Frosted Glass Bell

Glass Bell
Skill level: All

This tutorial will teach you to make a frosted glass bell with etched designs...I've been playing for some time with the materials and the path tool, and am just having fun with it..Lets go see what we can do.

New image, black, background, 400 x 400. Select File, Preferences, General, Guidelines and Grid. Change the parameters as shown.

Easy palette, shape library, and make a circle. Switch to the transform tool and using the guidelines, stretch the circle so that it is oriented like so. It should be 20 grids high x 16 grids wide, or whatever ratio you prefer. With the object selected, switch to the path edit tool.

You'll see four control points, left, right, top and bottom. From the control points, arms extend to control the shape of a curve.

We'll move these control points and change the orientation and length of their arms to create the bell shape in 5 steps.

1. Touch the top CP. Extend each control arm out until its endpoint is 7 grids left or right from the control point.

2. Select the bottom CP. Move it straight up 2 grids, then select and extend each control arm out until its endpoint is 8 grids left or right from the CP.

3. Select the left side CP move it two grids right, and four grids down.

4. Select the right side CP, and move it two grids left and four grids down.

5. Adjust the control arms for the left and right CP as I've shown you here. If you have trouble with it, use the back key, it is your friend.

Now that we have our basic bell shape, let's apply some material box goodies to it. Press the toggle button to look at the bell, then select the path tool. Press the material box and select the bevel tab. Click on 3Dround, select the border depth and make the border approximately 70%.

Select the bump tab. Click on the bump map button, and find one that you like. I picked bumpf014.jpg, density 34%, use bump map as reflection.

Change the shading to metallic, steel, shininess 15%, strength 18%. Select color, the purple at upper right corner in Ulead color picker.

Change transparency to very high, I used 85%, but you can get a lot of effects from this. Click the preview button to see your work. Note to self: Cedge, you're a genius.

To make the handle:

Same material box settings, Path tool, custom shape, plastic tube. Draw the shape the approximate size you want, then use the transform tool to thin it. Rotate the handle 90 degrees. You may wish to use the perspective tool to adjust the size of one end. Change border to 30. You may wish to adjust the lights as well. Now select ellipse from the path tool and draw a small ellipse to "join" the handle to the bell. Line up the parts, select all, group and you're done...unless you wish to add a ringer...I didn't on this one, but you may wish to.