The following tutorial was written using PSP7 and Animation Shop.

Open a new image 13 X 13, transparent background. Hit your + key a few times to zoom in so you can see what you are doing :)

Flood fill the image with black (or color of your choice). Using the magic wand, click on your graphic (you should now see marching ants around the entire thing).

Go to "Selections", "Modify", "Contract", Number of pixels=1. Now flood fill the selected area with your main color (#6D7AA5 used in example).

Choose 2 highlight colors, one darker than main, one lighter (#4D5B87 & #A8B0CA used in example). Using below image as a guide, add highlights to your blinkie block.

All done with your base :) Save this in psp format for use in other blinkies.

Duplicate your blinkie block image (Shift+D) for each letter in your blinkie. Add a letter to each block using a small, clear font. I found Arial at a size of 7 worked nicely. Black was used as the font color in the example. When adding letters, make sure "Floating" is selected. This allows you to reposition the letter so that it is centered in the block. It is personal preference whether or not to use antialias. Play with the lettering a bit to see what you like.

When all of your letters are done, open a new image 250 x 100, transparent background. Copy each letter needed and paste as a new layer on your new image. Position your letters so that only 1 pixel of the black is showing between blocks (see example). Move your first letter 6 pixels up from rest of letters. Shift+D to duplicate this. On main image, move second letter up 6 pixels, and move first letter back down to original position. Shift+D to duplicate. Continue in this manner until you have a new image for each letter in your blinkie.

On each duplicated image, go to "Layers", "Merge", "Merge Visible". Now copy each image in order as a new frame in your animation program.