and the photo. If you use smarties, resize 60%. Copy and paste onto the canvas. Crop merged opaque.
Then use Andrews Filter 56- Blurred Bits & Pieces at default.
Next Color Rave Atmospherizer, I used the settings: 98-224-95-63-249-35-215-0.
Now apply AAA Frames with these settings: 25-minus77-31-3-60-0-0-52.
Duplicate your layer, on the duplicate use AB 06 Rearranging the paintings: 10-55-86-64-33-18-185, change the blend mode in the layer palette to soft light. Merge down.
Then apply AAA Filters Options at 29 Halftone Texture & Lighten.
Finally use Alf's Border FX Mirror Bevel** and then Borders Checkers at default.

With the Selection tool set to square select a square 150x150 for the avatar, copy and paste as a new image.
Back on the siggie, paste the tube onto it and place it to your liking, crop merged opaque. Apply Border Checkers to the tube layer. Now you need to select the white background edge that checkers has created around the background with the magic wand set to Add, RGB, Tol 4-6, cont., Feather 0, antialias and ouside checked and hit delete on the keyboard. Do the same on the tube layer and add dropshadows to both layers. Now you will see the coloured fill of the bottom layer. You can delete this layer now. Add copyrights and photo source.

Now add your name in a fat font, I used Showcard Gothic, size 90, stroke 4 in colour from your tube and as fill the smarties pattern, scale 50-80. Apply AAA Filters 29 halftone Texture and xero porcelain. Then add another word/ quote in the script font. Save as a png.
Now carry on with the avatar, add your intial and use filters as above, change the blend mode to hard light and opacity to 90. Add your name in the script font. Merge visible, use Alf's Border FX/ Fade 1 at W 27, I 116, D/L 47. Save as a jpg.

If you also want a tag open a new canvas 400x300. Work as above between the **, only changing the width on AAAFrames from 25 to 39. Move the number of divisions on Border Checkers til you like the result, I used 2. Add the tube, apply the border again and remove the white on both frame layers. Dropshadows on both layers with plus and minus settings, so they go all 4 ways. Merge down and mirror the image if the artist allows. Add your name as for the siggie. And the copyrights and photo credit. Crop merged opaque and save as a png.

This tutorial was created May 19th 2010 , and is the sole property of ooh...babelicious. Similarity to other tutorials is purely coincidental. Do not copy this or any of my tutorials, or any part of my tutorials, to another site unless you have express permission from me to do so. If you want to share, send the URL, do not direct link or offer on your site. Give credit where credit is due. Do not script this tutorial and offer to others.

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