Design a pad of Post-it Notes

This tutorial uses a nifty looking wood texture as the background area to represent a desk. Click here to create the same wood texture.

1. To start this tutorial, create a new layer (Alt+Shift+N) begin with a square-like shape and fill it with color #e0cd73. You can use the rectangular marquee tool (M) to create the square-like shape.

2. Go to filter>noise>add noise and use these values.

3. Here is what you should have.

4. On this layer go to blending options and add a default black/white gradient with these settings.

5. This is close to what you should have.

6. Now go back into the blending options and add a bevel & emboss with these settings.

7. Here is what you should have.

8. Next we can add a nice design at the top of each note. Here is what I used.

You can add it into your existing document by copying and pasting it. An Alternate way is to simply open it up in its own document and drag and drop it to your existing document. This is what you should have.

9. Now for the cool part. Position and resize the design and then change the blending mode to 'multiply'. Here is what you should have.

10. And your layer palette should look like so. 'Layer 4′ is the design layer which I changed the blend mode to multiply. Please note you can disregard the 'Layer 2′ and 'Layer 1′ as those are layers created from the wood texture tutorial.

11. Next in order to transform the 'notes' we need to merge the design layer (Layer 4) with the note layer. So with your design layer selected in the layers palette hit Ctrl+E to merge it down. Now this is what your layers palette should look like.

12. Next enter free transform mode (Ctrl+T) and move the constrain dot (the dot in the middle of the object being transformed) and move it down and left a small amount. Then rotate the note clockwise a small amount. Like shown.

13. After you apply the transformation, hit Ctrl+Shift+Alt+T on your keyboard 7-9 times and you will get something like this. What this does it re-do the transformation each time you hit those keys. Each transformation is based on the location of the previous transformation and is put on a new layer. So you get a spiral effect.

14. Your layer palette will look pretty confusing at first, but it's simply showing each 'note' layer. We will fix this in a few more steps. For now we will give the top most 'note' layer a different rotational angle for a nice effect. To do this just enter transform mode for the top layer only and give it a different angle.

15. Like this.

16. Now for another nice little touch. Duplicate the layer you just gave a new rotation (transformed) and move it all the way to the bottom of every other 'note' layer but above your background layer. When you move your layer to the bottom, reduce the fill to 0%. This is what this step should look like.

17. Now go into blending options and add a drop shadow with these settings.

18. Here is what you should have, a nice subtle shadow from the top note.

19. Now it's time to combine every note layer. This is not entirely necessary but I suggest doing it. What you want to do is click on the top most note layer, hold Shift, and then click the bottom most note layer, like shown. This will select every layer in between. Now, hit Ctrl+E to merge them into 1 layer.

20. Here is what your layer palette should look like after the merge.

21. Now you can add some text on top. I used very nifty font called Jennifer's-Hand-Writing.

That's it!