bawbletut

It`s fun making your own backgrounds for your web pages.
Borders are very popular and need not be complicated to make.
For this tutorial you will need a fill pattern, and a tube which goes well with the fill pattern.
I made all my own but any you have will work fine.
If you don`t have suitable tubes you can download mine HERE.
You will need to extract the file into your tubes folder before you can use the tube.
If you want my fill pattern feel free to right click the pattern below and save on your computer.

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Start a new image with settings as fig 1.
(The largest monitor width is normally 1024 pixels, so it makes sense to make it at least 1024 pixels wide so people using larger monitors
will see the border correctly-
it will still display properly on smaller monitors.)
The depth is up to you, but I find 150 pixels works pretty well.

If using my fill pattern, open in psp and minimise it (click on the minus sign at the top)...Next go effects/texture effects/sculpture.
Choose your fill pattern and click ok. (fig 2)

Go layers/new raster layer.
Click on the tubes tool than right click it and select tool options.
Choose your tube, size it if neccessary to fit your background (fig 3)
and close tubes tool dialogue box.

Click on your background image to add your tube. If it needs resizing or moving, click the deformation tool, make your changes then click the moving tool to close the deformation tool. (see fig 4)

If You add a bit of depth to the tube using a shadow it will look more interesting.
Go to effects/3D effects/drop shadow (fig 5) then click ok (fig 6)

Now go layers/merge/merge visible.
That`s it! - It`s that easy...
Now save your background for future use,
go file/save as, choose the destination folder, name the image
and save as jpeg for minimum file size. (fig 7)
Click "save" and there it is ready to use...