Tag Tutorial - Masquerade Mayhem

 Masquerade Mayhem

Supplies Needed

Mizteeque Mask 268 - Download from her blog HERE

My Masks 477 and 479 - Download from my main blog HERE

Two very large images or backgrounds of your choice - I used two beautiful ones from Carita Creationz - HERE

(They are PTU so if you have a couple of very large, square images to use?  Great)

Preset Shape - This is one of my old favourites by the lovely Mikel Glade Lyman aka Mz Kels from With Wild Abandon!  If you remember her?  Then *high five* for the old skool taggy girls circa early to mid 2000s LOL! 

I've uploaded this shape to my box - HERE

Brush - I've had this one for years too, it's called wljsquares15 001 (no idea where I got this from, if you know, please let me know so I can give proper kudos!)

Brush HERE and the Brush Tip HERE

Place both of these brush items into your Brush folder 

Wordart - Made by me for this tut - HERE

Let me know if these links don't work and I'll see what I can do.

Ready for an old style tutorial?

You will need an understanding of working with the layer palette, preset shapes, brushes, file locations and confidence with using selections - if you've done some of my previous tuts on this blog, you'll probably enjoy this one :)

Ready? 

Let's go!

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We begin with the paper/s you're using - 

The ones I'm using measure 3000 x 3000 so you'll want equal or perspective measurements 

(square background not rectangular OR take a favourite rectangle image and crop it squarely!)

Open your Papers - duplicate them (Shift + D together) and then close the originals so you don't mess them up

Duplicate them again (yes really!) so you now have 2 copies of each background open

One will be for the close up crops and one will be for the masking

Choose one to start

Click on it in the Layer Palette and Promote Background Layer

Now, click again and choose Duplicate the layer

On the top copy

Effects - Texture Effects, Straw Wall 

Using the dropper tool that comes up when you open it, choose a nice dark colour shade from your image for the colour box but otherwise use these settings as mine as above 

Once applied, go to your layer palette and choose a Layer mode from the dropdown menu - whatever compliments your background/image 

I chose Soft Light (which seemed to be fantastic combo of the effect from Hard Light and also Screen!)

Choose one for you

Once applied - Layers, Merge Visible

Duplicate this whole image - and on one of them

apply one of my square masks - Vix_Mask 476 - 480

(I used 479 for this first image)

Apply

Merge Group

Now go to your copy of this Straw Wall applied image

On this one - apply Mask Miz_Mask268 which is one of my favourites to use!

Apply to this image as before

OK - ooooh them is big LOL!

So now, we're going to resize to a slightly more taggy size (bear in mind, I still work large these days due to tubes/images being deliciously large too!)

Go to Image, Resize and I chose to Resize by PERCENTAGE, resize the whole image (all layers) by 30%

This brought my image down to 900 x 900 pixels

Good!

Resize the first one now too - same size

So you've prepped your first two masked images

Great!

Do the same with the other image you've chosen 

Resize the masked images to 30% and 

So you should now have 4 masked images and two very large original ones?

Fab-u-looooooous!

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Open a new Image in PSP - BIG!

I went for 2500 x 2000 72 dpi

Flood Fill the Bottom layer with White

Back to the masked images - here's where you copy and paste

and place as New Layers onto this TAG CANVAS we've just created

Paste them all centrally (this should automatically happen in PSP)

And now for the mayhem!

Depending on what images you're using, you should now have 4 masked layers one on top of each other?

MOVE them using the move tool however you'd like - use my tag for reference if you'd like (or are using the same images)

For my tag - I overlayed my mask images over the Miz masked images - and I moved the Miz masked images next to each other on the canvas (horizontally)

then added my mask layers and lined them up, they looked quite spiffy like that!

Zoom in to get a better look and this is where your artistic flair comes in; whatever looks good for your chosen background images - Do that!

Overlap if needed, move a lot or just move slightly; go for it! 😂

Once you're happy that you've copy and pasted over as needed - you can close the masked images you created now (If your PSP is old, it'll probably breathe a sigh of relief LOL!)

You should now have 2 x original background copies and one big main tag canvas image left open?

Excellent - let's crack on

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Now we're going to CROP the tag canvas image and this will be the final "resize"

(I won't compromise on the quality of the image to make a much smaller tag)

so I cropped my canvas to

1992 x 1261 

You crop as you need to get the masks quite centrally to your tag canvas

Resize if you wish - but I'm not going to LOL!  Big is rather beautiful so keep it big unless you're posting in a forum (hellooooooo Misfits and all other lovelies!) in which case, resize to a forum friendly size right about now

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Find the Preset Shape - dbmmisc04 which you have placed into your PSP Files under Preset Shapes, yes?  Good!

Now, chose a nice colour from your tag - I went for mid purple

Place this in the Material Palette top box - Line Width around 7.00 and nothing in the bottom box

Now draw out the Preset Shape (use mine for guidance) stretch it out nice and horizontally wide

Once drawn out, Convert to Raster and Objects, Align, Horizontal Centre in Canvas

Move this layer down the Layer Palette so it's UNDER the masks but over the White Background

Now using your Magic Wand tool, click inside all the 5 inside areas of the shape, Selections, Modify, Expand by 2, then save as a Selection if needed (or liked) or just keep it with the "marching ants" 😉

Zoom in and out if you need to 'see' what you're doing - 

Go back to your very large original images, copy one of them

Paste as New Layer - yup, full sized

IT'S HUUUUUGE!  Don't worry, simply - Selections, Invert, and hit DELETE

Keep it Selected

Back to the large original image - Resize the whole image to 50%

C&P once more - move this over to the left or right, depending on the placement of your images

Hit Delete (It's still INVERTED, remember?  Yaaaaaaaassss!  You rock!)

Keep going with the other image - resize 50% as before 

(or adapt the resize to suit your tag canvas images etc)

C&P, Place and Hit Delete

Selection, Invert 

Add a New Layer in the Layer Palette - this one move directly under the Preset Shape Layer and apply, Effects, 3d Effects, Cutout on these settings 

(your layer which is empty, will now have a inner frame shadow on it)

Whoooooooo!  looking good, peeps!

OK, no more Selections needed

So now - check that your two images just placed on the canvas are in the right order in your Layer Palette

So from the Preset Shape Layer - going down the LP

Underneath should be the Cutout

Then one of the 50% resize image layers

Then the other one

and then the very large background image we pasted

and finally the White Back?

If you've got this, you're nearly finished!

Well done for following my rambling nonsense, I am so out of practice writing tuts but we'll get there LOL!

OK - so final finishing touches

On the two 50% resized layers - change their Blend Mode in the Layer Palette if liked I did, I changed mine to Screen for the right image and Hard Light for the left - but this will all depend what light/shade your image/s have; so, experiment with the finishes and see what looks good for your tag

Add some brushes if liked - I used the one I supplied - use a foreground/background gradient and stamp out on a new layer of it's own, lined up on the left side of the tag (as mine)

Make sure this layer is just above the white background 

On the brush layer in the layer palette, right click and Duplicate

Image, Mirror Horizontal

Looks good on the right side?  If not, move and line up as needed

Layers, Merge Down

Then Duplicate and Move Down the duplicate to the bottom of the shape area

Open my Wordart PNG as supplied, place as mine (resize and recolour if needed)

then add a shadow or gradient glow of choice

Finally, 

Take your colours of choice, using a font of your choice and add your name

Add any Artist Credit or Copyright/Licence information

Delete the White Background

Crop a little more if liked - not resize, just crop (remember the Snap Crop Rectangle as per previous tutorials?) as the massive image layer is still laying there outside of the canvas that you can't currently see, so we need to crop :)

Save a copy as a PNG tag and then Save your Tag Canvas Image as a PSPIMAGE so you can always revisit and add more names if liked.

DONE!

If you've made it to the end?  Bless you 🤣😍

Thanks for trying it and let me know if you had fun!

Hugs all round xx

This tutorial was written on the 14th/15th March 2024 by Vix aka VixPSP

It's totally from my own invention, written as I tagged along and if it bears ANY resemblance to other tag tutorials out there, it'll be a bloody miracle, entirely coincidental and totally unintentional.

Thank you and take care xx