creating a texture
As requested I've made a tutorial about how I make most of my backgrounds. I do often use stock images and sometimes my own other backgrounds. But this I've made with my brushes and two stock images and should hopefully be easy to follow. (with all images you can click them to view the full size in another window)
So this is the texture I'm going to use to show you
First I start with a black 1024x768 canvas. I made a new layer and used my own texture brushes with two shades of green, one light and one darker. I gently brush the dark green over the the canvas, not heavy over all black. I then on the same layer switch to the lighter green and pick areas I want to be brighter and brush that colour over them.
Next I duplicated the layer with the green brushes on it and set it to screen.
Now the next layer is one of the stock images. I use Image After as it does have great images for textures. This is the first stock picture I used at this point and I set it to soft light over both the green brush layers.
Now I made a new black layer. Took a dark red colour and a lighter red colour and did something very similar to the first time round with the green brushes. I then set this to lighten.
Next I used another stock image. This one I set at overlay and as you'll notice it has a big black bit at the top I placed it a few centimetres up the canvas. I don't worry about the line of it as there are a few more layers to come that will cover it up!
Next I made another blank layer and merged all other layers into it. You can do this (in ps) by pressing shift, control and n (for new layer) and then shift, control, alt and e. Then I made that layer black and white by pressing shift, control and u. Then I used a xero filter, which is artworx lines. It gives it a bush feeling. I then set that layer to multiply to darken the piece.
Ok, I again made a new layer and merged all the other layers into it. I then changed the colour settings as below. And then using the darkness/contrast setting I made it slightly brighter.
Next I made another blank layer and selected a dark red from the image and using again the texture brushes and both sets of my grunge brushes, gently put some brush work around the edge of the texture. Giving it a bit of a border.
I duplicated that layer with the border brushes and set the top one to hard light.
Lastly I make a new layer and merge all the other layers into it again. I lower the saturation a bit on this layer and set it to overlay at 50%.
And then I flatten the image and this is my final result. I hope it was useful.