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In this tutorial, we’re going to look at how to fill shapes with repeating seamless patterns. This is super quick and easy to do and is a great way to create custom graphics for your digital planner, scrapbook or other project. This is also a great way to make digital stickers or other shapes that you need for projects.

To do this, make sure you’ve looked at our first tutorial HERE which explains how to upload your free seamless tile graphics and create an all over pattern.

In this tutorial we follow a similar approach but this time using a shape.

How to Fill a Shape With a Seamless Pattern

Create a new project and make it what ever size you require. Turn off the background layer (the little eye by the background layer icon)

Go to the shape icon on the left hand toolbar and choose ‘Custom Shapes’ at the bottom of the list. This will open a new tool bar in the menu at the top of the page.

Choose what shape you would like to use. I picked the heart.

Draw the shape to the size you require and then create a new adjustment layer (the same as we did in the first tutorial), and select ‘Pattern Fill’.

This will fill the layer above your shape with a pattern. Again, as we did in the first tutorial, click on the tiny arrow at the bottom of the pattern icon to choose which pattern you would like and use the adjustments to change how the pattern looks. You can change this later.

Tip: If you are working on a small screen, you may find the tool panels overlap each other and you end up ‘losing’ a panel. If this happens, use the little grab handles at the bottom of the panels to resize them or click on the tiny arrows at the top of the panels to close or open them.

Now we are going to clip the pattern layer so it is the same as the shape beneath it. Make sure the pattern layer is active (ie slightly lighter in color, click on it if it isn’t). Also make sure the pattern layer is on top of the shape layer. Drag them to reposition if necessary. Go to Layer > Clipping Mask

You will now see the pattern has been clipped to match the shape underneath. However, the pattern is still editable. If you want to change the patter, for example make it bigger or change the angle, double click on the pattern icon in the layer panel to open the panel window where you can adjust the pattern.

And that’s all there is to it!

If you want to use another shape which you have created in another application (remember it needs to be a PNG file with transparent background), you can follow the exact same process but instead of drawing the shape in Photopea, go to File > Open and Place. Find the file you want to use and then drag this into position.

Follow the rest of the tutorial to create a pattern which is clipped to your shape.

Hope this is useful and that you are creating the perfect graphics for your projects!

If you have seen seamless repeating pattern tiles and are not sure how to use them, read on! In this tutorial we show you how to use our free repeating tile patterns to create a wonderful all-over pattern in any shape or size. Plus, we use free online graphics editor to do this, meaning there’s nothing to install and it’s all totally free!

Love repeating patterns….? Check out our Free Repeating Pattern Procreate Brushes 🙂

What Are Seamless Repeating Pattern Tiles?

Repeating patterns tiles do as the name suggests! The pattern tile has been designed so that the pattern on the tile will repeat without any seams to create an allover seamless pattern which you can make to any size.

A shape of any size can be filled with a pattern tile and the tile when tiled together will create an all over pattern.

This is such a versatile way to create your own backgrounds and stickers for digital planners and other digital projects, to create handmade cards, classroom material, party printables – and so much more!

We can see how repeating tile patterns works from the picture below. The image on the left is the pattern tile, the central image shows the pattern tile used to fill a background and the image on the right, shows how the pattern looks when used to fill a shape.

And as we will see later, there’s so much more control we have over creating graphics using tiles. We can customize the look and feel with a couple of clicks on the mouse!

How to Use Seamless Pattern Tiles

The process of using seamless pattern tiles is going to be pretty much the same, regardless of whether you use our free seamless repeating pattern tiles or tiles from other sources. You will need to use a graphics editor which allows you to use repeating patterns. We are using the excellent free browser based graphics editor called Photopea which not only is free to use, but also, being browser based means you don’t need to worry about downloading and installing additional software on your computer.

First, pick a pattern! Head to our free repeating tile section and choose which tiles you would like to work with. Download and save this to your computer, remember to unzip the files

Go to Photopea

Head to Photopea. You don’t need an account to get started as the free service gives us all we need. However if you want to start an account, you will find both a free and paid for option.

Load Your Pattern Tile

To save your pattern tile as a pattern in Photopea you first need to open the file. To do this you have two options. Either select ‘Open from Computer’ in the main screen, or look at the top left and select ‘File’ > ‘Open’.

Save As Pattern

When the tile is open, go to ‘Define New’ and select ‘Pattern’. This tile is now saved as a pattern and can be used to fill any shape.

How to Use The Tile Pattern

Let’s create a letter sized background and fill it with this pattern. You can, of course, choose any size you want. To do this, go to New and then select ‘Letter’ or any other size (or type in the pixels if you want to create something in your own custom dimensions).

Create New Pattern Layer

When your new canvas is open, look on the right hand side for the ‘layer adjustment’ icon (round circle with half black and half white). Click on this and select ‘Pattern Fill’.

Choose Pattern

After you have clicked on Pattern Fill, a menu will appear. There’s a tiny triangle at the bottom of the pattern box, if you click on this, it will open the pattern swatches and you will see the one you just saved. Click on this and…. voila! You will see your background is now filled with the pattern.

Pattern Controls

You will also see you have a number of options which will allow you to change the look and feel of the patter. For example, you can make the scale bigger or smaller, change the angle of the pattern etc, and you will see in real time what effect this has.

When you have finished creating the background and you like what you have done, just go to File > Export and chose PNG or JPG and download the file to your computer.

Tip: How to Edit the Pattern

To open the panel with the pattern options, double click on the ICON of the pattern layer which you will see in the pattern layer. Can’t see the pattern layer? Look at the next tip!

Tip: How to Hide/Show Tool Panels

If you ‘lose’ the panels which show layers etc or you want to hide some panels to give you more working room, click on the tiny arrow icons at the top of the panel windows.

So, that’s how you can create backgrounds and patterns to use in your digital planner, digital scrapbooking, handmade cards or other craft projects.

In the next tutorial, I’ll show you how to make shapes using this technique.