This is in no way meant to discourage buying the texture CD mentioned above, because I am always looking for good tiling textures. Continuing the texture theme, I'm trying to replicate the effect of transparent plastic with fine texteure to the surface. Accurate glass will give the required optical properties, and with the transparent shadows the colour will transmit to the surface on which the object sits. I need to add to this the effect of a fine texture to the surface, which I'm trying to do with a rough bump parameter in the shader. An example of my best effort so far is the detail image on the Skills page.
Any thoughts welcome.
The CD sounds most useful, look forward to it. Thanks to Peter M. Van Rooij and Michael Rees for their responses on this matter. Theres actually a filter in photoshop that does this. Mirroring remains a good policy as you pointed out.