Having a sunny themed design can do loads to brighten up any layout as well as your own spirits. Making them from scratch has never been as easy now that we have GIMP to help us in our art works. Though it might look like a tedious work from reading this tutorial, trust us – it’s not how you think it is. So to keep your summery mood intact, follow these simple steps and you’ll never go wrong.

Make Sun Rays in GIMP

Create a new file with transparent background. we need to be more precise in placing our rays so we recommend to use grids as our guide. Go to View > Show Grid

Now we need to manually dray one ray. You can zoom in if needed. Pick the Path Tool to draw a triangle like this one:

Now, on the Path Panel, click on Selection from Path

Create a new layer on top and name this 1

Activate the Blend Tool and select from the palette FG to Transparent.

Draw from bottom to top

Deselect. Then duplicate 1 and name it 2.

Go to Layers > Transform > Flip Vertically

You will have something like this:

Repeat duplicate and rotate until you have a full radius like the one below. You can now un-check the Show Gridlines from the View Menu to see the design clearly.

Finally, you can add a new background color from the transparent one, and you’ll have a nice retro sun ray design. We also added some retro texts to go with the background.

That sure was fun and easy, right?

Here is what’s new in July!

Learn more about the things we added for July here.