 Ok, this is not a complete step by step tutorial, but just some things to remember along the way as you fill your basket. After all, you want to fill your basket with your own thoughts and love. *s* First, Some Tips!
Use the pictures below as a reference for my tips:
1. First limit your colors to 3 colors, but you can use as many shades of those colors that you like. 2. Limit your different flowers or tubes to 3 or 4. Otherwise, it will look too busy. (unless you want your basket to look that way! *S*) 3. Choose one tube/flower to be the center of your basket. This is what you will build your basket arrangement around. I chose the striped flower (Sorry, I don't know flower types. *S*) 4. Insert your flowers and tubes, by pasting each on its own
layer. To do this:
5. Vary the sizes of your tubes. This will include having some short tubes and some tall tubes. The object that is supposed to be your "center" should be the largest or single of that size. 6. To create balance, use the mirror of an image. See the
first picture. I placed the pink rose in there on the left side.
Then I duplicated that layer, and and the clicked on Image > Mirror and
placed the copy on the right side. So as I built my arrangement,
I built the left and right side equally.
7. Place some layers behind the handles, between the handle and the basket, and on top of the basket. 8. When placing tubes around the handles, some of the flowers/tubes will need to be "intertwined" around the handle--where some of the graphic is in front, and some of it is behind the handle. There is a small step by step tutorial on this, following these hints. 9. Just remember to have fun, and enjoy decorating your basket!
How to Intertwine your graphics: 1. Open up the basket.psp file you made in the first part of the tutorial (If you haven't made your basket yet, return here.) 2. Open up the tubes that you want to use to decorate your basket, and minimize these images. 3. Open the tube that you want to use to place along your handle. This can be anything--a flower, animal, whatever. I chose this nice dragon tube that would sort of drape around the handle. 4. Click on your tube image and in the top menu, click Edit > Copy 5. The click on your basket image, and in the top menu,
click Edit > Paste > Paste as new layer
6. My tube had to be resized to fit with the basket. So
click Image > Resize. I had to resize mine at 45 %.
7. If you resize any tubes, remember to sharpen! Click Effects
> Sharpen >Unsharpen Mask. Apply these settings: radius = 2,
strength = 25, clipping = 5.
8. Here's what it looks like on my basket:
9. To balance out my basket, I needed a dragon on the other side.
So I right-clicked on my dragon layer, and duplicated it. The dragon
on the right side will be behind the basket, so in the Layer Pallete, I
dragged the copy of the dragon layer all the way to the bottom of the Layer
Palette.
10. Ok, now to make it look like the dragon is intertwining.
I clicked on my original layer of the dragon (the left one) It's
on the top of my basket. I want parts of the dragon's tail to look
like it's going behind the basket handles. See the circled parts
of the pic below.
11. Choose the eraser tool, and set the tool options to round,
size=2, hardness=100, opacity=100, step=25, density=100.
12. Then I carefully erased the parts of the dragon's tail so that they looked like they were behind the basket handle. You may want to magnify your image a few times, to make it easier to see what to erase. 13. Then I had to fix the dragon on the left side to look so that
it intertwined. I clicked on the copy of the dragon layer (at the
bottom). I decided that I wanted parts of the dragon's tail and arm
to look like it was in front of the basket handle. So I had to erase
parts of the handle.
14. Grab the eraser tool again. Click on the handle layer. I erased the right handle parts where I wanted the dragon's tail and arm to show. Then I clicked on the copy of handle layer, and erased the parts of the left handle where I wanted the tail to show. 15. This is what I got. See how the tail of the right dragon
looks like it's in front of the handle, even though the dragon layer is
behind the handle layer.
16. I followed the same Intertwining procedure as I placed my
flowers through out my basket. In the pic below, noticed the left
dragon's tail. I want to erase the part of the tail that is covering
the flower, so I can see the flower.
and I did it to the lilac on the right. It is in a layer behind
the big striped flower so that it is on top of the basket but behind the
flower. But I wanted it to also be in front of the small striped
flower to the right. If I moved the layer, the lilac would end up
behind the big white flower too. So instead, I erased the part of
the small striped flower that overlapped my lilac. Now the lilac
looks like it's in front of that flower.
Keep building your flower basket in layers around around the center until you like what you have. If you do it with one graphic per layer, then you can move the layers around or delete them as you see fit. My finished basket is at the top. When you like what you have, Click on Layers > Merge > Merge Visible and save! Here's another one. Isn't he cute! lol If you look closely, you can see his tail hanging out behind the basket. 
© Dragon's
Breath (aka The Dragon Lord), 2001-2003. This tutorial and the
graphics on this page are copyright to The Dragon Lord, 2003, 2002.
Please do not remove this tutorial from my site. Share my url.
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