Tis the season!

Materials needed

Paint Shop Pro - I used PSP9, other versions will work. Animation Shop - Tube of choice. - Download Kayleen's girl here. Thanks Kayleen! Font of choice. Glitter - You can find glitter fills by googling for 'glitter fills'. Right click on the glitter to save it to your harddrive.

Skill level - Intermediate.

Preparation:

Open your tube in PSP. Shift + D to duplicate the tube if you are going to modify it - resize it to fit into a 500X500 pixel image. You want your tube to leave a lot of space to work around in this tag. Close the original tube to use again another day.

Open your glitter in Animation Shop
It will open up as multiple frames.
Edit > Select All
Edit > Copy

Switch back to PSP and right click on a blank space in your workspace.
Paste Animation as Multiple Images.
If you use the glitter provided, you will have three separate images.

Choose a dark color from your tube for the foreground and a light color for your background. Set your foreground material box to gradient - foreground-background - with these settings: Angle 4, Repeats 0, Style Linear -

Compare the color of your glitter to the tube you are going to work with. If it seems it will match the colors in the tube, then you're good to go.

If the colors need to be adjusted, you can colorize your glitter to match.
Click on the first glitter tile to select it.
Adjust > Hue and Saturation > Colorize
If you have a preset close to the color you want to use, select it and then run the sliders for H: and S: back and forth until you find a color you want to use. Colorize each of your glitter tiles with the same settings.
Adjust > Brightness and Contrast > Brightness and Contrast.
Negative (-) will darken your image. (+) Positive settings will lighten your colors.

Minimize the glitter tiles.

Open a new 500X500 pixel raster image, with a transparent background.
Floodfill your image with your gradient.
Adjust>Add Remove Noise > Add Noise with these settings:
Gaussian checked , 4%, Monochrome checked.

Copy your tube and paste it into your new image as a new layer. Use the mover tool to position your tube away from the middle of the image. Add a narrow drop shadow to your tube.

The next step involves doing text on a line. I won't go into detail of how to do text on a bezier line, but you can refer to this tut for help.

Draw your bezier line with your foreground gradient - making it wide enough to be visible in your tag. Vary the gradient if you want, choosing different settings so that the line shows up against the gradient background. Place your text on the line so that it follows the curve across the page. Make sure it shows up against the gradient background, too. Play with your text settings until you find the colors and style you like. Do not convert this layer to a raster layer.

When you have your text and line created and positioned the way you want them...
Right click on the + in front of Vector 1 layer to expand your vector layers. Right click on the text layer and choose Create Raster Selection. Add a drop shadow using the same settings as before. This will create a new raster layer with the drop shadow.

Right click on the New Path layer in the layer palette.
Create Raster Selection.
Add the same drop shadow as you used before.
This creates a new raster layer of your line with a drop shadow.

Make sure that your text layer is above the line layer or it will not look right.

You can delete the vector layer for now, or if you want to change the message for tagging, hide it.

(A trick I use often is to save the image I am working on as my first draft. I duplicate the image and delete vector layers I no longer want in this project and work from the new duplicate.)

Hide your background (Bottom layer) and the tube layer, leaving your line and text layers visible. Right click on one of the visible layers and choose Merge > Merge Visible.

Unhide your tube and your background layer.

You will have three layers. One with your text, one with your tube and your bottom background layer.

Click on the bottom layer to select it.

Effects > Plugins > AAA Frames > Foto Frame with these settings:

Layers > New Raster Layer
PSP will automatically select the new layer. It should be above the bottom layer.

Selection Tool > Ellipse > with these settings:
Mode: ADD
Feather 0,
Antialias checked.

Draw an elliptical selection somewhere on your canvas -

With the selection tool in ADD mode, draw several selections around your canvas. You can change the selection type to stars, rounded rectangle, square, circle, etc. You can overlap a selection behind the tube and text layers if you want. The glitter will be behind the tube and your text.

If you draw a shape where you don't want it, you can use the undo button to remove the last selection you made. If you don't like the placement of all of the selections, right click to deselect everything. Do a design where you want your glitter to sparkle from.

Material palette.
Set your foreground to Pattern.
Browse to your first glitter tile.
I adjusted the size of my glitter to 150% to create the fill I wanted.

Fill your empty layer with the glitter fill. Do not Deselect...
Add a drop shadow using these settings

Make a new raster layer. Do not deselect.
Material palette > Pattern again.
Browse to your second glitter tile.
Use the same settings as the first.
Floodfill the selections in the second glitter layer with your pattern.
Add a drop shadow to this layer, same settings as before.

Layers > New Raster Layer. Do not deselect.
Material Palette > Pattern.
Select the third glitter tile and floodfill the selections of the third layer.
Add the same dropshadow to this layer.

If you chose a glitter with more than three tiles, repeat the above step until you have a layer for each tile.

Hide all of the glitter layers (X out the eye behind the layer names) except for the first glitter layer.
Make sure your background, tube and text layers are visible. If you want to reposition the tube or text again, do it now.
Deselect.

The background layer, the bottom glitter layer, the tube layer and the text layer should all be visible.

Edit > Copy Merged.

Launch Animation Shop and right click on the workspace.
Paste as New Animation.

Back to Paint Shop Pro.
Hide the first glitter layer and unhide the glitter layer above it in the layer palette.
Edit > Copy Merged

Switch to Animation Shop and right click on the first frame of your animation.
Paste > After Current Frame.
You will have two frames that look almost identical. You may have to slide the button to the left to see the second frame. It will be selected.

Back to PSP.
Hide the second glitter layer and unhide the 3rd glitter layer
Edit > Copy Merged.
Back to Ani-Shop.
Right click on the 2nd frame and choose Paste > After Current Frame.

If you have more glitter layers, repeat the copy merged and paste after current frame steps until all your glitter layers are copied and pasted as new frames in Ani-Shop.

View > View Animation
Click back on your Frames window to edit your animation.

If you want your animation to slow down : Edit > Select All.
Animation > Frame Properties.
Change the number in the Properties window in intervals of 5 or 10 until the animation speed looks right to you.

When your animation looks right to you, choose View > View in Web Browser.
Select your browser and a background color in the first window.

In the second window, you can select optimizing settings. I use the highest colors and default settings for an animation with a solid background, so I just click thru until I see my animation in my web browser. If I like it, I click back to Animation Shop, close the View in Browser window and resize my animation for web/email use. I resize all of my images in multiple small intervals - 90% - bicubic resampling.

Save your animation as a gif. You will go through the optimization screens again.

Here is another tag I did using this technique.

I hope you enjoyed doing this tut as much as I enjoyed writing it.

vetch