Fun With Abstract Patterns (Design Your Own Giftwrap)

With more and more companies printing wrapping paper to order, here is a little process you can use to design your own unique pattern of paper. Alternatively you could simply print and frame the result as an abstract piece of art.

Pick any suitable image that holds an area that you think will make a suitable pattern. Once you have had a go at this you will soon realise that just about any image can be used.

In this example I have started with a simple image of a green charm bracelet.

From your chosen image select and crop a small area of detail, I have have chosen to crop in on some of the beads. Note - for simplicity I have applied a square crop but it doesn't have to be square.

Now you need to create a new background layer which is twice the height and twice the width of your crop. So if your crop is 600pix x 400pix your new background layer would need to be 1200pix x 800pix.
You now need to drop your cropped image as a new layer on to the background layer.

Repeat this process a further three times so that you end up with a blank background layer and four copies of your crop layer sitting on top.

Ignoring the base layer you now need to manipulate three of the four 'crop' layers.
Layer one is left alone, layer two is flipped horizontally, layer three is flipped vertically and layer four is flipped both horizontally and vertically.

The four layers can then be arranged in four different ways as shown below.

Once you have chosen the layout you like you flatten all the layers to create one layer.

Make a note of the size of this document as you now need to create a blank background layer twice as wide and twice as tall once again, then copy across four copies of your flattened image.

With the four layers copied across, arrange, flatten, save and repeat this process until you reach a sheet either big enough for purpose or you simply achieve a pattern that you are really happy with.

The finished example using the green charm bracelet is shown below.