Westinghouse Xmas "gifts", plus ornamentation.

It's not even National Fictionalized Display of Gluttony Day yet, and all the Pointy Tree Day hoo-haa is up in the stores, of course. All is normal in America. So why are we jumping on that greedy bandwagon? Well, two things: A) we make not a dime from this damn blorg, and B) we have a Graphic Gift that may be useful for making your own Pointy Tree Day card... if you're into that sort of thing.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

"Merry Pointy Tree Day, honey! Here's some gifts to help with the housework, which I, as a man of 1957, don't do shit to help out with."

Aah, The Fifties. It's the nostalgic "great" version of America that apparently we all chose to make it be again. It was a time when you could give your wife a steam iron for Christmas to help her take care of you (because you married her as a replacement mom), and instead of bashing your teeth out with it, she'd be all giddy and grateful. If she was really good, you might even allow her to leave the house long enough to show the steam iron off to the neighbors. But she'd better hurry back inside to get that turkey going, because you'll be super hungry after all that generosity and stuff you did for her.

It's going to be an interesting four years.

Anyway, Pointy Tree Day is just about a month away, and you might be one of those kinds of person who designs your own Pointy Tree Day card to send out. If you're getting them printed professionally, you'd better get on that. Those decorations at the bottom of the ad are kind of nice. If some hero would only mitigate the problem of the magazine's groin running straight through the middle of it, those decorations could be useful to set aside for Photoshopping up an Exmess card.

Ornaments are reflective, and photographers have to think about this when setting up for a shoot. Let's go in for a closer look at the big red one...

We can see a white studio with two bounce lights pointed at the ceiling. Neat, huh? There's some stuff off to the right that we can't make out, and in the middle, there's a mysterious black rectangle. That's where the camera is. It's also probably where the photographer is. I think that's a black curtain with the lens poking through it. You wouldn't want to see a person in the ornament's reflection, as that would be a little weird. See the white spot in the black rectangle? That's a glint on the camera's lens.

Ornaments like these basic class bulbs and pointy icicle neutron stars are very much of the time. Pointy Tree ornaments have gotten pretty elaborate here in The Future, and simple ones like this remind me of a time, one hundred billion years ago when I was a kid, when Pointy Tree Day was one hundred percent fun and not at all a stressful, expensive P.I.T.A.

Why not pull these ornaments out of the ad and maybe use them for something? This one's going to really give the old pen tool a workout. Phil Are GO! Graphic Blandishment and Photoshoppery Brigade, ASSEMBLE! Pkshowww!

Pen Tool... DEPLOY!
Pen Tool... CREATE BEZIER PATH!
Pen Tool... ADJUST PATH!
Pen Tool... CONTINUE CREATING PATH!
Pen Tool... MORE PATH!
Pen Tool... AGAIN WITH THE PATH CREATING!
Pen Tool... CREATE SELECTION!
Pen Tool... FEATHER SELECTION ONE PIXEL!
Hotkey... CTRL+J TO CREATE LAYER FROM SELECTION!
Pen Tool... MORE OF THAT, BUT ON THE OTHER PART ON THE LEFT!
Move Tool... SCOOTCH LAYERS TOGETHER!
Layers Palette... MERGE LAYERS!
File... SAVE AS!

Wow, nice work, PAGGBPB! Hit the showers!

Basically, we took the bunch of decorations on the right and left, that weren't obscured by the binding, and scootched them together.

They're miscellaneous Pointy Tree Day decorations! They're retro! They're the maximum width allowable by Blogger! They've got a transparent background! They're coming to your town! You're welcome!

Click for 1600 px as printed, without color enhancement.

Click for 1600 px, with color enhancement.