Another check beside my designer todo list! Finally.. my own self made (from paint in the paint tube or scanned crumpled paper) distressed transparencies .. and plenty of ‘em! I have to admit, I love them and will use them religiously. If you are interested in linking up to them, see the bottom of this post. I first want to give you some pointers on how to use them:)
So.. first and foremost I HIGHLY recommend using my just dis-stressedout transparencies on patterned paper.. they won’t look so great on a solid colour unless to do some erasing with a grungy brush or something. The reason I made these overlays is to make your patterned papers looked like they are sanded or distressed.
If you are looking to distress solid papers, I recommend something like this:
otherwise, for patterned paper I recommend
If the distressed look is the look you want, recolour the transparency to your base or background colour of the paper. That makes sense right?
Want to recolour the transparency fast? I use the ‘lock transparent pixels’ tool.
Select the transparent layer you want to recolour and click the little ‘lock transparent pixels’
Now make sure the colour you want is your foreground colour and hold down your ‘alt’ key and hit your backspace key. That should fill your transparency with your foreground colour. To fill with the background hold down your ‘ctrl’ key and hit backspace.
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Here are some examples using the same distressed transparency.
Below – recoloured the transparency with the paper background colour.

Below – for a more dramatic look I recoloured the transparency with the paper background colour then duplicated the transparency 3 times.
Below – it looks a little like the paper has been sanded through, so I recoloured the transparency to an ‘almost’ white (#f9f8f6) .. I NEVER use pure white or black.
Below – I tried recolouring the transparency with yellow .. looks pretty ok .
or .. you could try the standard blending mode option of overlay.. but I’m not so sure I like that.. you be the judge:)
So there are some tips for how to recolour / use my dis-stressed out transparencies! Don’t forget, you can also layer many different transparencies for cool effects as well!
Would you like to try them before you buy them?
CHECK OUT THIS POST FOR A FREE SAMPLE
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