I started out with a 300 x300 pixel image, white background for the basket of roses. The basket is actually 2 tubes from "Linda's Gallery". She also provided the lace. What she did so cleverly is to provide a tube of the complete image and one with the back portion of the handle partially missing. By placing them on separate layers with the flowers on additional layers in between the two basket layers you can get the illusion of depth, yet still keep the basket whole when you merge the layers. The roses are from "Rhonnies Stuff". Her flower tubes are now of one variety per tube, only. It saves confusion when you want a specific flower. She also makes her tubes bigger than Jasc suggests, and that seems to work well too. To get the blossoms on the front of the basket I used the lasso tool to cut them from the main stems and pasted 3 on separate layers in front of the first basket layer. The flowers on individual stalks were rotated mostly at 90 and 45 degrees, right and left respectively, to give the appearance of laying in the basket. This is where your creativity comes in.
The lace and ledge were also created on separate layers above the background. The ledge was a matter of using the selection tool as a rectangle and flood filling with a wood grain. The edge of the ledge was treated the same way except I also used "Web Graphics on a Budget" bevel_shiny.q9q Blade Pro preset. For drop shadows you must turn all other layers off and select the portion of the image creating the shadow first then turn on the next layer below to see how the shadow falls. Keep in mind that it is better to create a drop shadow that compliments the colour of the surface it is falling on. By that I mean don't always use black, but try a darker version of the colour of that surface. The background layer was coloured with a sunburst gradient of the same basic colour with the foreground light and the background dark. After completing the picture I merged all layers flat and then resized to 80%. The frame was then added as image/border uniform size 20. The border was then selected and flood-filled with the same woodgrain as the ledge and the bevel applied to it. While the frame was still selected I used a black drop shadow twice at vertical and horizontal settings of 3,-3 and then -3, 3. Lastly I added a new layer for the glass, inverted the selection and flood-filled with white. Next I applied Filter Factory A Pool Shadow with the intensity down to 85. On the layer palette I moved the slider bar to 7 so I wouldn't fade out the colours too much. This is a matter of preference. I then saved the image as a JPEG to keep the colour depth.
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