Glitter Text

To see the printer friendly version of this tutorial, click HERE

This is what we'll be making

For this tutorial you will need:

Paint Shop Pro and Animation Shop.
This version was written for PSP 8 but it can be done equally well in 7 or 9.

Art Deco Font
This font isn't free so if you don't have it, feel free to use any fat font you like.

Glitter tile.
Right click and 'Save As' to a folder of your choice.
Thanks to Amy for the tile :o)

Gradient.
Download and unzip to your gradients folder in PSP...usually located in
 C > Program Files > Jasc Software > Paint Shop Pro 8 > Gradients
Please Note: This gradient wasn't made by me. I downloaded it but now I can't find the site it came from. If it's yours, please email me and I'll add your credit and a link to your site.

Open PSP and open a new image using the following settings:

Click on your text tool and use the following settings:

It doesn't matter what colours you have in your colour palette. I had white in my fill box and red in my stroke box so you could see the text.

Use the nodes on the vector box to stretch your text and make it larger.

Go to the layer palette. Right click on the vector layer and click on Promote to raster layer.

Now go to your colour palette and in the stroke box, load the mqc raven gradient.

Go to Selections > Select All then Selections > Float
Flood fill your name with the gradient using the following settings:

You will now have this:

Add an inner bevel to the text using the following settings:

Now go to Selections > Modify > Contract and contract the selection by 4 pixels.

We now need to duplicate our text layer 8 times so we have 9 layers. Do this by right clicking on the Raster 2 and clicking on Duplicate.
Once you've duplicated the layer 8 times, turn off the visibility of all the copies and click on Raster 2 to make it the active layer.

Now open Animation Shop.
Open the glitter and click on frame 1 to select it.
On your keyboard, press ctrl and c together.
This copies the frame.

Go back to PSP and on your keyboard, press ctrl and v together.
This pastes the frame into PSP.

Go back to Animation Shop and click on frame 2. Press ctrl and c to copy it.
Go back to PSP and press ctrl and v to paste it.

Continue going to Animation Shop and copying each frame then pasting it into PSP until you have 9 individual glitter canvases in PSP.

Note: In PSP 7 & 9, you can copy all the frames together in Animation Shop by pressing ctrl and a then ctrl and c to select all and copy. Then go to PSP and go to Edit > Paste > Paste Animation As Multiple Images.
All the frames will open in PSP as individual images.

Set your stroke box to Pattern and choose the first glitter tile.

Flood fill the selections on the text using the same flood fill settings as before.

Add an inner bevel using the same settings as before.

It will look like this:

Unhide the first copy of raster 2 and click on it to make it the active layer.

Load the second glitter tile into your stroke box.

Flood fill the selection and add the inner bevel.

Go to the layer palette and unhide the next copy of raster 2. Click on it to make it active. Now go to the colour palette again and load the 3rd glitter into the patterns.

Flood fill the selections and add the inner bevel.

Continue doing this until all the layers have been flood filled and the inner bevel added.

When you've done, save it as a PSP file and then open it in Animation Shop.

Click on the crop icon and then click on the options button.

Click on Surround the opaque area and click OK.

Now click on the crop button.

This is what you will have.

You don't need the first frame so click on it to select it and click on the delete frame icon

Save your sig and you're done :o)

I hope you've enjoyed this tutorial.

Tutorial written by Shell © 2005