In the previous beach wedding invitation tutorial, we made a fast and easy, 1970s-inspired, very informal invitation. Today, we’re making one with a totally different look which is a little bit more work-intensive, but definitely worth the effort.
As always, if you need to brush up on your Illustrator skills, go through one of my earlier tutorials (the Save The Date Postcards – A Step-By-Step Illustrator Guide post is particularly detailed) and take a look at the Illustrator Tools and problem solvers. For font issues, see the How To Add Fonts To Your Computer post.
OK, let’s get started. This is the invitation we are going to make:
and here’s how to do it.
1. First, download the illustration here.
NOTE: It was recently brought to my attention that this vector file is no longer available for download. If you want to use it for your invitations, contact me and I will email it to you.
2. Unzip and open in Illustrator. Select everything and make it the size you want it to be (I made mine 5×7). The easiest way to do that is to, with everything selected, type in the dimensions in the Transform palette (make sure the Constrain Width and Height Proportions is not active).
If you don’t see the Transform palette, go to Windows – Transform and it will open.
3. The next thing I did was to select all the fishes and put them on a separate layer. This is a bit time consuming, but you’ll be happy you did it when you need to move them around to make room for the text.
So select all the fishes with the Direct Selection Tool (white arrow), cut and paste on a new layer (to paste them in the exact same spot on the new layer, press CNTRL+F). Make sure you select their eyes too, otherwise they’ll stay on the “ocean floor” layer. If your new layer is above the ocean floor layer, drag it beneath it.
4. Lock both these layers and create two new layers. In the first one, type in your text. I used Papyrus 12pt (black) for the text and Papyrus 18pt (R 0, G 156, B 197) for the bride and groom (spaced at 30pt). Depending on your wording, you may have to space all the text differently to make it fit and look good.
5. Lock that layer and go to the next to add the ampersand. I used Dahrlin Regular at 48pt (R 0, G 117, B 139). Move it around until you like what you see.
6. Tweak everything until it looks good. Play with fonts, font size and word spacing, move the fishes around, resize items. Once you like it, you’re done!
Related posts:
- Beach Weddings – Invitation Tutorial I Who doesn’t like the beach? Good things happen on...
- Beach Weddings – Invitation Tutorial III So far in our beach wedding invitations tutorials, we...
- Make Your Own Engagement Invitations – Another Illustrator Tutorial With the holidays (and soon Valentine’s Day) behind us,...
- “Funky Chic” Save The Date Cards – An Illustrator Tutorial Today’s Save the Date card is very easy to...
- Engagement Announcements In Purple, White And Gray – An Illustrator Tutorial This is part 3 in my series of tutorials...
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