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Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all the readers here at PSDFAN. I hope that everyone has a great holiday. As part of the festive season I’ve decided not to do a traditional Christmas post, as I’m sure you’ve had enough Santa hats, Snowmen and Holly to last you until next year! Instead, I’ve compiled a super long post themed around ice/snow, as I felt that there was a lot of design potential surrounding these themes. I’ve compiled a ton of great tutorials, free brush/icon sets, textures, website inspiration, widescreen wallpapers and more! Enjoy!

Ice/Snow Tutorials

I’ve gathered some of the very best tutorials for creating ice/snow based designs.

Text Effects

How to Create an Ice Cold Poster with 3d Text
This is a nicely detailed tutorial that teaches you how to make an icy text effect and incorporate into a custom poster design.

Stunning 3D Ice Text Effect Tutorial
This tutorial teaches you how to make a great 3d ice text effect, which you can use to incorporate your text as part of an iceberg.

Ice Cold Text Effect
A simple, but effective set of text stylings to give your writing an icy edge.

Freezing Ice Text Effect
This tutorial is extremely simple, aimed mainly at beginners. However, it’s a quick and easy way to get a pretty awesome end result. Perfect for a quick winter design!

Photo Effects

How Funny the Squirrel Became the Snow Queen in Photoshop
Random concept, even more random title, but a nice example of how to turn your photos into winter masterpieces.

Photoshop Snowfall Tutorial (Video Tut)
This video tutorial is clear and informative, and shows you how to create an intense snowfall to give impact to your winter images.

Drawing

How to Make an Ice Cube
A reasonably simple tutorial, with a nice glossy outcome. The final effect actually made me thirsty!

Drawing a Snowman
A great tutorial, and a great effect. Learn how to create a detailed, yet stylish snowman illustration.

A Very Snowy Tutorial
This tutorial shows you how to draw your own custom snowflakes and then turn them into a cool Photoshop brush.

Christmas Snowy Night Sky
A relatively simply tutorial on how to create a clean looking Christmas night sky. Great for creating a backdrop for your festive designs.

Ice/Snow Free Textures

I’ve also compiled my favorite 10 ice/snow themed texture sets, featuring 16 excellent high resolution textures.

Web Design Inspiration

These designs all show great examples of winter themed work. Some seriously ‘cool’ examples here (sorry couldn’t resist the pun).

IceBreaker Template
This HTML Template costs just $15, but is definitely one of my favorites from Theme Forest. It’s super professional, and a great example of how ice/snow doesn’t have to be festive or cheesy, but can be the basis of a beautiful design.

Daily Challenge
The Daily Challenge website uses a subtle snowfall design in their header. They have blurred each snowball varying amounts to create depth, and kept the effect very faint in order to not distract from their content too much.

Icons and Brush Sets

Free Snow Icons
IconsPedia offers a great variety of snow themed icons that you can download for free.

Snow Prints Brush Set
This great free brush set offers 4 snow print brushes to create a truly unique design.

Snowflakes Brush Set
This brush set includes several awesome snowflake designs.

Widescreen Winter Wallpapers

As a designer I like to work on a larger screen resolution, but unfortunately this limits my wallpaper choices. However, if you’re suffering from the same problem don’t worry! I’ve compiled my 10 favorite winter wallpapers, all of which are available at multiple widescreen resolutions (the smallest of which is 1280X800). Enjoy!

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