If you’re anything like me, you’re a big fan of all the free sources out there offering icons, graphics, textures, etc. etc. etc. They come in very handy when you need to add a little extra somethin’ to your designs and don’t have a lot of time to do it manually. But today, friends, I’m going to show you how to do something all by yourself — easily make your own vintage-style wrinkly paper social media icons in Adobe Photoshop!
There’s more than one way to skin a cat, as they say, but let’s start out with a clean slate, say 600×600 pixels at 72dpi. Go ahead and drop a neutral background color in there so you’ll be able to see the white circle you’re going to add next. To make it easier on myself, I added some guides to my doc like so:
Next, let’s make the circle that will be the base shape of our icon (make it on a new layer). I just used the circle selection tool and dropped white in with the paint bucket, but you could use the ellipse tool, as well.
Before you go any further, make a duplicate of the circle layer and hide it (trust me, it’ll be handy later).
Since we’re going to give the icon a “folded over” look, make a selection using the polygonal lasso tool that will nip a section of the circle at a 45-degree angle (use your shift key with the polygonal lasso tool to get a perfect angle). Using the guides will help you position your selection.
Then, cut the selection off (command+X) & paste it into a new layer (command+V).
Now, rotate the new “flap” layer 180 degrees (edit>transform>rotate 180) and position it so the cut edges match up nicely (those guides come in handy again!). Really zoom in to match the corners up if you need to.
Next, let’s add a little shadow to that flap to give it some depth. Direct select the flap’s shape by holding command and clicking the flap layer in the layers palette, and then add a new layer underneath the flap. Drop some black into the new selection. Doing it this way will give you more control over the shadow than using Photoshop’s drop shadow effect.
Then, bring up the shape transform handles (command+T), and while holding down the command key, drag the bottom-right handle out a bit to shape your shadow.
We’ll use a gaussian blur effect (filter>blur>gaussian blur) of 5.0 pixels, set the shadow layer’s blending mode to “multiply,” and drop the opacity down to 25%. Then direct select the main circle shape (command + click on its layer) and add a mask to the shadow layer to keep it within that shape. You should end up with something looking like this:
0 Comments on Create Your Own Vintage Wrinkled Paper Icons in Photoshop as of 1/1/1900
Nice work! Love the colors & cute character!
Very sweet! I love the penguin's cute face.