In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a desk-top arrangement that can be used as an interface. We will be creating a wooden table-top, and then place sheets of paper on top, and also a stickynote pad.

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The first thing we will be doing is creating the wooden desk-top. We can use an earlier tutorial for this, Creating a Wood texture:

Once we have a table, we will begin to add the sheets of paper. Make a selection like so:

Add a new layer and we'll fill it with an off-white/blue color, then goto Filter > Noise > Add Noise. Choose a value no more than 1 or 2:

Next, we want to add a fine drop shadow, so open up Layer Styles for this layer. Because we are going to pile sheets on top of each other, we may find it beneficial to add a very fine Outer Glow to the sheets, in addition or instead of the Drop Shadow. For the first sheet, we will add just the Outer Glow:

[Click to enlarge]

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Next, we will draw lines on the paper. Add a new layer and then open up a new document, 10px by 10px. Add a new layer to this document and hide the background:

Now zoom in and draw a 1px line at the very top, across, in a color you desire. I chose blue:

Press Ctrl+A to select all, and then goto Edit > Define Pattern. Give it a name and click Ok. Now we can close this document and go back to our original composition. Make a selection of the paper by Ctrl-clicking that layer, and then in our new layer, choose the Paint Bucket tool and choose the Pattern instead of Foreground, in the toolbar options. From the patterns drop-down menu, choose the one we just created, which should be at the bottom. Then fill in the selection:

Now, remove the top two lines with the eraser tool, and also the bottom line, so we have this:

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Next, make the same selection (Ctrl-click the paper layer) and then choose a red color and paint a 1px line down for the margin. You can hold Shift whilst painting to make straight lines:

Reduce the opacity of the lines layer to around 35%. We should now have two layers for the paper - the background color and the lines. We want to duplicate these two layers a couple of times - or however many you want, and transform them (Edit > Transform):

To increase the depth of the other pages of paper, we can add a Drop Shadow as well as the Outer Glow, I used the following settings:

[Click to enlarge]

For the sticky pad, we simply make a small selection, create a new layer, fill it with yellow, rotate it slightly, and add a Drop Shadow. To give the illusion of the pad being taller than the paper, we give it a larger shadow:

To make it even taller, we can duplicate the layer, remove the styles from the duplicate (which will be on top), and then add a color overlay to the original layer (underneath) to make it a much darker yellow:

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This is a subtle change, but aren't subtle effects the best?
Finally, we can add some text to the stickynote (and the paper, if you want) with your favorite handwriting font:

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