This is what we will be making
Several years ago while attending a Crafts Fair, I came upon a maker of Stained Glass who had some beautiful and unusual things. One of these was a multi-pointed glass star. He called it a "Moravian" star. I liked it so much, I bought 2 of them. They´re a bit heavy to hang on a tree, but they look wonderful on their own special display stands, or just sitting on a table. This is my attempt to recreate them in PSP, which by the way, is the only thing you´ll need to complete this tutorial. :O) You can get it here: www.jasc.com
Note: This tutorial is for intermediate to advanced PSP users and as such, it may not contain detailed instructions for every phase.
Let´s begin!
1. Set your foreground color to black and your background color to white. Open up a new transparent image, 400x400.
2. Select your preset shapes tool, and choose the shaded star shape with the following settings:
Note:You may not have this shape if you downloaded Paint Shop Pro. If you´re unable to find it in your shapes menu, you can get the missing shapes HERE
Draw your star beginning with your cursor at about 30,30 and drag it across the image to approximately 1/4 inch from the edge, then down to about 1/4 inch from the bottom. It should look something like this:
3. While holding down your shift key, and your Magic Wand set on tolerance 0, feather 0, click in each of the 5 empty areas on the star. Go to Selections>Modify>Expand, 2 pixels. Using your flood fill tool, fill the selections with black.
DeSelect.
4. Choose your paintbrush with the following settings:
Zoom in and paint all the empty areas with black. Be sure to check the points on each of the 5 triangle shapes.
5. Grab your Magic Wand, click on the black outer edge (not the black inner triangles). Go to Selections>Modify>Expand, 2 pixels, and as in Step 3, fill the selection with black. Go to Effects>Texture Effects>Sculpture and use these settings:
NOTE: The green and yellow pattern may have a different Number in your computer, just hunt for it in the drop down box.
6. Repeat the sculpture effect. (You´ll have to go through all the steps again. I discovered that if you just click the repeat arrow, it won´t work with this Effect...sigh....) Deselect. I noticed when I finished this step on my star that some of the outlined edges were a bit jagged, so I used my paintbrush tool, with the same settings as before, except I changed the size to "2" and filled in the edges. Of course you don´t have to do this. I tend to get a bit compulsive sometimes, LOL.
This is what your image should like like at this point
Save your image.
Okay, now we´ve prepared our star. On to the fun stuff!
Continued on Page 2 -->
