Create a cute Christmas Bauble to go along with your candy cane!

This simple tutorial will walk you through the steps of creating a few different kinds of baubles – you can include a hook, ribbon, or even a reflection on your decoration. Unwind the lights and go past the break!

Start off with a background. I’ve added a bit of a subtle gradient and starburst to mine.

Let’s start by making the body of the bauble. We’ll need a circle so grab the Ellipse Tool.

Holding down shift to prevent your circle from turning into an oval, drag out your bauble onto your canvas.

Enter Blending Options for your bauble. First, add in a Drop Shadow with the following settings:

Now we’re going to add in a Gradient Overlay. Change the style to Radial. I’ve chosen to make a green bauble, but you can choose whichever colour you want.

Here’s a close-up of how the gradient looks like. You want to have the intermediate colour from light to dark closer to the light part, which will allow your bauble to simulate a shine.

Once you’re done applying the gradient, by dragging on the canvas (while blending options is still open) you can move the overlay around. I’ve moved it so the shine is in the upper right of the bauble – just make sure that wherever you put it, your drop shadow is opposite of the light source.

Grab the Rectangle tool.

Drag out a rectangle on the top of your bauble.

Again, enter Blending Options. Add in a Drop Shadow like we did for the ball.

Enter Gradient Overlay. This time, we want to create metal, so change the style to Reflected. Create gradient from yellow to light yellow for gold (alternatively gray to white for silver, or bronze to light brown for .. well, bronze).


There it is.

From here you can make either a ribbon or a hook to adorn the top. Head over to the next page to choose your path!

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