2015 - Page 5 of 11 - Every-Tuesday

How to Create Delicious Donuts in Illustrator

After the Lovebird and Watercolor Popsicles tutorials, I had a few requests to create more illustration-based tuts (if this is something you’d like to see more of, please let me know!). Last week, Tamara made a request for a donut tutorial which I thought would be fun, plus it incorporates quite a few useful techniques I find myself using all the time. So! Even if you don’t have an appetite for some digital donuts, I promise you’ll walk away with something you’ll use many times in the future. In this tutorial, we’ll create 2 different versions of typical donuts in Illustrator utilizing the blob brush, scatter brush, paint streak textures and clipping masks. Let’s get started!

August 18, 2015

3 Comments

Freebies, Hand Drawn, Hand Lettering, Typography

Freebie: 3 Watercolor Notecard Printables

As the summer begins to wind down, things are already feeling busier! I’m finding myself constantly searching for a sheet of paper to scribble notes on, to-do reminders, or phone numbers to call. If this is you too, you might want a prettier sheet of paper to make your list a bit more achievable..I know I do! For that reason, this week’s freebie is a set of 3 watercolor notecard printables – print two notecards per any 8.5″x11″ or A4 cardstock or regular paper. The final printed size for each notecard is 5.5″x8.5″, full preview + download link below!

August 13, 2015

0 Comments

Branding, Business, Personal, Tutorials

Bulk Print DIY Business Cards Using Illustrator

Happy Tuesday! This week’s tutorial comes courtesy of Jodie who asked a great DIY question I think will help a lot of people. Personal business card printing can get pricey pretty quickly if you’re looking for anything better than a paper thin glossy card (ick). I’ve DIY’d every personal business card I’ve ever made. Yup. And you know what? Even fancy shmancy design studios loved em. So say you’ve designed up a killer card design in Illustrator and don’t want to be wasteful with your paper. Say you also have a back of the card designed that you need to match up to the front when you print on your home printer. What’s the best way to make the most of your paper and have things work out perfectly front to back? In this week’s tutorial, I share how to bulk print DIY business cards using Illustrator to print 8 cards, front and back using one sheet of 8.5″x11″ paper. You can also use the same method in InDesign if you’d prefer using that instead. Let’s go!

August 11, 2015

11 Comments

Freebies, Resources, Textures, vector

Freebie: Vector Mini Grit Textures

Have you ever run into a situation where you know adding a little – just a little bit – of subtle texture could take something you’ve done to the next level? This happens to me allll the time, which is why this week I want to give away a couple of vector mini grit textures. Each texture’s grittiness is on the smaller/finer side to work perfectly with more detailed artwork. And because they’re vector, no matter what you use em on, they’ll never lose resolution and can infinitely scale for any size you need them. Check out a few ways you can use them below!

August 6, 2015

5 Comments

Hand Drawn, Illustrator, Tutorials

How to Vectorize Hand Drawn Doodles

Happy Tuesday! This week’s tutorial is brought to you by Whitney + Monica who both emailed asking how to vectorize hand drawn doodles so they would have reuseable, and infinitely rescalable vectors. You’ve probably seen vector artwork around a lot lately – I just released a pack of vectors a few weeks ago and gave 5 of them away for free. In this tutorial, using that vector pack as an example, I share how I took those hand drawn elements from a doodle on a sheet of copy paper to a crisp vector that can be used over and over again on any application. Do you remember the how to vectorize hand lettering tutorial? If you’ve practiced that at all, you’ll be in great shape with converting doodles 🙂 In this video, we’ll go over 3 different methods of cleaning up your doodles, so whether you’re a beginner or advanced Illustrator user, there’s an option that will work for you. Let’s get started!

August 4, 2015

25 Comments

Color, Hand Drawn, Hand Lettering, Roundups, Typins, Typography

Typins: 05

Welcome to Typins #5! This post is where I share my recent favorite typography pins from pinterest. I’m obsessed with (and if you’re here, I’m sure you are too!) and have boards for general typography (phrases, quotes, full words) written beautifully, just letters and just numbers. I pull from those boards for these posts, so there’s even more over there if you’re craving a bigger type fix 🙂 Here are 8 of my current favorite pins to get your type on!

July 30, 2015

0 Comments

Branding, Color, Illustrator, Products, Tutorials

How to Vectorize Watercolor Textures

If you took my Watercolor Branding Skillshare class, you learned how to digitize watercolor textures – from scanning them in, to color adjustments, to removing the background correctly so they could be placed on anything. When a watercolor texture is scanned in, you’re limited by the greatest size and resolution your scanner is able to scan at. For large applications (think billboards, signage, posters), if a professional scanner wasn’t used, resolution is likely too small for the texture to reproduce as crisply as you might wish. Enter vectorized textures. Since vectors (which are point based instead of pixel based) can be rescaled infinitely without losing quality, they make a great alternative to finding a high res scanner and going through the process of color editing + removing the background again. Watercolor textures are super detailed, so finding a happy medium with file size and a similar outcome to the raster (pixel) based image is key when vectorizing. In this tutorial, I share my exact method on how to vectorize watercolor textures using two different textures. We’ll go over what to look for when you vectorize your own.

July 28, 2015

34 Comments

Branding, Color, Tutorials

The Watercolor Branding Challenge

Happy Friday! I just wanted to post a quick notice of a Watercolor Branding Skillshare session I’ll be hosting for the next two weeks starting this coming Monday, July 27th and ending August 7th. Sessions are new to Skillshare, so I’m very excited to be a part of some of the first ones! If you love learning new things, but need a little more structure with completing a project associated with what you learned, sessions were made for you.

I’ve laid out a full schedule and I’ll be sending emails every few days so we all stay on task to complete the project of creating your own watercolor logo. These emails will ask you to complete videos from the Watercolor Branding class and then post a small task to your project. I’ll be available for questions, feedback – whatever you need to ensure you come out with a great logo and some skills you can use well into the future. You’ll also be with other students who will offer their feedback and will be posting their own projects. Since this session is paired with the Watercolor Branding class, it means every student in the session will receive a free mini watercolor kit, a resource pdf with every asset mentioned in the class, as well as a logo inspiration cheat sheet to keep the ideas coming. This session is a great way for all of us to collaborate together and have some fun with watercolors 🙂

July 24, 2015

4 Comments

Freebies, Illustrator, Patterns

Freebie: 4 Geometric Illustrator Pattern Swatches

I was going to say a few months ago, but I just checked, and last year (holy moly), I shared some geometric photoshop patterns. They’ve been downloaded almost 20,000(!!!) times, so I thought it might be time for some Illustrator ones! This week’s freebie is a set of 4 geometric Illustrator pattern swatches to use on whatever you please 🙂 I’m also sharing some quick tips + tricks on using them you may not have heard before – read on to see!

July 23, 2015

3 Comments

Business, Tutorials

How to Create an Editable PDF File

A few weeks ago, Kori emailed me asking how to create an editable pdf file. If you’ve ever browsed the template files on Etsy, chances are you’ve come across files for sale that come as editable pdfs. This is cool because you can offer a design file to someone who doesn’t have the programs and they can still work with and edit them to some degree. This is also useful to know if you ever need to send a client any kind of form you’d like them to fill out and send back – same rules apply – which eliminates unnecessary printing steps for the client. In this tutorial, I’ll share how easy it really is to create your own editable pdf. We’ll take a design created in Illustrator and transform it into that editable pdf using Adobe Acrobat. If you don’t have Acrobat (it’s the professional version of Adobe Reader) you can try it out for free for 30 days here. Let’s get started!

July 21, 2015

17 Comments

Color, Freebies

Freebie: Printable Watercolor Greeting Cards

In celebration of my brand new Watercolor Texture Kit Vol. 2, this week I’m giving away 3 watercolor greeting cards! Fill them in and use them for whatever you’d like – they’re any occasion and can be printed using any home printer along with 8.5″x11″ or A4 paper or cardstock. The final cut + printed size is 6″x4″ which fits perfectly into any A4 sized invitation envelope. Trim + score marks are included, so cutting and folding are a cinch 🙂

July 16, 2015

9 Comments

Color, Hand Drawn, Hand Lettering, Photoshop, Tutorials, Typography

How to Create Chalk Typography Without Chalk

Happy Tuesday! Chalk lettering is still going strong these days, from outdoor signage, to indoor wall murals, to photographed magazine ads. But! What if you want a digital, more permanent and quickly editable outcome without all the mess (or dealing with the perfect lighting setup for photography)? There’s actually a super quick way to accomplish a chalk typography style in Photoshop in just a few simple steps. In this week’s tutorial, I share my exact process of taking a nothing-special pencil doodle or sketch and transforming it into white chalk, then colored chalk typography. Use this same method for illustrations too! Whatever you can doodle, you can change into the digital chalk look, and in only ~10 minutes! Try doing that with real chalk 😉 Let’s get started!

July 14, 2015

8 Comments

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