Flower Design
1. Open a new file in Photoshop size 300 x 300 (any size works, but that's the size used in the tutorial). Fill in the background with a lightish color.
2. Change your color to black, make a new layer, and use the circle tool to "draw" (click and drag while holding the shift key, then let go) a circle that overlaps over the whole canvas and is slightly down from the top. Change the layer style to Overlay and the opacity to 50%.
Repeat two more times, lowering where you draw the circle each time (note: they must all be on new layers!)
3. Make a new layer and change your color to white. Find a flower in the custom shapes and draw some of varying sizes.
Make a new layer and repeat with a couple bigger flowers (change to a different style flower), drop the opacity to around 20%, and change the layer style to Overlay.
4. Make a new layer and use the line tool (hold down shift) to make straight vertical white lines (1px wide) that are close together. Go to Layer- Duplicate Layer and then move each layer to a side.
5. It looks kind of weird now, but it'll look better in a second! Pick one of the layers (I used the left side) and go to Filter- Distort- Shear. There should be a box with a vertical line in it and grids in the background. Click on the bottom right corner of the first box and the upper left corner of the last box (you're making an S curve).
Change the layer style to Overlay.
6. Click on the other layer with the vertical lines from before, and then go to Filter- Distort- Ripple. Change the settings to -900% and medium. Change the layer style to Soft Light, and use a size 100px or so brush to erase one side of it (hold down shift so you get a straight line) so it looks like it's fading in.
And there you have it! :) You can use this for pretty designs, backgrounds of things, part of a layout, etc. Here's another example:
