Whether it’s signifying merit or signalizing new content, a golden seal graphic often does the trick. Utilizing two of Macromedia Adobe® Fireworks®‘ nifty features—Auto Shapes and Text On A Path—you’ll be stamping shiny seals in no time.
Update 2006-11-20: Spanish translation is available, care of Uriel.
The Making Of A Star
We start off by creating our base shape—the starburst. Select the Star Tool 
and draw a star that’s around 150px wide. Drag the Points Handle up to increase the number of rays to around 22, and similarly drag the Inner Radius Handle to produce shorter, more triangular rays.
Next, we add a splash of color. Give the starburst a gradient fill going upwards, from #DDA600 to #FFEB77. That should give it a nice golden tone. Adjust the colors to suit your taste; you can go for royal blue, crimson red, or forest green, if the situation calls for it.
Then we give our starburst a subtle shadow. Apply to it a Drop Shadow Live Effect, with 2 Depth, 55% Opacity, 2 Blur, and 270° Tilt.
Faux Inverted Bevel Mini-Tutorial
Use the Text Tool 
and place your main text on top of and centered on the starburst. I chose bold-italicized Georgia for the fontface, but you can use any font of your choice. (Traditional serifs look good on seals.) Give it a color similar in hue to, but slightly darker than the starburst’s. (Try #DDA600 to match our gold tone) Copy-paste (Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V) the text you just made and push it one layer down (Ctrl+↓). Nudge it 2px up, give it a solid black fill, and set it’s opacity to 50%. Paste another copy of the main text and again push it one layer down. (It should be a layer below the gold-colored text) This time, nudge it 2px down and give it a solid white fill. Set it’s opacity to 50% just the same.
Note: This bevelling technique works best with solid-colored, small-sized graphic elements. I came up with this technique because Macromedia Adobe® Fireworks®’ built-in Outer Bevel Live Effect is of crappy quality. If you want a raised bevel effect, just switch the colors of the two back texts.
Words Go ‘Round
For the pièce de résistance, we’re gonna put some accompanying text on a circular path, similar to most gold seals we see on certificates and legal documents.
Use the Ellipse Tool 
to create an outer circle, centered over the starburst. Then, use the Text Tool to create a couple of center-justified text objects that will form parts one and two of your accompanying text. Center them horizontally over the circle you just made, align the top of the first part of text with the top of the circle, and align the bottom of the second part of text with the bottom of the circle. After this, create another circle, this time smaller than the first one, with it’s top touching the bottom of the first part of text, and it’s bottom touching the second part of text. This arrangement ensures that your texts are perfectly aligned along concentric paths once you attach them to the circles.
Once you have everything aligned, select the first part of text and the inner circle, and attach the text to the path (Text > Attach To Path; Ctrl+Shift+Y). Once the text is on the circle path, adjust the Text Offset to position the text correctly. Do the same for the second part of text and the outer circle, this time reversing the direction (Text > Reverse Direction) so the text flows inside the circle.
To finish off, adjust the Kerning of the accompanying texts so they occupy just the right amount of space on either side of the main text. Give each of your accompanying texts a color that is similar to that of the starburst, with just the right darkness/lightness to create contrast against the starburst background.
Tips On Usage
When you’re all done, select all of the objects on the canvas (Ctrl+A) and create a symbol out of it (F8). Because of some quirks in Macromedia Adobe® Fireworks® that happen whenever you resize/rotate gradient-filled shapes and texts-on-a-path, you’ll want to flatten an instance of your symbol (Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Z) before applying any transformations to it. Also, depending on the situation, you’ll want to adjust the intensity of the drop shadow to make your seal prominent.
Disclaimer: The author of this tutorial will not be held responsible for any legal consequences arising from misuse of the same, including, but not limited to falsificaton of deed of sale, incorporation documents, and high-school diplomas. Happy stamping!
Need a quick sample to study? Download the source PNG (tutorial02.zip, 197KB) for this tutorial.
Great tutorial ! Thanks a lot
Very well written indeed. Thanks buddy!
Great trick! Thanks
wow how easy is that! excellent trick indeed. Fireworks rocks!
Thanks for this. I’m always happy to see Fireworks tutorials, since there are so few of them, except basic ideas. I enjoy seeing how people use the tools in combination to create nice effects.
Is it okay to share one of my own here?
Pixelation - Color Sampling
If you’re going to use the seal with a little rotation, better is to apply the shadow AFTER the rotation to provide a more realistic effect: what if I apply a 270° shadow and then I rotate the seal 45° more?
BTW, great tutorial!!!
Thanks.
Very cool tutorial!
verycool i liked it a lot
koan: I see what you mean, but there’s more to it than meets the eye. Not only do you need to apply the shadow afterwards, but you also have to wait until the end to apply your gradient for the starburst, and nudge texts for the faux bevel, both of which coincide with the same light source as the does shadow. Not that it’s not doable, it’s just harder to explain it that way in the tutorial.
Thanks for the worthy comment, though. I appreciate it.
Great work, but I have some doubts (I’m a newbie to fireworks)
How do I save my new “stamp” with a transparent background without loosing the inner stamp gradient?
Nuno: First, set your canvas color to transparent, then export it as a PNG with Alpha Transparency.
Great tutorial, it has been linked to from my site at http://www.tipclique.com/ which allows ranking of tutorials, I think this will fair well.
Thanks
Great e verycool tutorial. Giovanna.
Great tutorial thanks
thanks for the tutorial. you do photoshop too?
aad_lfcfn: I tried using it, but never got the hang of it. Fireworks just happens to suit my preferences more.
good job. i used it for a website i was making. very thorough. i like fireworks 10 times more than photoshop.
Love it!!! Thanks so much!
Awesome tutorial! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
Fantastic!! as I am in the middle of my A-levels and drawing the intial ideas for my coursework these tutorials are invaluable thanks a lot!
It’s simple…
Thanks for the tutorialism!
thanks for this tutorial and expesiall y for the source file.
Regards
Dimi
very easy way of making web 2.0 logos. thanks.
That was nice and neat!
Great, thc for tutorial
Fantastic !!!, you really made it easy and described quite a many new skills for novice fireworks learner .. Thank you so much
that was a bit peasy.
the only thing is the language was over rated
it could be madse easier to read as the actions done were pretty simple
Didn’t think it was that good to be honest
Nicole +& Jake x
I Could make a better tutorial myself
x
jake you have my love
was immense better than anything i could teach