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!
