You will need:
Paint Shop Pro
Animation Shop
VDL Adrenaline - Snowflakes
VM Natural - Sparkle (optional)
Tube of choice, or the one I'm using by Outlaw by Design.  Download here (Terms of Use)
Mask of choice.  I'm using one by Sophisticat Simone, which you can download from her site here (Links/Resource Downloads/Masks)
Two fonts of choice or the ones I used AlastGreeting and Windsong

Open your tube. Open a new white canvas of 600 x 500.  Add a new layer.  Selecting two pale colours from your tube for your foreground and background.  I used a pale blue and lilac.  Change your palette to Gradient Foreground-Background, angle and repeats set to 0, and check or uncheck invert, depending one which way round you would like your colours.  Flood fill the new layer with this gradient.

New raster layer, then select your Airbrush tool, colour white, with the following settings.

On your layer, towards the top, paint out a zig zag horizontally across the canvas.  Something like this:

Then go to Adjust/Blur/Radial Blur, and apply these settings:

This is the start of our sky.  Add a new raster layer, choose a pastel colour, and apply another zig zag line just below where you applied the white one.  I used pale blue.  Here is how I apply my zig zag:

Apply the Radial Blur again, same settings.  Undo and redo as you need to, until you get the effect you are happy with.  Add a new layer, and apply white again just slightly lower than you did the colour, and just a squiggle in the centre.  Apply Radial Blur.  One last layer, choose another pale colour.  I've gone with pink.  This time change the size of the Airbrush to 32, and do small zig zigs all the way across the canvas over the top of the other layers.  Apply Radial Blur.  As I've said, undo and redo as much as you need to, until you get the effect you are happy with.  I did, and this is what I ended up with:

Hide your background layer, and merge visible.  Unhide your white background, and apply your chosen mask by going to Layers/ Load/Save Mask /Load Mask from Disk using these settings:

  On the mask layer, if need be, drag out the nodes until the mask fills your canvas.  Merge group.

Copy and paste your tube as a new layer.  Resize to the size your require, and position it on your where you would like on canvas.  Add a drop shadow of choice, or the settings I used:

Now we are going to apply some wordart around the mask layer.  Take your Ellipse tool, 'show nodes' and 'create on vector' checked.  Foreground black, background null, line width 2, and drag out a shape around your mask.  Drag in or out and position it until the inner edge of the shape fits snugly around the mask.  Do not convert. 

Add a new layer, and select your Text tool, using a script font.  I'm using Windsong.  Select a colour from your background, only as shade darker, at about size 40.  Hover your text tool over the vector shape until the curser curves, then click.  Write in your text, or use my line 'Beautiful as the skies that glow, and as pure as the virgin snow.'  Rotate it round until you are happy with the position, then convert it to raster. I then resized it by 107%.  This just takes it further out from the mask, giving me that little gap between the text and the mask.  Why did I not make my oval shape further out from the mask? you ask - because I want to use it for something else in the position we put it in.   Hide the oval shape for now.  Now add a drop shadow to your text, change the Vertical and Horizontal to 1, Opacity to 30, and Blur to 2.

Now add your name and copyright, and crop as needed.  I'm using AlastGreeting for my name.  Same colour.  Once happy with the size, convert to raster.  Selections/Select All, Float, Defloat, then Modify/ Inside/Outside Feather, setting of 'outside', Feather amount 5.  New layer, flood fill with white, and move below your text.  Select none, and merge your text down to this feathered layer.  Add the same drop shadow.

Unhide the oval shape, and activate this layer.  Take your magic wand and select in the centre of the shape.  Hide all the layers above this for now.  This will be your tube, name, copyright, and wordart.  This is just whilst we work on the animation part.  You can delete the shape now.  Now we've selected we don't need it anymore.

Add a new layer, and then add filter VDL Adrenaline Snowflakes, with the following settings:

Add three more layers, applying snow to each one, and moving the Random up each time by about 300 (doesn't have to be exact).  Name each layer, snow1, snow2, snow3 and snow4.  Hide all but snow1, and unhide all the other layers we hid before (apart from the other 3 snow layers).

Open Animation Shop.  In Paint Shop Pro, copy merged, then paste as new animation in Animation Shop.  Back in PSP, hide snow1 and unhide snow2.  Copy merged, and paste after current frame in Animation Shop.  Repeat this with the final two snow's, until you have four frames in Animation Shop.  Select all, and change the frame properties to 15.  View animation, and save as a gif.

Here is another I did, using a different mask, and darker colours on the background.  I also applied some sparkle to the sky, by taking your selection tool, and selection the top colour of your background before you apply the mask, feather set to 20.  Then applied VM Natural Sparkle, maximum size 12.  Then just do everything as we did above.  I also made the snow size a little bigger.

You are done.  I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.

Please feel free to link to this tutorial, and/or print it out for your own personal use, but DO NOT copy it in ANY way to put on-line, pass out, or re-write without my permission.  Any resemblance to any other tutorial like this is purely coincidental.   Thank you.  This tutorial was written on the 22nd November 2008 by Faerie Queen.