This tutorial was written by me on November 25, 2023. The results are of my own imagination.  Any resemblance to another tutorial is purely coincidental.  

Please DO NOT claim this tutorial as your own.

This was written assuming you have a working knowledge of PSP.

Please keep in mind that I write the tutorial as I am creating it.

Sometimes I may not explain properly where to place things so please see my example if you are ever in doubt :)

Supplies needed

I am using PSP 2018 but this tutorial should work with any version.

PTU Kit:  I am using an adorable kit called "Northern Holiday" created by Carita Creationz.  

Check out the rest of her store where you can find all her gorgeous kits, AI tubes and CU products here.

Optional:  Only if you are going to animate the tag.

PTU Animation:  I am using Kiya Design's awesome animation 560 psd from "pack 190".  

Check out the rest of her store where you can find all her animations, tubes and scrapping needs here.

Mask:  Mask_Viv_0045.jpg by Vivienne. Thank you for your awesome masks.  You can download it from her blog here. I am using the jpg versions for this tutorial.  

Font of choice for your name. I am using Waving at Christmas which you can find at Dafont here.  

Drop shadow of choice.  I used V 0, H 5, Opacity 55, Blur 5.  I use a lot of Vivienne's drop shadows as I really like the way they look.  You can find her settings on her tutorial site here.

Plug in: None

Animation Shop (Optional).  Only if you want to animate the tag.

Please read all the Artist's/Designer's TOU.

One of the things I do recommend is Save often in the event PSP crashes.

Remember to add a drop shadow as you go along unless otherwise stated.

Let's get started.

Open a new 800x800 transparent image. We will resize later.

Flood fill with white.

Add a new raster layer and select all.

Open pp9, copy and close the original.  Back to your working canvas.  Standing on the new raster layer, go to edit>Paste into selections.  Select none.

Open Vivienne's mask in PSP.  With your new paper layer selected, go to Layers>New mask layer>from Image.  In the drop down, select Vivienne's mask and merge group.  Close Vivienne's mask as we no longer need it.  Resize 90% and again by 95%.  Move it up and to the left slightly.

Copy element 41 and close the original.  Select your working canvas and paste as a new layer.  Resize 50% and move to the upper center.  Do not drop shadow yet.  Select your magic wand and click in the center of the frame.  Selections, modify, expand by 5.  Add a new raster layer and drag it under the frame layer.  Keep everything selected.  

Copy pp1. Back to your working canvas.  Standing on your new raster layer, go to Edit>paste into selections.  Select none and drop shadow the frame.

Copy element 50 and close the original.  Select your top layer and paste.  Resize 30% and move to the top of the frame.   Drop shadow.

Copy element 47 and close the original.  Select your top layer and paste.  Resize 10%, drag this layer under the wordart layer and move to the bottom of the S.   Drop shadow.

Copy element 46 and close the original.  Select your top layer and paste.  Resize 10%, drag this layer under the wordart layer and move to the bottom of the Y.   Drop shadow.

Copy element 45 and close the original.  Select your top layer and paste.  Resize 10%, drag this layer under the wordart layer and move to the top of the A.   Drop shadow.

Copy element 43 and close the original.  Select your top layer and paste.  Resize 10%, drag this layer under the wordart layer and move to the top of D.   Drop shadow.

Copy element 3 and close the original.  Select your top layer and paste.  Resize 30% and move to the right of the frame.   Drop shadow.

Copy element 30 and close the original.  Select your top layer and paste.  Resize 20%, mirror and move to the left of the frame.   Drop shadow.

Copy element 49 and close the original.  Select your top layer and paste.  Resize 40% and move to the bottom left side of the frame.  Duplicate, and mirror the duplicate.  Drag it under the paper layer of the frame.  Move to the top left of the frame.  Drop shadow each layer.

Copy element 20 and close the original.  Select your top layer and paste.  Resize 25% and move to the bottom of the trees.   Drop shadow.

Copy element 2 and close the original.  Select your top layer and paste.  Resize 25% and move to the top right of the iceberg.   Drop shadow.

Copy element 33 and close the original.  Select your top layer and paste.  Resize 15%, mirror and move to the bottom left of the iceberg.   Drop shadow.

Copy element 4 and close the original.  Select your top layer and paste.  Resize 40%, mirror and move to the bottom right of the trees.   Drop shadow.

Copy element 16 and close the original.  Select your top layer and paste.  Resize 10%, and move to the bottom right of the house.   Drop shadow.

Copy element 5 and close the original.  Select your top layer and paste.  Resize 30% and move to the bottom left of the house.   Drop shadow.

Copy element 27 and close the original.  Select your top layer and paste.  Resize 10% and move to the bottom left of pond.   Drop shadow.

Copy element 48 and close the original.  Select your top layer and paste.  Resize 15% and move to the bottom left of the house.   Drop shadow.

Copy element 13 and close the original.  Select your top layer and paste.  Resize 7% and move to the bottom left of the pond.   Drop shadow.

Copy element 9 and close the original.  Select your top layer and paste.  Resize 7% and move to the bottom right of the cookie plate.   Drop shadow.

Copy element 8 and close the original.  Select your top layer and paste.  Resize 10% and mirror.  Drag this layer under the Santa and move to the bottom right of the Santa.   Drop shadow.

Copy element 36 and close the original.  Select your top layer and paste.  Resize 7%, drag this layer under the pail layer and move to the bottom right of the pail.   Drop shadow.

Copy element 34 and close the original.  Select your top layer and paste.  Resize 10%, Move to the bottom left of the pond.  Drop shadow.

Copy element 37 and close the original.  Select your top layer and paste.  Resize 5%, drag this layer under the penguin layer and move to the bottom left of the penguin.   Drop shadow.

Copy element 25 and close the original.  Select your top layer and paste.  Resize 13% and drag this layer under the penguin layer.  Move to the bottom right of the penguin.   Drop shadow.

Copy element 28 and close the original.  Select your top layer and paste.  Resize 5% and move to the bottom left of the boots.   Drop shadow.

Copy element 19 and close the original.  Select your top layer and paste.  Resize 5% and move to the bottom left of the flower.   Drop shadow.

Copy element 7 and close the original.  Select your top layer and paste.  Resize 5% and move to the bottom right of the girl.   Drop shadow.

Copy element 32 and close the original.  Select your top layer and paste.  Resize 10% and move to the bottom right of the snowballs.   Drop shadow.

Add any other elements you like and make any adjustments to the layers.

Crop away any extra space.  Resize 650 on the longest side, all layers checked.

Add your copyright and name.

If you do not want to animate.  Hide the white background layer Save your tag and export as png.

Animation portion:

We are going to be using a mask on the animation.  We need to do a few things before starting with the animation.

Hide the white layer.

Animating the tag.  Make sure your tag is saved as a psp image file as you do not want to loose it if psp crashes.

Might want to grab a coffee :)

Merge your mask layer, bottom tree layer together.  Leave the paper layer under the frame as a single layer.  Hide the new merged layer and the paper layer.  Now we need the reset of the layers as one layer.  Make sure the white layer, merged mask layer, paper layer and your name layer are hidden by clicking on the eyeball.  Right click on one of the open layer and merge visible.  You should now have 5 layers.  The white background layer.  Your merged mask layer.  The paper layer, the merged frame/elements layer and your name layer.

It should look something like this.  I don't have my name added yet so it is not included in the screen shot.  Please sharpen your layers if you have not sharpened them already. 

Open Kiya Designs 560 psd file in psp.  Shift + D to duplicate it and close the original.  Do not save any changes as a psd file will merge into one layer.  We do not want this to happen.  

You will notice that there is 25 layers in this animation and it does not have the group layer.  That is ok as we are going to learn how to do this.

We need to group all the odd layers.  Starting from layer 25, hold down your control key and select each odd layer so the next one will be 23 then 21 etc.  Once all the odd layers are selected (the layers will be highlighted in blue) we need to group them.  All odd layers selected? 

Next we need to group these layers.  Go to Layers, New layer group.  Scroll all the way to the top and you will see Group 1 with all the odd layers as sub layers.  

Select group 1, copy and close the original.  Select your tag layer and paste.  When you paste grouped layers it will always go to the top.  Standing on group one select the link icon to link all the layer.  Click the arrow beside the new group to hide all the sub layers.

Standing on group 1 go to Layer, arrange, send to the bottom.  Drag this group just above the paper layer. Resize 50% all layers not selected.  Select the pick tool and moved it up so the animation shows nicely in the frame.  

The ani is larger than our tag but that is ok as we are going to fix this.  Select the paper layer.  Select all, float, defloat.  Select group 1 layer, Layers, new mask layer, Show selections.  You will now have two group layers.  Group 1 is your ani layer.  Group-group1 is your group layer with the mask.  Deselect your selection by hitting the Ctrl + D on your keyboard.

Expand the group 1 layer and hide all they frames by clicking on the eyeball beside each frame.  Leave frame 1 visible.

Select Group-Group1 layer.

Ok we are now finished our tag and ready to animate.

Open Animation shop and go back to psp.

You should have your white background layer, mask layer, paper layer and element layer, copyright and name visible.  For the animation group, only frame 1 of the animations visible, edit, copy special, copy merged.

Back to Animation shop.

Edit, paste as new animation or keyboard shortcut Ctrl+V.

**Back to psp.

Hide Frame 1 by clicking on the eyeball and unhide frame 3 by clicking on the eyeball. Edit, copy special, copy merged.

Back to Animation Shop.

We need to paste after current frame.  Go to edit, paste after current frame.**

Repeat from **to** until you have 13 frames in animation shop.  It will tell you on the bottom right corner how many frames you have.  

Select all the frames in Animation shop Ctrl + A.  Go to Animation>Frame properties.  When the pop up window appears type in 15 and click ok.

Go to file Save as, gif and click next and next until you hit finished.  I use the default settings.

I hope you have enjoyed my tutorial.  I would love to see your results.