Vallely background

1. For the background I went on eBay and found a picture of the deck I was doing the tribute to. I saved the image and placed it as the very bottom layer. The original boards background is really rough, but I wanted to go with a more clean look to fit the cartoony aesthetic I was going for. I then used the pen tool to roughly trace the outline of the background. I could have used the live trace feature, but it's a to much of a cheat and never really looks that good anyway.
2. I next continued to draw in the rest of the pattern using pink to make it easier to see over the black. Due to the fact that older decks were shorter I had to make up a bunch of the pattern for the bottom. The pattern on this board wasn't very hard to follow.
3. When one whole side was done I simple selected it all copied, pasted, horizontally reflected it and moved it to the other side of the center line.
4. I used the same technique for the top of the board and placed a layer behind the pattern with a gradient square on it.