Snow Globe

Open a new image with a black background. Make it large so it is easy to work with. We can scale it down later. With the selection tool select a circle at the top of your image. Now flood fill it with white. Again, with the selection tool select a rectangle over the circle and flood fill it with white. Finally select an ellipse at the bottom of the the rectangle, and flood fill it with white. (NOTE: when you make your selections, if you choose the move tool and use the right mouse button, you can reposition the selection where you want it.)

Now to make the base. Make a copy of your finished dome from above to work from. To start make a ellipse selection at the bottom of your dome (just a little wider than the width of the dome), and with the move tool and right mouse button, move it to the dome edge. Then flood fill it with a different color (any color will do, it is just to keep track of it). Next select a rectangle to extend the ellipse like we did to make the dome. Flood fill this selection too.

With the selection tool, make an ellipse seletion on the side of the base about the same height as the base. Use your move tool and right mouse button to position it into place then flood fill it with color. Repeat this on the other side. Now make an ellipse selection at the bottom of the base (the same width as the base), move it into position and flood fill. This will give the base it's roundness. Finally paste your dome over the dome already present, and the top edge of your base.

Now with the magic wand tool, select your base (NOTE: to make sure you select the entire base you may need to adjust the tolerance or use the shift key when you click to choose multiple sections until the whole base is selected). Next, with black as your background and some shade of yellow as your foreground select the flood fill tool settings; Linear Gradient options: Direction=270. And then flood fill it again with settings; Direction=90. You may need to adjust the tolerance and opacity to get the blended effect you like. Now you could leave the base like this, but if you wanted to give it a metal effect continue on...

The next step requires Filter Factory's Gallery A: Pool Shadow filter. With your base still selected, choose Image/Plugin/Filter Factory A/ Pool Shadow and adjust the settings to your liking. Now you could use the base as it is ore continue and apply Hot wax by Image/Other/Hot Wax Coating. Again, you could just use the base this way, or you could Brighten and Contrast it or Adjust RBG to make it more gold. Experiment with Colors/Adjust/...whatever.

Now open another copy of your dome to work on. With the magic wand tool select the white dome area. Then with the air brush tool settings; Paper Texture=clouds, Size=30 to 40, Shape=round, and Opacity and Density set to whatever you like, make a misty background just in your white dome area. Choose a nice image (I am using some victorian clip art that I purchaced in a holiday clip art package), you may need to clean up the background so that you can select just the image. Now Edit/Copy this image and Edit/Paste as Trasparent Image onto your dome. (NOTE: For the image to paste with transparency the background color of your image must be selected as the background color in the color palette.) Now promote this image to layer. Open a copy of your dome again. You will need to open the original and copy it again. Select it with the magic wand tool. Now with black as your background color and white as your foreground select the flood fill tool settings; Sunburst Gradient, options: Both Offsets=0. You can adjust the Opacity and Tolerance to your liking.

Now with this shadow image Edit/Copy and Edit/Paste as New Layer over your dome with the image inside. Adjust the opacity of the shadowed layer opacity until your image shows through. This will give the dome a shadowed effect and round it out some. Finally Edit/Cut this image and go back to the image you made with just the dome and base. Edit/Paste as Transparent, this image over over the existing dome (making sure your background is selected for proper transparency). Any color you wanted to transfer, but didn't, can be touched up with the paint brush tool.

To top it off... Create a new layer. On this layer choose the air brush tool settings; Size=2 or 3, Shape=round, and make white snowflakes over the image within the dome. Now choose Image/Blur/Soften (or Soften More if you like). And now you are done! (NOTE: I did all the work at a much larger size to make it easier to see and make touchups, then I resized it to make it web-ready!)



By making 2 to 4 copies of your image before the snowflakes and adding snowflakes in different patterns, you can use Animation Shop to animate your snowglobe.



I got this tutorial from Michele and have made some adjustments that I found made it a little easier.