The Making of a Background

In the first cards (shown in earlier posts) I chose a background from a Nasa photos of a galaxy. That was pretty easy as I just looked for the right photo and color adjusted it. For the next background the designers asked me to create a sort of hypnotic swirl. I really couldn't find anything online, so I just made it from scratch. So I here is the process I went through..

No 1: I created a black pointed "spoke" that a replicated and started to arrange on a central point.
No.2: I got the spokes all arranged and started to adjust the color. They wanted something that was comic book like.
No3: I copied one set of spokes and layered it on top, then rotated it. I used colors that were reminiscent of a circus tent.
No 4: I then used the distort tool to "twist" the rays in a circle. I played around with the lighting effects, but found it was easier and quicker in this case to just use the airbrush tool with a really big brush. I then imported it into the card template and added the text and images for the card.