Simple Background Tutorial

First press D and then X. Now Black will be your background color, if not set it to background color. Press Ctrl+N to open up a new document. We will be working with a 350x120 px document, choose as background contents: background color (black here). You come up with this now.

Start brushing on it with some basic grunge brushes which you can find practically everywhere 9for example www.deviantart.com -> search photoshop brushes).
play around with the opacity a bit and brush on it in white (on the black background). Try some different brushes, play around with it you'll come up something like this.

Now to add a little spice to it: we're going to add some color balance for this layer (Ctrl+B). Pick a nice color; maybe have some adjustments to it.

This tutorial was made for newbies, when I was a newbie this would have been a great help to me, I hope it helps some of you too.