In this tutorial I'm going to show you how you can layer different background materials on top of each

other. Now the first thing to talk about is how backgrounds work.

When we drag a backgroun on, this automatically goes onto the Background Layer.

And if you click on the layers tab on the right hand side, you can see that here.

And each time I drag a background on, that replaces whatever

was on the background layer with a new background.

Now the potential problem with this is that you might want to layer

two different background materials on top of each other to make a more complex

background. So the way I would go about doing that, is

firstly to create a new layer. And to create a new layer

you click on the little add layer icon here with the little plus symbol

you can see that's now added a new layer called layer 2. You can

You can reorder layers very easily, and I'm actually going to drag this layer 2

in between my background and layer 1. But also if you click on it's name,

you can actually rename the layer. So I'm going to call this background 2

Now I want to use this material that's covering the background

as a material. So the way I want to do is firstly to select the background layer

and now I can actually select this material. And what I'm going to do is cut that

using the button at the top. Go back to my Backgroun 2 and then paste it.

So now this material is now set on my Background 2 layer. The great thing about this is that now when

I drag other backgrounds onto my page, like this blue one

you can see that it doesn't replace what's on my background 2 layer.

and you can see from this preview here, that the new background

is actually sat on my background layer. So now, if I wanted

to cut this material to make a secondary part of my background

I can select it, use the scissor tool, and hold on Shift to make a straight line cut

Then throw that bit away. I want to just add a shadow here.

And now I've effectively got a composite background. When you want to start adding

embellishments and what have you to your page, you should then

go back and select Layer 1, and then you can drag embellishments on as

normal without ever selecting any of those background elements'

You'll also notice using this method, going back to the Backgrounds tab,

if I were to drag on new Backgrounds, all of that still works. But it only replaces the bottom Background

layer. It leaves this piece of additional material I've added here

on top.