Background techniques?

just wondering if you guys had any favourite background techniques or favourtie brushes? and tips!

 

I like to use grunge or cloudy brushes and then I just do a heap of filters like blurs and anything else which I feel like using.

 

I would use grunge, spatter, star and abstract brushes. I would brush over stock images of anything really and play around with their blending options. The i would use filters like motion blur, gaussion blur then play around with the blending options again.

 

abstract brushes are my favourite.. grunge brushes are really good too.. sometimes just a stock looks good if you add effects to it and lightly go over with brushes..

 

Please explain 'stock'

 

A stock image is an image of anything.

 

something that isnt a brush, isnt a person.. something like a bridge, or a football field.. stuff like that..