Your first step is to choose an image to start with... transparent gifs work great..images that have plain backgrounds work well... for busier images you may wish to place them on a circle/roundrectangle or oval to make it less busy looking. Here's a tute on that.

You can also just use a border (found under "decorate") to frame your image and then re-size smaller. The border will be where you place the number/letter and the icon... so be generous..at least 40 pixels per side.

Go to "annotate" and choose either a number or a letter..standard cards go from 2 to 10 and use the letters J,Q,K and A. There's also the joker.. place your number in the NorthWest corner.. depending on how big your image is... a good number to start with would be +10+20. If it looks good..go to the next step..if not hit "back" and add/subtract until you are pleased.

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Now go to composite and place the URL of whichever icon you chose for your gif. Use the co-ordinates of NorthWest and +10+20... but add half of however much your annotate size was to the width co-ords..ie if your pointsize was 24..add 12 to the 10.. check and see if this looks good..hit "back" and add or subtract as needed...sometimes IM is off a bit.

OR you can place your icon on the opposite corner of your number/letter..it's up to you!

Now once you have your first corner..go to "transform" and place a 180 in the box and choose "rotate"... click "transform".

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Go to "annotate" again and just click "annotate". Go to "composite" and click "composite". And finally go to "transform" and click "transform". You don't have to change any of the second co-ords because you have already perfected them :-)

You can stop here or place a thin border around your card..or add a bar around the outside.. you are limited only by your imagination!

Like my animated card? Take your card to the ImageStacker and a moving gif.. you'll need to know the height and width of both images.. the ImageStacker will give you a table code you can place on a webpage or right into your sig. Your card will be the background..and you can move your ani gif around but I used center.