STEP-1
Create a new document with dimention 2400 x 1350 pixels
STEP-2
Let's set the background. Select the Paint Bucket Tool(G), set the Foreground color to #009ec9 and paint the transparent canvas.
Take #009EC9 in Color picker
STEP-3
Drag Snow Land 1 into canvas and make it as background
Erase the sky part of image using Eraser Tool (E ) (Try to use Soft round)
Take Color Balance (Ctrl+B) and give the values show below
Then it will look like this
STEP-4
Drag Snow Hills into canvas and make it as background
Duplicate the layer, move it on to right side and flip it horizontally
Merge both those layers and drag it down to Snow Land 1
Take Color Balance (Ctrl+B) with Color Levels (-20,0,0) and apply it to layer. Use Eraser Tool(E) to remove those 2 big trees and rearrange few few. Now it will look like this
Erase the sky part of image using Eraser Tool (E ) (Try to use Soft round)
STEP-5
Drag Snow Land 2 into canvas and place it below the fold
Take Color Balance (Ctrl+B) with Color Levels (-20,0,0) and apply it to layer.
STEP-6
Let's build the home now, drag House here.
Use Pen tool (P) to delete the background hill part of house and use Erase tool to blend it in snow land
Now image will look like this
STEP-7
Let's duplicate the balloon tree by using Pen Tool (P) and paste it at few place randomly
Use Erase tool at balloon tree to blend them in snow land.
It will look like this, we placed it randomly throughout the snow land.
Note: By doing this you will get separate layer for each tree, after arranging in proper places merge all of them into one. In turn it will reduce the file size
STEP-8
Let's bring moon in. Create a new layer and draw round circle with the Elliptical Marquee Tool(M). Fill it with white
make it Glow, double click on layer and fill the values as below in layer style
Moon will look like this
STEP-9
Drag Santa Claus in
We just need Santa without that background. So lets use Pen Tool (P) and remove all that unnecessary stuff.
Now the invitation will look like this
STEP-10
Drag Clouds in and give cloudy effect around moon using Erase tool
STEP-11
Now lets play with the important part of invitation i.e Christmas tree. Open the image and take out only the tree using Wand Magic Tool (W )
Copy the tree and paste it in. Resize it and place it in center
Take Color Balance (Ctrl+B) with Color Levels (-20,0,0) and apply it to layer.
STEP-12
Drag Snow 1 into image and place it at left corner of below fold. Use Pen tool to blend it in existing snow
STEP-13
Let's add Merry Christmas text. Take Merry Christmas image, takeout the text and paste it in front of Christmas tree
STEP-14
Now lets bring all those funky characters in. Open all those images one by one and take out the characters using Pen tool and arrange them in proper positions. Each character has got its own layer, now lets club them all into a folder (Select all the character layers and press Ctrl+G)
After arranging those character, here is how my image looks
I want all those character to be part of celebration. So I just got some stuff (Flowers, Cap, Stick and balls) and gave it in hands, head and mouth of characters.
STEP-15
Take out only the banner from banner image below
Fill the banner with a single color, extend the thread to hold and place it in such a way that both of those top birds holding it.
Take a new layer on top of Banner and use Brush Tool (B) to draw 3 to 4 lines to give fold look according to air flow. Smudge edges of those lines to mix it in banner using Smudge Tool (R)
STEP-16
Take the big tree image, take out only the tree using Pen tool and place it on right side. Make it bit dark
Take a new layer along with Brush No. 66 (Dry Brush Tip Light Flow) and apply some snow on tree
STEP-17
Drag those small Plants and place it at below corners of image.
STEP-18
I just added few more character to that tree to make it into reality.
STEP-19
I used downloaded brush Splatters to make contact between characters and snow land. Use brush no 999 from Splatters set
Create the snow splatters near to the characters specially Panda, Peacock, Donald duck and penguins.
STEP-20
Lets give some special power effect to character Tinker Bell. For that take a new document with Background contents as transparent.
Take a separate layer with Star shape from Custom Shapes Tool (U ) and fill it with black color.
Select star shape and go to Edit > Define Brush Preset
Now we got a new star brush in the list of brushes
Using this start brush create some stars of different sizes and give lite yellow color. It will look like this
Duplicate it and give it to other hand and leg of Tinker Bell.
STEP-21
Lets play with shadows of objects and characters. We need to shadows to object and characters according to light source. In this case it coming from moon on top left, so the shadows should fall right to characters.
For that create a new layer and paint dark color with soft round Bush Tool (B)
The same way give shadow effect to house as well.
STEP-22
In the last step lets add falling snow effect using Brush SS-light-beams no 2500. Take a new layer on top of all the existing layers, use white color and bring snow falling effect.
Final Image:
Here is my Invitation
