A Freshman's Approach to Making Papers

Here is something I came up with when experimenting with paper designs -- very simple and easy to do.

This is my finished background:

I started with a screenshot from Google Earth of Oregon's high desert country.

You can see a few clouds, and the green circles, where the fields are watered with those huge sprinklers that go around on a pivot.

I then added a cropped section of a photo I took of a cascading stream --

For color, I choose a pretty teal:

I made two teal layers and put one as the bottom and one as the top.
I then played with the layer blends and ended up with this:

Top Layer: Solid teal, set to 'screen' blend, opacity 100%
Raster 3 (cascade stream) 'soft light', opacity 20%
Raster 2 (google earth) 'luminance', opacity 26%
Bottom Layer: Solid teal, 'multiply', opacity 50%

Here is my layer palette:

There are numerous possibilities just by playing with the layer blends, opacity, using different solid colors and images, adding texture, make it more bold by raising the opacity, or softer by lowering, etc.

You can download the layered .psd HERE if you'd like to experiment yourself.
Download the finished paper HERE.