A copper tea pot, approxiametly eight inches tall. The main body of this pot was raised from a flat sheet of 18 gauge copper. The spout is constructed from a piece of copper tubing that was hammered into shape. The handle on the piece is actually taken from another one of my pieces that you will see later in my gallery. Finally, the finish on the piece is a patina.

This piece is an abstract comb. The main construction was with silver wire to make up the face. The flames on the crown are made from silver sheet. The piece has a total of eight stones, four on each side. It is about eight inches in height.

Here is a set of candle holders. They are both constructed out of a single sheet of copper. The process to do these is called piercing. It is a very long and tedious process in which you break many many saw blades but the end result is always worth it. The finish on both pieces is a patina. When lit these pieces produce some very cool shadows. If you didn’t notice the handle from the copper pot up top was taken from one of these.

This is not one of my favorite pieces but it turned out ok. Its a cigarette case. There are several techniques used to make this piece. The main shape was done with a process called die forming. With die forming you use a hydraulic press to press the metal into a form that you have cut out in plastic. Its a very cool process and I did some neat stuff with it. The pattern on the body of the case is a process called solder inlay which was one of my favorite techniques. It’s another long and tedious process but the results are always worth it.

This was the very first piece that I did in my metals classes. It’s a jewelery box about five inches across. The scales on the snake are another example of solder inlay. After finishing this piece I was certain that metals was going to be my major.

This is another shot of the same piece above. I never was very happy with the jewelery that was inside the box, but I’ll let you all see it anyway.

This ring was a serious pain in the ass to make. If there is one thing that I’ve found in life it’s simple doesn’t mean easy. Soldering the pieces together was the hard part. Trying not to melt the silver and keep the angles straight was a nightmare. When all was said and done I was very happy with the final piece.

This is one of the very few pieces that I ever did in steel. This sun is about 3 feet in diameter and was surprisingly easy to make. It is currently hanging above the staircase at my Mom’s house.

This was made as a present for my Mom. It is a silver tea strainer and one of my favorite pieces that I ever made. It is fairly small about four inches tall and turned out just the way that I wanted it.

Here is the tea strainer shown in it’s open position. The handle sits inside of the stem when the piece is closed.

Now we are going to give the text a jagged look, which will make the flames more realistic later on. Go to your filters and choose Distort/Ripple. I used a setting of 100% for the amount and medium for size.

Flatten your image (Layer/Flatten Image) and then Invert the image (Image/Adjustments/Invert).

Then rotate the image 90 degrees counter clockwise.

It is time to start making the flames themselves. Go to your filters and under Stylize choose wind blowing from the right. You may want to do this more than once, it just depends on the size of the image you are working with and how big you want your flames to be.

Those flames are a little too straight so let’s make them more flame-like. Go into your filters again and choose Distort/Ripple. Set the ripple values at: Amount 50 and the size at medium. (sorry if you can’t see the ripple effect in the picture trust me it’s there)

Rotate the image so that the flames are sticking up. For you not so quick ones out there rotate 90 degrees clockwise.

Apply the ripple filter again, use the same settings. This will make the flames look a little more realistic.

Now it is time to colorize the flames. Change the mode of the image to Index color (Image/Mode/Indexed Color). Once index is chosen go to your color table and choose Black Body. You can do this by going to Image/Mode/Color Table, and on the menu that pops up choose Black Body from the drop down menu.

And that my friends is how you make flaming text in Photoshop. Any questions or comments about this Photoshop tutorial please fill out the form below.

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Control click on one of the layers with the letters to bring up its selection. Then go to your channels menu and save the selection as a new channel. Working on the newly created channel (Alpha 1) with the selection still active do a series of Gaussian blurs starting at 16 then 8,4,2 and finally one.

Now go back to your layers palette, working on the top layer go to your lightening effects (filters/render/lighting effects) I used the settings that you see below.

After the lightening effects your image will look like this. As you can see lighting effects is a great tool in Photoshop, thanks Adobe.

You will notice that after the lightening effects the image looks a little rough. We can fix that, just do a Gaussian blur of 2 pixels over it to smooth it out. You may not notice a difference here but trust me you will when you do it.

Still working on the top layer, we are going to adjust the curves to start to give the image its chrome look. Set your curves to the settings shown below.

After you have adjusted your curves your image will look like the one below. Which looks pretty cool, but I like it better after the last step.

The last thing to do is add the plastic wrap. You can find the plastic wrap filter under filters/artistic/plastic wrap. Set all the levels to their maximum.That is all for this Photoshop tutorial folks. Any questions, comments or feedback fill out the form below.

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Next flatten the image and then duplicate it. In your new layer (should be called background copy) fill with white using the fill option (Edit/Fill) with the mode set to multiply. Now we are going to do a gaussian blur. Blur the image by 2 or 3 pixels.

Next, solarize the image. You can find this under Filter/Stylize/Solarize.

Next you’re going to set the levels. Go to Image/Adjust/Auto Levels.

OK you with me so far? Now you are going to duplicate the image again, this step is important, don’t miss it!!.

Then we are going to really screw with the image. Go to your filters and under distort choose Polar Cordinates, make sure that polar to rect. is checked and hit ok. You should get something like the image below.

Now rotate the image 90 degrees clockwise.

Invert the image (Image/Adjustments/Invert).

Now we’re going to screw with the image some more. Go to your filters and under Stylize choose wind. Make sure that you’re blowing from the right and that you’re on wind. Apply this filter three times.

Next set the levels again using the auto levels command (Image/Adjustments/Auto Levels).

Invert the image yet again.

With the image inverted apply the wind filter three more times.

Rotate the canvas 90 degrees counter clockwise to get it off its side.

Now go back to your distort filters. Choose polar coordinates again but this time set it to rect. to polar.

We are almost done, are you excited yet? Go to Image/Adjust/Hue Saturation and make sure that colorize is checked. Move the sliders around until you find a color scheme that you like and hit ok.

Remember way back when when I told you to duplicate a level, this is when it comes into effect. You should have three different layers. Move the middle layer so that it is on top. Set the mode to screen and fiddle with the opacity (75% or so is good) and you’re done!!!

If you have any questions or comments about this photoshop tutorial please fill out the form below.

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All right, using the magic wand tool select the white background (you do not have to worry about selecting the inside of letters, such as the middle of an O). Apply the Crystallize filter using a value of 10. Your text should have a jagged look now.

OK, now do a select inverse so that your text is selected. Under your filters menu find the noise filter and add noise with a value of 70 with the distribution set to Gaussian

With the text still selected run a slight Gaussian blur over it. Use a value of 2 or so.

This next step can be a little tricky. You need to adjust the curves, curves are one of the most powerful tools in Photoshop but are mostly used for photo retouching, but you can also made some great effects with them too. Below you can find the settings that I use when doing this effect. Below is what the text should look like after you have changed the curves.

Deselect the image. Then invert it (image/adjust/invert)

Rotate the image 90cw.

Apply the wind filter. For short icicles use the wind filter once, for long do it twice. I used it twice in this example.

Straighten up the image by rotating it 90ccw.

Now it is time to give the image some color. Go to image/adjust/Hue Saturation and make sure that the colorize box is checked. Move the sliders around and find a color scheme that looks like ice to you. You may have to play with both the Hue and the Saturation levels for the desired effect.

The last step really brings this effect to life. Choose your air brush tool and use one of the custom brushes that came with photoshop to give it that sparkle look.

Any questions or comments on this Photoshop tutorial please fill out the form below.

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First off why don’t you download the image that I use in the tutorial so we are both on the same page, ok? Just right click the image and choose “Save Picture As”

This will tile very ugly, if you want to see click here and take a look.

Lets fire up Photoshop and get started. It is a good idea, although not neccessary, to make a duplicate of this image. It will help later on so why don’t you make a copy.

OK now it is time to put that offset filter to work. This image is 280X200 so we are going to offset it by half. So go ahead and choose your offset filter and enter in 140 for the width and 100 for the height. Make sure that you have wrap around checked and hit ok. You should have an image just like the one below.

Now if you were to tile this picture all the edges would match up, but of course you would still have that ugly cross section right in the middle. So why don’t we get rid of it. The best way to cover up those seams is to work with the original image (you did make a copy didn’t you?). Choose the lasso tool and under its options set the feather to 3 or 4.

Now you should have both images open, working on the original unaltered one cut out one of the smaller starfish. You should have one of the starfish selected. We are going to bring that starfish into our offset image. Select the move tool and place it on your selected area. Now if you hold down the Alt button while using the Move tool you will copy whatever is in the selected area. So holding down the Alt button drag the selection into the offset image. Once you have the starfish in your offset image you can use the move tool to place it so that it covers up some of that ugly seam. Now if you want you can use this same starfish to cover up more of the seam. After you have placed it all you need to do is hold down Alt and move the starfish over another part of the seam. Since you are copying it, it will stay where you originally placed it and you can use it again to cover up more of the seam. Now just go back to the original image and select another starfish with the lasso tool and do it all over again. Just keep on placing starfish over the seams untill they are covered. One word of warning placing anything on the edge of the picture will ruin your tiling so be carefull.

This is what my picture looked like after I had all the seams covered up.

Want to see what it looks like tiled, click here.

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First you need to create a one pixel by one pixel image.

Next zoom way into the image so you can see what you are doing. Or just hit Ctrl+0 (zero) to zoom the image to fit the screen.

Fill the image with white.

Now expand the canvas size to two pixels high. To do this go to Image/Canvas Size.

Now fill the new part of your canvas with black. Just use the paint bucket and put it over the new part of your canvas and click.

You have now completed your pattern that you will use for the scanlines. Lets put it to work. Hit Ctrl+A to select the entire picture (or hit ctrl and left click the layer in the layers palette). With the image selected, go to Edit and choose Define Pattern. It will prompt you to name this new pattern, name it “scanline” and it will now be saved in Photoshop for future use. Now lets do something with it.

Let’s go ahead and apply it to an image. I am going to use this picture of my car. You can use whatever picture you would like though.

So open up the picture that you want to apply the scan lines to, and add an additional layer on top of it. Working on the newly created layer, go to Edit/Fill and on the menu that pops up, under contents from the drop down menu choose pattern. Below this you will see another drop down menu next to the words Custom Pattern, hit the little arrow and choose your newly created pattern (It should be the last one).

Now you will notice that the pattern is completely covering your image. Easy to fix though. In your layers Palette set the layers blending mode to Multiply (setting a layers mode to “Multiply” in Photoshop hides all the white areas of the image). And you now have scanlines over your image.

These scanlines are a little too harsh though. To soften it up a little bit, just set the layers opacity to around 50%. It is all just that simple. In the future whenever you want to re-use this effect Photoshop should have saved your pattern, so you can just choose it as a pattern whenever you choose to fill something with a pattern.

Extra Tips for using this effect.

Instead of setting the layers mode to Multiply, you can set it to Screen to give you white scanlines.

You can also try using different colors as well.

To make vertical scanlines, just rotate the image that you defined as the pattern 90 degrees and define that as a pattern.

If you have any questions or comments concerning this Photoshop Tutorial please let me know by filling out the form below.

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First off open up the object that you want reflected. I am going to use some text for this example. Your text or object must be in a layer by itself, it cannot contain a background. So essentially in the begining, have a all white background layer and your text/object layer on top of that.

Duplicate the text layer so that you have two of them. To duplicate an the contents of a layer drag the layer to the new layer icon in the layers palette. Or right click the layer that contains the text and choose duplicate layer. You will now have three layers, your white background layer, your text layer and a copy of the text layer.

Working on the top layer, add a drop shadow layer effect. To add a drop shadow go to Layer/Layer Style/Drop Shadow or double click the layer that you want to add a drop shadow to which will open your layer style option menu. Select drop shadow on the left and make sure its check box is checked. Play with the settings until you have a nice soft shadow that is underneath your text. I used the following settings for my drop shadow. Your image should now look like the image below.

Now working with the lower text layer, vertically flip the layer. You can do this by going to Edit/Transform/Flip Vertical. Choose your move tool (the keyboard short is “V”) and move your newly flipped layer so that it sits under your top layer as shown in the picture below.

Now adjust the opacity of the lower layer to soften it up a bit, a value of around 30% tends to work great.

That pretty much covers the basics of it, pretty cool huh? I love how simple it is to achieve such cool results in Photoshop. You can do much more with reflections as well. Continue the tutorial to see some variations utilizing the technique discussed in this tutorial.

By changing the perspective on the reflection layer (Edit/Transform/Perspecitve) you can get an effect like this.

By adding the ripple filter (Filters/Distort/Ripple) to the reflection layer you can make it appear as if the image is being reflected on water.

By adding a gradient overlay (Layer/Layer style/Gradient Overlay) to the reflected layer you can achieve something like this.

By doing a Guassian Blur (Filter/Blur/Guassian Blur) you can get an effect like this.

As you can see, the possiblities with this simple technique are limitless. Explore and play around with Photoshop and see what you can come up with. If you have any questions or comments about this Photoshop tutorial please let me know by filling out the form below.

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Lets begin. Fire up Photoshop and open up a new document, doesn’t really matter on the size, but you want it big enough so you can really see what is going on. I tend to work big, you can always shrink the text down when you are done. If you want to follow along exactly like me, start with your canvas 800X450. Pick a background color, this isn’t at all important and can be changed at any time. I am going to use a bright green color which is R:12 G:255 B:0 during the tutorial.

Now in order to make this effect work, each of your letters has to be on a separate layer. This kinda makes everything a pain in the butt, but it is the only way to do it. Break out the text tool (keyboard shortcut is “T”) and then choose your font, I like to use a playful font for this effect, I am going to use a font called “Frosty”. Choose the color that you want to use for the font, I am going to use yellow (R:255 G:255 B:0). With a font size of 140. Now just type the first letter of the word you want to spell out. I am going to spell out overlap so I am made an “O”.

Now I am going to apply some layer styles, the import one being Stroke. The stroked edge is what makes the effect really visible. Working on the text layer, go to Layer/Layer Style/Stroke. In the window that pops up choose your colors and the width of the stroke. In my example I am using these settings; Size: 4, Position: Outside, Blend: Normal, Opacity: 100% and I am using Blue (R:0 G:0 B:255) for the color. I also applied an inner shadow and bevel and emboss layer effect to my text just to make it look a little cooler.

Now just spell out the rest of your word make sure to put each new letter on its own layer, this is very important. Don’t forget that you can copy and paste your layer styles to each new letter which will save you lots of time. To do this type your second letter, making sure it is on its own layer, and use the same color that you did for the first letter. Don’t worry about placement of the letters yet either. Once you have your new letter go to your layers palette and right click the first letter that you made and from the pop-up menu choose “Copy Layer Style”. Now go to the new layer that was created when you made your second letter and right click it and choose “Paste Layer Style” and all the effects you used on your first letter will be applied to your second letter. Follow these steps until you have all of the letters that make up your word, again make sure that each letter is on its own layer.

OK, now you should have all your letters, each on there own layer, with the same layer styles applied to each. Now it is just about moving the letters around so that they overlap each other and then changing up the layer order. Get your move tool, keyboard shortcut “V”, and choose one of your letters. I like to work left to right, so I am going to choose the “V”. Move it over so that it just partially covers the first letter, the “O” for me. Then continue working your way through your letters until you have something that looks pretty good. We will improve the effect in the next step.

With the way it is now, it looks pretty good but we can take it a step further. Due to the way layers work, each letter as you go in the word is on top of the one that it follow. So the first letter is on the bottom and the last one is on the top. In Photoshop you can drag layers up and down changing their order. For instance in the above picture the “V” is over the “O” but if I take the “O” layer and drag it above the “V” layer the “O” will now be on top of the V. So play around by dragging the letters so that they sit in above or below the letters next to them. And since the layers are on separate layers you can also move them using the move tool. Thats it, pretty simple huh? The finished product is on the right. I hope you have enjoyed this Photoshop tutorial, if you have any questions please fill out the form below.

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