Another New Halloween Design

Halloween Paisley Invitation Postcard

In my quest to learn something new I came upon this tutorial and thought I might give it a try. I like paisley and I LOVE Samhain so I though why not combine the two? I have to say the tutorial is very easy to follow and if you are learning Illustrator or want to learn something new this is a great site.

The paisley design I came up with (a small portion is shown above) involved two of my earlier designs, you may notice the skull and the spider has appeared before plus a new appearance by a bat. I chose citrus colors against black with touches of white. I think it worked well It wasn't hard to do but it was very time consuming. Perhaps it was because I didn't have a plan in my head, I just went along throwing things together, some worked some didn't. Along with the paisley design I made three seals to go along and compliment everything. While these show up in the final paisley they also stand alone.

Halloween Paisley Spider Sticker

Halloween Paisley Skull Magnet

Halloween Paisley Bat Button

Halloween Patchwork

Halloween Patchwork Candy Corn Button

I spent yesterday on another Halloween design that is less bold and more subdued called Halloween Patchwork, inspired by an old pair of socks I used to have. I worked the new design the same as I did "Halloween Stripes" and used Illustrator.

First I created a checkered background and played around with the colors. I settled on tans as this made a good neutral background. I created the stitching lines simply by using the line tool and selecting "dashes"

For the Jack O'lantern, well he may look familiar. I opened the one I made from Halloween Stripes and added color to him with a slight black outline. I wanted to give him a bit of a different appearance so I squashed him down.

The candy corn was a simple triangle I drew freehand. I added two extra anchor points on each of the sides and duplicated the triangle twice. I changed the top triangle to white and "cut" the bottom off so the triangle had a white cap on top. I repeated the same thing with the yellow bottom. I "grouped" the triangles to make a candy corn and duplicated another for the set.

Taking all of the artwork into Photoshop I applied "texture/burlap" to give it some interest and there you have it, enjoy!

Halloween Patchwork Pumpkin Magnet

Halloween Patchwork Candy Corn T-Shirt

Halloween Patchwork Mousepad

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New Halloween Design

Halloween Stripes Trick Or Treat Photo Bag

Well I had fun today! I decided to rely on my good old standby when I am dry for designs and that is Halloween and Samhain. I absolutely love Halloween/Samhain. I love the colors, the smells and scaring the trick or treaters and their parents when they come to my door. (You have to work for your candy here) and most of all remembering loved ones that have passed from this world.

To begin the design I started out in Illustrator and made a striped background of orange, green, black and purple. I opened it up in Photoshop and though I am not a big fan of filters I started to play around with them. First I added some "Noise", then I used "Sprayed Strokes" and added a "Burlap" texture to it. This added some interest from just plain old stripes.

Still something was missing so I went back into Illustrator and drew a simple little spider. I started with an oval, drew each of the legs on the left side, copied the legs and pasted in place then reflected the new set of legs and placed them on the right side of the spiders body. Then it was simple ovals for the eyes and a string to hang from. I placed him against the background but one big spider got quite lost so I shrunk him down and duplicated him until he ran along the green stripes of my background.

Liking where I was heading with this I opened Illustrator and drew three ovals, one a bit larger than the other two. This formed the Jack O'Lantern's body. I freehand drew the stem and mouth with help from the swirl tool for the ends and added triangles for the eyes and nose. I then added him to my background in Photoshop as I did the spider.

For the witch hat I took the stem from the pumpkin, added a few anchor points and disstorted it a little bit. I put an oval along the bottom and added some stars using the "Shapes" tool. It was then ready to add to the background.

To add to the designs I could make on Zazzle I repeated the process with the filters for a green, a purple and an orange background. I also saved copies of each drawing. I uploaded all of them into zazzle and well, you can see for yourself the designs that came about. Also you might want to take advantage of the back to school sale on bags. I have a few trick or treat bags for sale, some of which you can add your own phtots to.

I hope you like the new design, I have another idea I may work on tomorrow, Until then, enjoy!

Party Invitation

Photo Magnet

Table Tent

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Welcoming Baby Cards

New Line Of Baby Cards On GCU!

I often times overlook Illustrator but on occasion I get around to opening it up and playing around with it. Since I don't have a drawing tablet Illustrator is not my first choice to use but I wanted to do another line of simple baby cards for single up to quadruple births and I wanted to make them multi-cultural.

First I started out with the background, I made a small swatch of polka dots in light and dark pink then added it to the swatch pallet. I applied it to my card background and added type on top. To draw the baby I started out with a circle for the face, drew half circles for the eyes, two small circles for the cheeks and placed them accordingly. To make the pacifier I made an oval and placed a half oval on top for the handle.

To make the bonnet and bow I began with a oval made from the pentagon tool. As I was stretching it I held the up arrow so the sides increased to around twenty or so. I used the "pucker and bloat" filter to make the billows in the bonnet. I then added a smaller regular oval to serve as the lip. For the bow I made a triangle and moved the anchor points to round it out. I copied and pasted in front of the first triangle and reflected it to form the other side of the bow. Add a circle for the knot, some lines for the creases, and the bow is finished. For the tails I just drew them freehand with my mouse and repeated the copy, paste, reflect for the other side. I moved the bonnet behind the face and the bow in front and placed it on my card. To change complexions and colors was easy from there by just selecting the items and picking the colors from the color palette. To add extra babies I copied the face after grouping all of the shapes and pasted them.

There are cards for single, twins, triplets and quadruplets and if you need more babies feel free to drop me a line and I will be more than happy to make one up for you. Cards are $2.79 with bulk purchases being lower.

to be continued...