How To Make Cute Seamless Patterns in Photoshop

Today I’ll show you two ways to make a custom seamless pattern in Photoshop. Let’s get to it!

Hey guys, I’m Kris, and I’m an illustrator, and I love helping you make your creative projects easier. If you’d like to learn more tips and tricks and just up your design skills, I’d love to help you in any way I can, so hit that Subscribe button, and that bell for notifications so you don’t miss out.

Alright, let’s get to it and open Photoshop and get going on this first pattern. See you there. Okay guys, full disclosure. I am doing a voice-over, because I did record this with audio and it turns out I can’t work and talk coherently all at the same time, although it is yet to be seen whether I can do this coherently this way too.

So, anyways, let’s get to it and start by going into Photoshop, I’m going File New and I’m gonna make a new document that is 4000 pixels by 4000 pixels, nice and big, and 300 DPI. And I’m gonna push okay.

Okay, and then I’m gonna go into my finder and grab some elements from my Snow Adorable pack here… I’m gonna grab… Let’s see… I’m gonna grab… I’m gonna get some trees and… Let’s see what else, let’s scroll down… And some, and more of these… And some triangles. I’m just gonna drag and drop into Photoshop.

Alright, now let’s change the background color to a nice blue so we can actually see what’s going on.

It always helps.

I’m gonna take this blue and make it a little bit darker. Perfect. Alright. I’m just gonna drag these guys around to make an irregular pattern. And just tweak them a little bit just by going Command-T to scale them. And then I’m going to take my lasso tool to get these little triangles here… I just want one of them to make… I don’t want that pattern always, so I’m gonna select the triangles layer and go Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V to paste so now I have a new little triangle on its own layer and I’m gonna duplicate that by going Command-J and moving it.

Command-T to transform to just make it a little bit on a different location, perfect. And then I can just use that guy and dot them around wherever need be. Fill in the holes, fill in the gaps.

Okay, I’m gonna select all these and move them up to the left hand corner. Then Command-J to duplicate and Command-T to move over, which I really didn’t need to do Command-T, but anyways… Habit. Just Command-J to duplicate, and then I’m just gonna move them around.

And then we’ll just fast-forward a little bit while I just place all these little guys around.

I’m gonna select everything I’ve put on the canvas here…

and move it up to the top left hand corner, so that just the outer elements just touch the edge.

You can see they overlap the edge there. Then I’m gonna take my selection tool and just select the very edge, so anything that touches that very edge at the top, I’m just gonna grab those and then do Command-J to duplicate, Command-T to transform, and at the very top.

You’ll see that in the Y-axis, I’m gonna take that duplicate and move it down by 4000 because I know this canvas is 4000 x 4000, so I’m going to move it down that full 4000 pixels. Gonna do the same to the left hand side.

Select the very edge and Command-J, Command-T to transform and move it over to the other side in the X-axis this time, and that way it repeats perfectly ’cause I know the dimensions and I realized there was a gap at the top there, so I’m just gonna place another leaf and I’m going to Command-J and Command-T, transform in the Y-axis, so I will move it down exactly 4000 pixels. Now I’m just gonna fill in the holes.

Just to make this pattern look like there’s no big gaps. So now I’m gonna take this one, I think I need one over there, so I’m gonna take that and Command-J duplicate, Command-T on the X-axis, 4000 pixels over. It’s starting to fill in nicely.

Okay, so now I’m gonna take all my layers…

And just group them so it’s not messy. And then I’m gonna go Edit and Define Pattern… And you can name it whatever you want.

And then I’m going to go Layer, New Fill Layer, Pattern, click Okay, and then I’m gonna scale it smaller, so I can see if how this pattern has worked out. And this is just my test, so that I can see how it repeats and if it’s repeating perfectly or if I’ve missed anything.

It looks like we’ve got everything just so, so you can see it’s a perfectly repeatable seamless pattern. So this is one way to make a pattern and I’ll show you another way in the next little section.

So, of course you’ll wanna save this, save it as a Photoshop file and save it as a JPEG as well. So the JPEG is the finished pattern and it is a tileable seamless pattern that you can just repeat and repeat over and over.

So then, next what I’m going to show you… Actually, I’m gonna do some stripes first. And this isn’t very new, but I always found stripes to be a little bit confusing.

I don’t know why, ’cause it’s really actually simple,  once you do it a couple of times. But here we go. What I’m gonna do… And this is gonna be an irregular stripe so it’s actually not something that I want to be a perfect line.

I’m gonna use this Kyle Webster brush…

that comes in Photoshop and it’s just like the speckley one. You can see I’m going to make it 800 pixels, that’s the size of it.

So I’m gonna go across here, and I didn’t like that, I want it to go so it’s full on either side. So first of all, I’m gonna actually make this so that it does repeat perfectly because I want the edges to match up and I’m gonna move it over on the X-axis to zero and then I’m gonna duplicate it, so Command-J and I’m gonna move it over 4000, just like I did before, ’cause I wanna make sure that the edges match up perfectly and they do.

And because it’s irregular it actually wasn’t too difficult. So if there were any gaps or anything that looks weird, I could fix it then with a clone brush or something like that, or the stamp tool.

And so I’m gonna take this and I’ll move it up to the zero, the Y-axis there, and then I’m gonna duplicate it, and I’m gonna move it down 800 pixels, and that way I’m gonna get an even stripe because it’s 800 pixels and it divides it nicely into 4000 so I’m just doing multiples of eight… Doing my times tables, trying to remember them…  It’s not that hard.

Anyways, it’s all good.

We’ve got one more to go, and…

There it is at 4000 and now we have a nice stripe pattern. So I can just merge these all together and that’s Command-E, then we’re gonna define the pattern just to check to make sure it all worked out nice… Go over to… Not there… Layer, New Fill Layer, Pattern… And, yep, and I’m going to scale it down and that looks good to me.

Awesome, okay, so that’s the backdrop I want for this pattern. That’s not the new part I want to show you, it’s this part. So I’m gonna go grab some elements from Snow Adorable again, and grab these cute little bears in hot chocolate cups… Mugs… Right?

Okay, I’m gonna scale them, ’cause this is too big and I’m just gonna make sure that the mugs are the same size, so this top guy can scale up a little bit. There we go, getting better. Okay, so pop these guys in the middle, and this is the part that’s important.

And then go Filter, Other, Offset and the settings are going to be half of the width of your canvas. So we know it’s 4000, so it’s going to be 2000 x 2000 and it’s going to be wraparound. And then this little guy can just stay right where he is, and that’s perfect.

And so now you have all those four quadrants…

Perfectly done, you know they were right and the way they’re supposed to be.

Now we’re gonna go and grab some little snowflakes from the snow globe here and this is just gonna add a little bit more texture. You’re not going to see them too much, it’s just gonna be a little bit more subtle, but I think it just adds… Adds a little bit more to this little project.

That looks… Good. I’m gonna take them and I’m going to group them and I’m gonna duplicate the group and I’m gonna take the original group and I’m going to do the same thing, just gonna merge those and go Filter, Other, Offset because there you have it set up, it does it perfectly anyways.

And that just scattered them about to the corners, touch the edges and that repeats perfectly, and I’m gonna bring back the other ones and just move them around just a touch. And… I’m not gonna do that, because then I will have to repeat it and you’ve already seen that box.

Alright, let’s just move these guys around, and that looks good. So now we can go and just tidy those up, merge them together… Edit, Define Pattern, say Okay and then go Layer, Fill Layer, Pattern and test this out just to see how we did, so I’m gonna scale it down and here we go, and so you can see how easily that this type of pattern is to create with the offset method, and that looks good.

Perfect. I love that little bear, so cute.

So that was two ways to make a seamless pattern in Photoshop. I hope you found it useful and you can use that in your next project. If you haven’t already, hit Subscribe, that really helps me out and then you don’t miss out on any of the upcoming videos. So, I love you guys, I appreciate you so much, and hope to see you in the next one.

How To Design Your Own Fabric Easily!

Hi Everyone!

We don’t know about you but it always seems like there are too many things to do in the day and not enough hours to do them!  With that in mind we are checking off one of the many things that has been on our to do list and that is to write this guide on how to design your own fabric and be fabulous!

We don’t know why we added “and be fabulous” on the end but hey, if you are going to do something you might as well be fabulous right?  We like to think that if you are feeling fabulous than your fabric will be that much more fabulous!

And for the record, because we haven’t said it enough already, can we just say it one more time…fabulous!

Alright, enough of the pleasantries, let’s get right into it shall we?

Come Up With Your Theme

The first step in designing your own fabric is deciding on your theme.  Are you looking to make a spring floral fabric, ballet themed fabric or spring bunny fabric to name a few?  It sounds obvious, but having a theme will help you in either making your own art or finding artwork by illustrators that is all related to your theme.

Take a minute and think about it!

Make/Get Your Art

Once you have your theme nailed down you are now ready to start getting the art together that you will use to make your seamless pattern.  We won’t go into how to create your own artwork here.  If you are new to creating your own art then there are many courses and tutorials out there that you can find to help you with that.

An easier and just as fun way to get your art is to use someone else’s!  Ahhh yes, it is great to let someone else make the art, especially, well, if they can just flat out do a better job than you can!  The good news is that there are lots of places to buy art for commercial use or just personal use to make your seamless pattern for your fabric.

In fact, there is lots of lovely art for all sorts of themes on Pretty Little Lines you can check out here!

A word of advice is that if you are going to create fabric that you are going to sell and you are using someone else’s artwork than you must purchase it with the right license.  Usually a standard commercial license will have you covered for under 500 sales so read over the licenses and choose the right one for you.

Make a Seamless Pattern

All of the clipart collections you will find on this site include premade seamless patterns.  However, there are many individual elements you can use in the collections to create your own seamless patterns if you want something more custom.

If you don’t know how to make a seamless pattern already check out this very helpful video by Kris Lauren on how to make a seamless pattern in Adobe. (Check back! It will be out soon)

Send Your Pattern To Your Fabric Print On Demand Site

After you have your seamless pattern completed you will be ready to head over to one of the many print on demand sites, like Designyourownfabric.com or Spoonflower.com, to have the fabric made.

Some sites may ask you to create a profile first.  You will need an account so you can save your design and so you can enter your billing and shipping information.  After that is out of the way, you will start by uploading your seamless patterns file.  Most sites accept .jpg, .png or .tiff files however, designyourownfabric.com does not accept .png files so if you are using them make sure you save your seamless pattern as a jpeg file.

You will want to make sure the seamless file you have created is at least 150dpi but we recommend 300dpi and 4000px x 4000px so you get the best results. 

Here is a great little guide for sizing your image on Spoonflower.

Order A Test Yard of Fabric

Once you have uploaded your pattern you will want to select what kind of fabric you want and make sure to select that you want a test swatch.  You can play around with the size of your image on Spoonflower by selecting bigger or smaller to manipulate how often you want the pattern to repeat.  The setup on Designyourownfabric.com is very similar.

Once you are happy with the results go ahead and order that test swatch and wait for it to be delivered to your doorstep so you can see it with your own eyes!

Order Your Fabric

If you are not happy with the test swatch then make the necessary adjustments and order another test swatch.  If you are happy with the test swatch then go ahead and order your custom fabric and wait in anticipation for your beautiful fabric to be delivered to you!

We hope that helps you in designing your own fabric.  Of course, there are other tips and tricks but this really gives you the gist of it so you can get started and cross designing your own fabric off your to do list.

Happy Creating