Curio Cabinet Tutorial

This is the Colonial style curio cabinet which I have
in my living room.

It was made by my husband--lucky me!

This tutorial was made with PSP 7. You'll also need Eye Candy
and the *.zip file with selections and other files, which you
can find here.

You need to be familiar with layers and the flood-fill tool.

The terms of use are here

Please have fun with this tutorial (or any one else you do). Feel free to use a coloured fill instead of wood, different latches, add decorations, whatever. If you like the curio cabinet the way it is, that's fine, but a tutorial can also be a jumping-off point for your imagination!

If you use a different wood fill or a solid colour, the directions for making the various ridges are here

1. Open a new file 200 x625 pixels.

2. Make a new layer, Backing, and go to Selections - Load from Disk and choose 01backing.sel.

Flood fill

with white. (This is backing for the mirrors in the curio cabinet.)

3. If you use the wood fill provided, just open it and it will show up in the styles pattern. If you need a refresher on flood filling with a pattern, you can go here and use the Back arrow to return.

Make another layer, Outer Frame, and go to Selections - Load from Disk, and choose 02outerframe.sel, and fill with a wood pattern.

I think you've got the idea of how it goes, so the next directions will be abbreviated.

Now for the mirrors.

4. Upper Mirror layer - 03topmirror.sel. Flood fill with a gray metallic gradient angle-317, and lower the opacity, by sliding on the right side of the Layer Pallette, to about 80%.

5. Lower Mirror layer - 04bottommirror.sel - Flood fill as above.

6. Shelves layer - 05shelves.sel. Flood fill with light gray (#E2DEDE), and then go to Effects - Texture Effects - Texture, and choose the first texture. (These are glass shelves.)

7. Top inset layer= 06topinset.sel. Flood fill with wood pattern.

8. Lower door frame layer - 06lowerdoorframe.sel. Flood fill with wood pattern and go to:

Effects - Plugin Filters - Eye Candy,

and apply the following inner bevel:

NOTE: For a solid color, I used a Super Blade Pro preset, bevelflat, which you can find here

9. Upper Door frame layer - 07upperdoorframe.sel. Flood fill with the wood pattern and apply the same inner bevel.

10. Kickplate layer - 09kickplate.sel. Flood fill with pattern.

11. Middle Ridge layer. 10middleridge.sel. Flood fill with pattern. Go to

Effects - 3D Effects - Inner bevel,
and apply the following bevel:

12. New layer, Middle Ridges. Open the middleridges.psp file, press CTRL-A, then CTRL-C to copy the ridges. Then go back to your curio cabinet image, press CTRL-E, and put them in place on top of the cabinet.

13. New layer, Lowest Ridges. Open the lowestridges.psp file, and once again, use the same techniques to put them in place.

14. New layer, Upper Wood Panel. 11upperwoodpanel.sel. Flood fill with your pattern.

15. New layer, Topmost Ridges. Open the topmostridges.psp file, and using the techniques you used before, put them in place above the Upper Wood Panel.

16. Latch layer. Open latch.psp and put in place on your curio cabinet.

17. Hinge layer. Open hinge.psp and put in place on your curio cabinet.

You're all finished! Now you can place your favorite objects on the shelves. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.

NOTE: Since the back of the curio cabinet is a mirror, when adding objects to the shelves, I duplicated the layer with the object, lowered the opacity to about 30%, moved the duplicated object a bit, and then dragged the duplicated layer below the original layer.

I omitted making a layer for the front glass, since it made everything mucky, and when the glass is REALLY clean, it's invisible. :-)

If you have any questions or comments, our email contact is here.