Textures

As I look all around I see all kinds of textures. The most natural ones are the textures in nature, the way the sunlight shines on the trees, the clouds, even the verdant grass. Textures are a great way to get away from the solid color monotonous effect that can be placed into fonts or background design.
There are many free texture sites on the Internet. One site of note, which boasts over 30,000 textures is: http://www.cgtextures.com/ There are many categories for you to peruse and to decide upon when doing your layout. Other great sites would include:
http://mayang.com/textures/
http://www.imageafter.com/index.php (see second drop down menu from the left for these full paged textures that can be idea for web pages).
http://texturez.com/
http://www.texturise.com/
These are just a few of the many free textures out there. Just watch out for the copyrights, some images might not be available to use commercially. Respect the designer's wishes.
I also have some of my own designs that I will be including at a latter date. I created them using some basic graphic programs like Starfish. There are other commercial programs that work very well such as GenTex (still the best), Illusionae, and Wood Workshop. You can integrate the generated images through photo editing software, even programs such as the 'timeless' 2pic at http://2pic.moor-software.com/ There are other programs that will super impose one picture into the other as well. Just realize that not all textures will super impose the way you might want them to.
I look for textures that have a lot of contrast in them. The more muted tones seem to all blend together and stand out more like one color. The fun part is experimenting within different graphic programs like Photoshop, Paintshop and even Photo Filtre. Once you get the hang of working textures into your layout, or into fonts, then you may be pleasantly surprised.