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ELEMENT: Rick Rack
By and Copyright 2006 Nancy Shaw
Aug 28, 2006, 20:58

Making rickrack for your layouts is a very simple process.

Start with a new image, making it as wide as your layouts will be, and about 2 inches in height, at 300 dpi.

Choose the pencil tool, located in the same box as the paint brush tool. Set the size to a square tip, at 75 pixels. The paint brush tool could be used instead. Set the foreground color to any color of your preference. Hold the shift key down, and draw across the image to make a straight line the complete width of your image.

Once you have your line drawn, you will go to Filter>Distort>Wave. This is the step that will give the curvy look to the rickrack. Below is a screenshot of the settings I used. If you switch the type from Sine to Triangle, you'll have sharper edges, which some people might prefer.

You should end up with something like the following. The top sample used the "triangle" setting, and the bottom sample used the "sine" setting.

The last step is to give our rickrack a little bit of depth by adding a layer style. I added a slight bit of Bevel and Emboss: Inner Bevel, Smooth, Depth of 31%, and size 1. I also added Texture, using one of the default patterns, called Wrinkles and changed the depth to approximately 150%. The rest of the settings are default. In the bottom sample, I also added a Gradient Overlay (using the foreground/background colors), set with the opacity set at 41%, reflected style; reverse checked, and the angle at 90 degrees.

You can duplicate the layer several times and apply different gradient or color overlays, save as a psd or png file, and you'll have yourself a library of rickrack to use in future layouts.