Hi there, Stefanie here bringing you a tutorial on changing a striped paper into a plaid. I have to admit to loving striped papers, I usually leave just a small edge peeping out between my paper layers and that magically ties all the colours of my layout together. But what if you don’t like the way a striped paper draws the eye away from the photo? It is easy to change a stripe into a plaid paper, and plaids lack the directionality of the angled stripe.

I wanted a more masculine monochromatic feel for the quote I had about black and white photography. But the striped paper lead the eye away from the photos and I wasn’t wild about it. I used photoshop elements 12 and it was easy for me starting with the striped paper.

I duplicated the striped paper, then flipped it horizontally and then decreased the opacity of the top, flipped layer and created the plaid look.

When I swapped out the background stripe for the plaid effect I was much happier with the effect on the layout.

I know that the text in the striped paper also flipped and wasn’t ideal, but felt that with the addition of some wordart stamping on the layout, the text, flipped and otherwise on the background layer would be read as texture instead of words.

I hope that this tutorial helps you to play around and create some of your own custom plaid papers that perfectly match the kit you may be working with, even if there is no plaid in the kit to begin with.