The inspiration for this little guy came from my real crafting days before I became addicted to my computer. I must have made close to a hundred of these for fellow teachers and friends. I will always have fond memories of Mom and Dad's hanging from the chandelier over the dining room table all during the holiday season. What follows is my attempt to computerize him. What You Will Need to Start ...PSP 6 or 7 (this was done in 6)... ... good knowledge of basic terms and tools... ... either a gold fill of your own or you can copy mine below ... ...a plaid fill for the legs and head... I have made several small versions in different colours below you can copy as well. Right click and "save as" to your own hard drive. Choose the one you want or take them all. I made them for this tutorial.                               We will start off making the bell first. Open a new image 160 by 160 transparent 16mil colours. Go to "Save as" and give it a name and then save in psp format. Remember to save your work often. Create a new raster layer and then floodfill with either your own gold gradient or the copy of my fill that was provided above. Create another new raster layer. From the tool bar select the shape tool and set to rectangle, (filled, antialias checked, feather none) using the colour black, start at approximately points 30 across and 110 down, create a rectangle to 45 across and 160 down. Then change the shape from rectangle to circle (keeping everything else the same), start at points 37 across and 100 down and extend until you have a circle that is wider than the rectangle and carries on just a little lower than the top of the rectangle. See the image below. Go to "layers" and then "duplicate". Go to menu "Images" and choose "mirror". Your image should now look like the last one below.             At this point, go to "Layers" and "merge visible". Go to the menu "Effects" and choose "Deformation--circle". Go to the toolbar and choose the "Selection" tool. Set it to circle, antialias checked, feather unchecked. Starting at points 80 across and 80 down, draw out a circle until you almost reach the edges of the bell. Then go to "Selections - invert" and press your keyboard "delete" key once. Then deselect by holding down the control key and D. I left this image larger so you can see the marching ants more clearly. Add a new raster layer. Choose the shape tool and set to "elipse", line width 3, unfilled, antialias checked. I have demonstrated in red so it would show up clearly. We are going to fill it with the gold gradient anyway. Start at the points 80 across and 40 down. Draw out your elipse until the bottom appears to make a ring around the centre. To do this, I had to drag the tool right off the image into the PSP work area and you will notice the ends of your elipse disappear. Look at the image below. Choose the selection tool set to rectangle and make a selection around the bottom part of the elipse. Click inside the rectangle and the marching ants will surround the bottom section of the elipse. Go to "Selections - invert" and hit the delete key once to remove the top part of the elipse that is not needed. Go to "Selections - invert" again to return the ants to the bottom of the elipse. Flood fill with the gold gradient and then add a drop shadow using these settings. Magnify your viewing area and take the eraser tool set to 1 and erase the few ring pixels that reach right to the edges of your image. I only had to erase 3 or 4 pixels of colour on each side. You just want a few to extend beyond the bell to give the appearance of it surrounding the bell. PAGE TWO MAIN TUTORIAL LIST This tutorial was posted at the site of "P. Ann's Place" Oct.24,2001 and written by P. Sherman. All I ask is that you do not claim it as your own.