Elements, images and resources used in my designs

Version 7 (The Brush Strokes in Blue Design) Elements

A similar background was found on a site offering it for free as a wallpaper. I went about searching for some victorian style repeating patterns for Photoshop. And this is the best I found, by onethirtytwo over at deviantart. Spot on, just a slight adjustment by adding a colour overlay using soft light and then five minutes trying to mark out the repeating area to take just a small tile. And voila, beautiful seamless background! And here's the exact tile I used:

Take it, use it, enjoy it. If you do anything sexy with it, let onethirtytwo know, and let me take a look too!

The paint brush and grungey effects were done in a couple of ways. The type seen behind the logo is a photoshop brush set called "ultimategrungeset3" from deviantart. I'm not sure who it's by, but it could be him. If i find out for definite, i'll post a link on here. All the other grungey effects are done by filling a block in on the page in your desired colour, and remove parts of the block painstakingly using a grunge or random splatter brush as the eraser. Easy to do, but can take plenty of time.

Version 6 (The Paint Splatter Design) Elements

I've had a request recently for an insight into the "paint splatter" effect used in this current design. As i'm working on a new design, I thought now would be a good time to do so.

The paint splatters themselves are photoshop brushes, most good ones i've found are from deviantArt. If i ever find the user who made the exact ones i used in my design, I'll link to them. For now, here's the brush file. To install, unzip the file and put it into the following directory (this assumes you have installed to the default directory on windows, mac users will find it somewhere in your hard drives "applications" folder in probably a very similar place):

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop CS\Presets\Brushes

Obviously, if you're using a newer or older version than CS subsitute accordingly to find the directory. Once you've put the file there you can add brushes to your existing pallette and append them to the end of any currently loaded. Easy.

The site design was originally planned to be a wordpress theme, and in fact I might make that download available too if I can find it! It's been through several different evolutions since the original paint splatter idea came about. you can see the other versions in my portfolio. Christ, some of them are poop when I look back at them.