Referring to the Spirograph mentioned earlier, there is a free program that works with 'Draw' programs (not 'Paint' or 'Photo editing' ones) called 'SpiroJ' that can give effects like that. Below is just a sample. The shapes it can make are infinitely variable. It just draws an outline, which is then filled with colour within the Draw program:

Guildford High Street clock with an 'old silver' embossed look. It was done in Xara Xtreme. A photo was converted to a Draw (vector) format using the 'Trace' tool. Then then an effect called 'Chrome' was used. A bit more playing around produced the effect.

This was achievied using cave painting filter in my microsoft photo package.

Ghostly cavalrymen of the English Civil War, with drawn swords. Achieved using a neon effect programme.

I drew this a while ago and I'm not sure if I've linked to it before. It wasn't displayed in a post anyway. A Xara Xtreme vector drawing:

tw, Professer, and picqero - hats off to all, those are fantastic! I just love this stuff.

you're losing your marbles, lol.
excellent.

Yes, maybe the drawing is symbolic of my trouble

I've been playing around with the new extrude tool in the recently released Xara Xtreme 4 Trial. Using this and a few other functions (transparency etc) produced these first attempts. It would cost money to upgrade to the new version but I think I might go for it:

tw, You could be onto a career in special effects for the movies! I selfishly think you really ought to upgrade.

I took a rose photo of mine, then used the marbled glass effect followed by lizard skin, this is in Adobe Photoshop.

Tha rose looks lovely with that finish, Sue - very attractive, unlike this odd windmill created with photoimpression cylinder effect and altered colours.

Lovely rose, Sue.
lilyalli, Yours looks like a teapot warrior with a sword. I've noticed I am the only one who comments with my *strange observations*? I wonder what that says about me....

So guess who just upgraded to Xara Xtreme 4 and who played with the program all afternoon when he should have been doing the gardening!

used paint wides strokes for this photo of dolphins and rainbow

My first try at something like this...
A giraffe photo we took at Taronga Zoo last year.

Using Jasc Paint Shop Pro 9, I put a sepia tint to it and used the 'blinds' texture.

Here is a picture of the American Supreme Court building, done with the "Fresco" option on Photobucket. Then I hand brushed some of the details back to the original photo, such as the sky portions and the statue in front - the edges are a little rough, though, because all I have with me is a laptop computer with no mouse.

Photobucket 'paint'.

A blurry, blended, flowery, leafy collage on a black, wavy bevelled background. Done in Xara Xtreme:

lily, that shadow photo does look wonderful with the effect! Prof, I love the way the rainbow comes through that image, too.

This is a vector drawing of pencil, paper and background I constructed. The individual components that make up the drawing are shown in the grey oblong. Vector drawing is quite interesting because all of the bits are are separate outlines filled with colours. The outlines can be seen in the outline view (top left):

A .gif image of the waterfront near Piazza San Marco (St. Mark's Square) in Venice, taken two days ago.

Just got back to this thread and have to say, "Thank you, ClaraSue!" Good to know someone appreciates my strangeness.
tw, I am so glad you went with the upgrade, more for us, and that really is a neat program. These are all just wonderful and that boat photo did look great just like you thought it would, lily.

Very creative people here, have enjoyed looking at your work. This is a fractal using "Apophysis" freeware.

That's a good effect mcshellsie. In fact, they're all very good and a bit of fun to produce too.

This is done with 'Brushes' in Xara Xtreme. It starts off as just a couple of drawn circles and then you play around with for a while until it looks a bit interesting