Antique Glass Ornaments

This tutorial and these images are © 2001 Melisa McCurley. It is unlawful to use them on another site or distribute them in any manner (incuding passing them on mailing list) without written permission. You may use the images you create from this tutorial any way you wish.

You will need a square graphic or photo and an ornament top (hanger). You can get my ornament top here or use one of your own. If you'd like to follow along with the same graphic I used, you can get it here.

If you are using a different graphic, crop your graphic or photo to make it square. We are using a 300 x 300 image for this tutorial. Duplicate it and set one copy aside for later. Take the copy you will be working on and right click the background layer and promote it to a layer.

Use the dropper tool to select a color from the graphic as your foreground color. Make your background color null.

Add a new layer.

Set your shapes tool to oval, set the line width to 14 or whatever gives you a width you like. I like a 14 for a 300 x 300 sized graphic.

Hold down the shift key and draw a large circle. The shift key will make the oval a perfect circle. Now, to make the circle be in the exact center, cut and paste as a new layer. It will then be perfectly positioned.

Then Add Noise 10%, Random. This will add a slight sparkle effect. Don't worry if it seems too bright now. It will be toned down a lot later.

Then do an Inner Bevel with these settings.

With the magic wand, click inside your circle and then Modify, Expand 2. Now go to the layer below your circle, which should be a blank layer. With your circle selection still active, do a cutout with these settings.

Turn off visibility to layer 1 (your beginning image) and merge visible layers. Turn layer 1 back on.

On your merged layer, do Kaleidoscope with these settings-

With your eraser tool, erase the shape in the center. Make sure to get it all or it will cause problems later. You can use the freehand selection tool to select and delete it instead of the eraser, if you prefer.

With layer 1 active, do Kaleidoscope with the same settings as before. Then do it again! After running Kaleidoscope twice you should have a really pretty design.

Still on layer 1, do a Geometric Effects, Circle. Then sharpen.

Go to your merged layer and do a Geometric Effects, Circle. Then Sharpen.

Now this is pretty enough to use as it is, but we are going to add our graphic or photo back to it. On your merged layer, click inside the center shape with your magic wand. You may need to clean up some stray pixels to be able to select the entire insid shape. Then Selections, Modify, Expand 2.

Add a new layer.

Now go back to the copy of your original graphic that you set aside in the beginning. Copy it. Then back to your ornament on the new layer you just added and Paste Into Selection. Select none, then drag this layer down in between your merged layer and layer 1.

Merge visible layers. Now we will give it some depth. Select All, Float. Now do a Cutout with these settings-

Do another cutout with these settings-

Select none.

Now we need to add a little room so we can add the ornament top. Do Image, Canvas Size, width-300, height-400, with UNcheck vertical horizontal and use Top-100, Bottom-0.

Add a new layer to the top of your stack and add the OrnamentTopMMDM tube or use the ornament top of your choice. If you use mine, set it to Size 30 for a 300 x 300 image. And you're done!

*A fun thing to do is alter the color on just the kaleidoscoped graphic or photo layer by using the colored edges effect in PSP 7. On the image below, I used a golden yellow edge to completely change the look of the ornament.

This also works great on photographs. It works much better on a snapshot that has something in the background than it will for professional photos that have a mostly solid background. Don't worry if the background of your photo isn't pretty. The kaliedoscope will take the colors and make something wonderful. Click here to see an ornament made from a photo.