This tutorial assumes you have a good working knowledge of PhotoImpact, the location of the tools and their functions, as these instructions are not covered.

Learn to make your own cornucopia basket using the Path tools, then decorate with your own fruits, veggies, etc.

To begin, open a large canvas at least 600x600. Draw an ellipse approx. 265x375. Fill with a brownish-red color. I used R 185, G 37, B 0.

Make the ellipse 3D round using a width of 99 and a depth of 5 in the Path Tool Panel. Click the Adjust light button and move the light to the center. You might want to add some texture to give it a basket look. I used the Adobe texturizer for this, but you could use M06 from the Easy Palette under Text/Path effects, Material attribute, Bump.

Use the Transform tool to rotate the ellipse 5 degrees to the right.

Duplicate the ellipse, reduce the size by 20 pixels, rotate 5 degrees and send it behind the first one.

Repeat this step until you have 15 ellipses, each one approx. 20 pixels smaller and rotated 5-10 degrees.

I have included a guide to help you get the sizes and angles close to what I have done.

Down load zipped .ufo file HERE.

Next we'll make the inside piece. Shift-click the first five ellipses and duplicate. Using the Path Tool panel, change the depth of each one to 0 and stack them opposite of the original. Shift-click each one and combine as single object.

Now we're ready to make the outer ring of the basket. Open a new 600x600 canvas. Draw a small ellipse and use the Path edit tool to pull the top and bottom nodes to this shape. There is a sample in the zipped guide.

Change to 3D round and use the same color and preset as the basket. Rotate 20 degrees.

In the Transform tool Attribute panel, use the Copy and Rotate function with these settings:

Click the button 17 times for a total of 18 shapes.

Now drag the top shape toward the bottom, then pull each shape from the top and start arranging them like so:

When you get to the last shape, send it to the back. You should now have something like this.

Select all, Combine as single object and drag to the canvas with the basket. Using the Transform tool, rotate 5 degrees and resize to fit.

R/C the ring, add a shadow, then R/C again and Split shadow. Move to this position:

You might want to shift-click the outer basket pieces and combine as a single object. Just make sure to keep 3 separate objects of the outer, inner and ring pieces to be able able to place objects 'inside' the basket.

And there is your Cornucopia basket, ready to be filled with produce.

In my opinion, your image will look better if you use objects you have made yourself rather than clip art or PSP tubes that someone else has made. Pam has several tuts for making fruit from scratch and I have seen several tuts for pumpkins. AND...if you make your own, you might save yourself some grief down the road...

Any questions or problems, e-mail me here.