Now let's dabble with colorizing :o)

8. With your square background piece active lets go to Window / Duplicate so you have an extra one to play with as we colorize.

9. Click on Colors / Colorize and have fun! Choose whatever color suits your fancy *g* the settings I used for this burgundy are here:

When you have the color you like save it as Background 2 and your ready to move on.
For design purpose on this piece I added a black border of 2 to both of my tiles before proceeding to the next step, then chose undo on them to save them as seamless borderless tiles.

10. Open a New Image size 500 w x 400 h / Transparent Background / 16 million colors/24-bit, we need plenty of room to make a design now using the square tiles you've created!

11. Copy / Paste your first tile onto this new canvas, it will automatically be centered for you, now for the purpose of lining up the rest of your squares you need to have your checkered background on the canvas visible and move this first tile with your mover watching the top left corner of the tile, up and to the left of your canvas to allow room for the following 2 tiles and position this tile right on the corner of a light square on your checkerboard aligning it evenly.

12. Copy / Paste your other colored tile to the new canvas and using your mover and watching the top left corner once again, move it 2 squares downward and 2 squares to the right. This gives you equal distance both vertical and horizontal between the 2 tiles.

13. Copy / Paste once again, your first color tile so that now you have a stack of 3 tiles, position this last tile in the same way, watching the top left corner and lining it up 2 squares right and 2 squares down from your second layer tile. Now on the layers palette move layer 2 to the top. Save your work! Checkpoint now should look like this:

14. Alrighty then it's time to begin to add some shine and embellish your design! Making sure your alignment is spaced evenly in all directions on each layer, go to Merge / Merge All Visible.

15. Click on Selections / Select All , Selections / Float , Selections / Defloat and with the marching ants surrounding your image click on Selection/ Modify / Expand 7 and add a New Raster Layer, on your layers palette click on the new layer so it's active with the marching ants.

16. Get out your Flood Fill tool, set the background color to Gradient, foreground color to null. Open your gradient palette and select Metallic2, I believe this is a standard preset, if you don't have it you can download it by right clicking here and selecting 'Save Target As', directing the download to unzip to your Gradients folder in PSP. Make sure both texture boxes are set to null. And flooodfill your selection using these settings:

17. Let's give it a slight bevel using Two Moon / Emboston with these settings:

(Your going to love this filter, I've found several uses for many of it's presets!)

18. Now with your selection still active click on Selection / Modify / Expand 3, add a new raster layer, and changing your background color to black, make sure your new layer is active and floodfill it. Lets line up your layers, move your black layer to the bottom (keep the ants marching!) and slide your metallic layer just above it. Ants still marching? Good add a new layer and click Selection / Modify / Expand 15 and change back to your Gradient/Metallic floodfill using the same settings and floodfill this last layer and move it to the bottom, keep it selected.

19. With your final metallic layer on the bottom your your layers palette and the marching ants active go to Effects / Plug In Filters / Two Moon / RotoBlade and apply these setting:

(This is my favorite effect in this plug in so far!! I've written a quick & simple tutorial for framing using it located here)

20. Deselect your image and go Layers / Merge All Visible, that's it your finished, now you can rotate and resize and do whatever you wish with your new Metallic design!!

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and became acquainted with some new filter effects, the only limits are in your imagination, the possibilities are infinite, so enjoy and have Fun!!! :o))
I can't wait to see what kind of designs you come up with!!