If you aren't familiar with using the Colour Pallette for patterns, there is a short explanation here

There is a short tutorial for the Materials Pallette in PSP 8 & 9 here.

1. Back layer - Flood-fill with any colour you like. (I used #00C0C0.) If you want to give your match holder a more "used" look, you can add Noise.



2. Back Rim (optional)- Flood-fill with a contrasting colour you like (or #00E0DD).

3. Sides - Flood-fill with #808080, or a darker version of the colour you're using.

4. Cutout layer - Click on the Back layer in the Layer Palette and then, with the Magic Wand , click in the hole on the top. Keeping this selected, click on the Cutout Layer.



5. We'll skip the Match layers for now.

6. Front - Flood-fill with your colour.



7. Front Rim (optional) - Staying on the Front Rim layer, get the Front selection again.



8. Bottom - Flood-fill with your colour.

9. Decoration layer

Plain Holder

Click on the Text Tool and write MATCHES vertically. Make the colour of the Fill box the same colour you've used for the Front layer. (I used Copperplate Gothic Bold font, Size 18.) Check Bold and centre as shown below:



On the top right of the image, you'll notice a box with minus 5. This is the "Leading" box. The Leading controls how much space there is between each line. The value of -5 forces the letters to be spaced closer together vertically. (Kerning forces letters to be closer or farther apart horizontally.)

Now, we'll add a Drop Shadow to make the letters stand out:



If you prefer, you can apply an Inner Bevel to the letters before you apply the Drop Shadow. Here are the settings:

Fancy Holder

Open the tube you want to use, if it isn't already in your PSP Tube folder. Copy the tube (CTRL-C), go back to your holder image and paste it in as a new layer (CTRL-L). If it is too large, go to



Now, the holder is all finished, but we need some matches.

The Matches

1. Make a new image, 50 x 420 pixels with a transparent background. Save the image (CTRL-S) and name it Red Match.psp or Red Match.pspimage.

2. Set your Foreground colour to #DAC089. Then, if you're using PSP 7, double-click on the selection Tool, . A box will pop up, like the one below. Fill in the settings as shown.

If you're using PSP 8 or 9, click on the Selection Tool and then choose Custom Selection:



3. Make a new layer - Tip. To make things easier, click on the Zoom Tool . In PSP 7, just click once on your image, and in later versions, keep clicking until the image is twice as large (200%).

With the Selection Tool set to Ellipse, draw an ellipse at the top of the matchstick, so about half of it is covering the stick. This is done by placing the cursor right at the top of the stick, in the middle, and drawing the ellipse up and out. Flood-fill with red #D92728.



Next, lower the Opacity of this layer by using the slider in the Layer Palette, to help you see what you're doing, and cut off the bottom part of the tip, using the Selection Tool set to Rectangle, as shown in the third image above. When you've made the selection, hit CTRL-X and the bottom part of the tip will be gone.

4. Raise the Opacity of this layer to 100% again.

5. Duplicate the image by hitting SHIFT-D. Save this second image (CTRL-S) and name it Yellow Match.psp or .pspimage. You can now select the tipby hitting



and Flood-fill with the yellow #D92728.

Now, you can merge the layers.



6. Go back to the red match and Merge Visible those layers and save.

Putting the Matches in the Holder

1. You now have two colours of matches. To put them in the match holder, copy (CTRL-C). Then click on the match holder image and click on the Red Match or Yellow Match layer. Hit CTRL-E and you can place the match. You just keep hitting CTRl-E until you have as many as you want.

Repeat this procedure with the other colour match.

2. Since matches are bound to slip around, I rotated some of them after they were placed by going to



Now you're all done! I hope you like your Match Holder.


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