PSD Tutorial: Cork Shaped Sticker

Stickers our one of the most popular assets in today’s web design. They can be used to  highlight a particular feature of your website or some other design piece. Our latest freebie is a sticker that is a bit different then most, since we made it in the shape of a bottle cork. In this tutorial I will show you  just how easy it is to make one.

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STEP 1: MAKING A BASIC SHAPE

Open Photoshop and create new document  (something about 400px wide and 400px high should be perfect).  Press U (Shape Tool) and select Custom Shape Tool. Now select sticker shape from the dropdown menu (like in the screenshot below):

Now draw a shape that is 175px wide and 175px high. Now go on the layer where the shape is and press ctrl + mouse click on vector mask thumbnail (see the screenshot below) to make a selection of the shape.

Now go to Select / Modify and click on Contract. Set it to 5px and click Enter. Now right click on layer and click Rasterize. Make sure that shape is still selected and now cut and paste the the contracted shape. New shape will get pasted to a new layer. Be sure to delete the old layer since we don’t need it anymore. You should now have following shape in your document.

STEP 2: APPLYING 3D CORK EFFECT

All we have to do now is to apply effects on the layer. Set shadow, bevel and emboss properties just like in the screenshots bellow:

Applying shadow

Applying Bevel and Emboss

You can apply any color that you wish or even make a gradient to make it look even more realistic. In our case we added a subtle pattern (diagonal lines) to make the cork look a bit dirty and more realistic. Pattern can be seen and downloaded in the source files. You can tinker with the settings to improve the effect even more and maybe add some shadows and light on the surface (to make it look a bit bended).

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