14. You have all of your specified layers in Group 1, use your Mover Tool to move them all at once down on your canvas to make room for adding a handle.

15 To make the handle select your Preset Shapes Tool with settings like this:

Background color set to white, Foreground is null. Selecting to create as vector will automatically create a layer all it's own so place your cursor on the canvas and draw a long slim ellipse to go on top of your bell. Now your going to have to Edit some nodes to give your handle the shape you'd like *s* It's ok, it's not as hard as you think lol Click on Object Selector / Node Edit, your going to want to ADD a couple of nodes near the base of the handle similar to this:

Zoom in once if you need to, I did :o)

Now right click them one at a time selecting curve before on the right side and curve after on the left side and give the handle a small turn inward, your looking to make a handle that does a smooth transition as if it were molded to the bell dome itself. Then right click the bottom node and adjust a bit too. Something like this:

When your comfortable with the shape of your handle Convert this layer to Raster and rename the layer Handle.

16. Now I found it too timely to try and make both sides of my handle exactly the same so I kinda cheated and cut it in half, use your Selection Tool set to rectangle, Feather 0, Anti alias is not checked and select half of your handle like this, then go to Selection / Promote to Layer , click on your layer palette to activate the handle layer, go to Selection / Invert and hit the delete key, this gets rid of the half you don't want. Deselect and click on the Promoted Layer to activate then click Image / Mirror and align them with your Mover, Zoom in once or twice to be sure it's exact. Then hide all layers except the 2 handle layers and merge visible, rename this merged layer Handle. Unhide your layers.

17. Making sure your Handle layer is active go Selections / Select All / Float / Defloat and apply Super Blade Pro / SoClear and push OK. If you don't have BladePro to use soclear with, fill your handle with a light gray so it can be colorized, the cutout effect will add a bevel effect for you so no worries. Or you can experiment with bevels or other fills and see what you come up with on this too!

18. While the handle is still selected let's Add a New Raster name it cutouthandle1 and apply Effects / 3D Effects / Cutout settings at 0 Vertical | 2 Horizontal | 50 Opacity | 10 Blur. Add another New Raster naming it cutouthandle2 and apply cutout effect again changing the Horizontal to -2. Deselect and hide all layers then merge visible these 2 handlecutout layers, renaming this layer MergedCutoutHandle.

 

 

19. Click back onto your Handle layer and let's colorize it to match a color in your snowscene image, Colors / Colorize. In case you didn't know get these values by using your eyedropper and selecting any color on your picture, then you copy the values on the Hue & Saturation boxes to the Colorize box.

 

20. Here's one small step to add in before you leave the handle itself, to be prepared for the snowbell handle, to make a smooth transition or to just make more than one kind of handle use your Selection Tool , set to Rectangle and select the base of the handle and go to Selections / Promote to Layer. Then click Selections / Float / Defloat so the marching ants are snug around the promoted portion of the base and apply Super Blade Pro / FD_SnowBells to it. Or if you don't have SBPro apply Effects/ Textures/ and load the FD_Snow.bmp and apply these settings again:

 

Position this layer below the cutouthandle layer on your palette.

21. Now you can add some embellish to the handle if you'd like. I added some small gold bands to mine, using your Preset Shapes Tool create as Vector so you can size it to fit::

 

Once you make one ring, convert it to a raster and duplicate the layer to make as many as you like. I added a drop shadow of H1 | V1 | Opacity 100 | Blur 1.2 to my first ring before I began duplicating more layers. Then moved them into position with the Mover tool.

 

 

22. At this point I decided my handle was too wide, so I used my Deformation Tool on all of my handle layers to make it more narrow. This is a personal choice so make yours however you like, this is your bell creation *s*

23. Have we been saving our work at regular intervals? Be sure you do!

Now you need to decide if your going to make a finished snow bell of a clear glass bell, or both *g* The next page you choose will show you how to do one or the other! So let's get up and stretch a little bit, grab a fresh cup of coffee and get ready to finish up this project!

 

Click here to complete a Snow Bell

Click here to complete a Clear Glass Bell

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