In this tutorial I used the art of

Eos Sparks.

You need a license to use Eos’ art, they are available at

The PSP Project.

I used two of the beautiful Peppermint Pleasures clusters.

You can purchase the clusters, cluster frames and the kit
 independently or as a bundle from

Deedles n Doodles store.

You will need Animation Shop and my snow animation

here.

You will also need a snow scene, I used a paper from

The “December Magic” kit also from

Dee.

I used Christmas mask 6 from

Fecnikek.

Font of choice.

I used a drop shadow of vertical 0 horizontal 5, opacity 65, blur 10.

Open a new transparent canvas 750 by 700 pixels and fill with white.

Make a new layer and fill with the colour #d7a7b1.  Paste the mask as a new layer, resize it 40%, select it, float and defloat it, invert the selection, click on the colour layer to activate it and hit delete, deselect and delete the black mask layer.

Paste cluster 8, resize it 60% and place in position.

Paste cluster 7a, mirror it and place in position.  I re-coloured the flame. 

Paste the tube, resize 80%, place in position and apply the drop shadow.

Check your layers now, I pulled the mask out very slightly wider, crop your tag and add your copyright information and text. 

With your selection tool set to rectangle and the mode set to add, draw two selectins around the two open parts of the frame and get your two scenes in position.  Do not deselect.

Open the snow animation in Animation shop, select all the frames then go to File – Export frames – to Paint Shop Pro, your frames will then open in Paint Shop.  Back in Animation Shop go to File – Export frames – Break link with exported frames.

Now you need to paste each later of snow onto your tag between your scene and the cluster frame being very careful not to move them or the snow will jump.  When you  have pasted all the snow layers, invert the selection and hit delete on each one to delete the snow that is outside the frame, deselect.

Close off all the frames apart from the first one, right click on your tag and paste it in Animation Shop “As a new animation”.  Close off the first frame, open the second and paste it in Animation Shop “Before current frame”.  Repeat with each layer of snow.  Check your animation, if the snow is going in the wrong direction, select all the frames and go to “Animation – Reverse Animation”.

When you are done, run your tag through the Optimization Wizard and save as a gif.