The first thing I make with any kit is a striped paper and a plaid paper. I love plaids - and I learned this trick a long time ago on how to make easy plaid papers with
NO filters needed. Use if you can!
Easy Plaid Papers by MagsGraphics
Goal: To create a 12x12 plaid paper in PSP or Photoshop.
Note: I use PSPX3, but this tutorial can easily be adapted to your design program.
TOU: This tutorial is ©MagsGraphics, 2010. Please direct others here for the directions. What you MAKE with this tutorial is YOURS to do with what you want! Free stuff, Paid stuff, whatever!
Directions:
- Open a new canvas 2"x1" (2" wide). We need to make your striped tile. Choose your four or five colors. Fill a new layer with each color. Then drag the different layers over so that you can see all five layers of color. They do NOT have to be of equal distance - sometimes the most interesting plaids happen with colors of unequal widths.
- Get your rectangle selection tool, and draw a rectangle over your tile - we need to make sure there aren't any gaps and this is the easiest way. After you have your selection, to to Image --> Crop to Selection. Now it is seamlessly tiled all at once:
- Open a new canvas 12"x12", 300 .dpi.
- Change your fill pattern to this new pattern you've created. For skinnier stripes, lower your scale to 50% or whatever looks good to you. Flood-fill your canvas. You now have a nice striped paper.
You can add texture or grunge it up however you like it. For plaid, continue to step 5. - Duplicate this striped layer.
- Go to Image --> Free Rotate --> and Rotate 90 degrees (left or right, doesn't matter).
- Reduce the opacity of this top layer to 50%.
- Merge the layers and add your texture (I used a texture called "Daze" for this paper).
- Save as a .jpg and you're done!
