As always, if you need help with Illustrator, take a look at “Illustrator Notes & Problem Solvers“, “The Illustrator Toolbar” and some of the previous tutorials (there are different techniques in each one). For those who are brand new to Illustrator, a good one to start with is the pink photo Save the date cards.

The invite we are making today looks like this:

To get it to look exactly like this, you will also need a corner rounder cutting tool (there are lots of different kinds, this is the one I use, I love it) and a gold leaf pen.

1. Download the wedding bands vector here. It comes with five different ring designs, so if you prefer a different look for the rings, you might find another one that you like in the set. Unzip the file and open the ring eps file you want to use (I’m using #3).

2. Select all (either with a keyboard shortcut or drag around the entire illustration with the black arrow tool) and copy.

3. Create a new document (file – new) and make it the size you want it to be. I made mine 5×7. Once you’re in your new document, paste the vector. While everything is still selected, group it (Object – Group). As you can see, the illustration is huge, larger than the invitation, so in the Transform palette, type in the size you want (make sure the “Constrain With and Height Proportions” is on). I made mine 1.75″ wide and let the height be whatever it needs to be to keep it proportionate. Drag it down to the lower right hand corner (or wherever you want it to be).

4. Create a new layer and add your text. I used Myriad Pro, 12pt, regular, black, for the text part, and Coronet Italic, 30pt, colored in Pantone 8006 C (metallic) for the bride and groom. Space the text out as you want it, and drag the whole text block to where you want it to be.

5. Print on card stock, cut the corners and run the gold leaf pen all around the edges. Done!

Related posts:

1. Christmas-Inspired DIY Wedding Invitations Today, I thought we’d do a Christmas/Holiday season-inspired invitation using...
2. Beach Weddings – Invitation Tutorial I Who doesn’t like the beach? Good things happen on beaches...

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As always, if you need Illustrator help, check out my posts “Illustrator Notes & Problem Solvers“, “The Illustrator Toolbar” and any of the previous tutorials (I go over different techniques in each one). If you’re new to Illustrator, the “pink with photo” Save the date cards tutorial is especially basic, so that’s a good place to start. If you want to see any of the illustrations larger, just click on them (they will open in a new window).

The invite we are making today looks like this (shown printed on natural and white stock to illustrate the different feel the paper color creates – more on that further down in the text):

and here is how:

1. The vector we’re using was created by Polish designer PeHaa and you can download the file here. Unzip it and open the vector file in Illustrator. Note: these vectors (and some of the things we are going to be doing with them) require quite a bit of RAM, so if things seem to be going insanely slow, or not working at all, try shutting down all other applications you have open. Also, if you are using a previous version of Illustrator, I strongly suggest downloading the trial version of Illustrator CS5. It’s free for 30 days, and it is fabulous!

2. Select all the silver/red/pink ornaments and copy them.

3. Create a new 5×7 document and paste the ornaments into it. As you can see, the ornaments are HUGE, so while they’re still selected, go to Transform (if you don’t see the transform palette, go up to Window and select it and it will pop up), make sure the constrain proportions link is active, and type in 7 (inches) in the upper right hand box.

4. Move all the ornaments off of your document (out into the artboard area). Create a new layer. Grab (with the black arrow – the “Selection tool”) the ornament you want to be hanging the lowest and drag it (inducing its shadow) over to the document and place it roughly where you think you want it to be.

5. Create a new layer and drag the next ornament over. Repeat this until you have all 4 “hanging” ornaments placed on your document. If you want more than one of a particular design (I have two heart ornaments on mine), just select it (make sure all parts are selected and group it before you copy), copy and paste it into a new layer. Adjust the size of each ornament to what you want. You will end up with something close to this:

You may notice a greyish tint behind some of the ornaments. To get rid of that, just click slightly to the side of the ornament, and you’ll see a big ring selection. Delete that. (To be sure that you are only selecting part of a design, always use the white arrow – the “Direct selection tool”).

6. Now, we want to add that ornament “on the floor” and to do that, select the ornament you want (and place it on a separate layer). Click on the “string” and the shadow with the white arrow and delete them. Select the ornament and go up to Effect – 3D – Rotate. You want to use the Off-Axis Front option, and then just put your cursor over the 3D block and move it around until you think you like the result. Click ok, and wait.

These are the settings I used, and my ornament ended up looking like this. If you don’t like how yours turned out, just undo it and try again.

7. I wanted this ornament to give the impression of lying on the floor, and in order to do that, just select a shadow from one of the other ornaments and pull it over. Place it in its own layer beneath the layer with the ornament and move it around until you like what you see. We also need a string (in my opinion), and I just drew one with the pen tool. To get it to match the color and stroke weight other “strings”, select it and click on any of the others with the eye dropper tool.

8. As you can see, the strings of the other placed ornaments are not aligned with the top part of the invite, so just go ahead and select them, one at a time, with the white arrow, and while holding down the shift key (to make sure they’re straight), pull up or down until they are aligned with the edge.

9. Now we need to add the text. Create a new layer, select the Text tool, and type in the first line (“together with our parents, we”). Deselect, select the Text tool again and type in the names of the Bride and Groom. Deselect, and select the text tool again and type in the bottom part of the text. Repeat and type in the ampersand. You can of course use any fonts you want, but I used Myriad Pro, Regular, at 12pt for the text and Ribbon 131 Bold BT, bold, 30pt with 30pt leading for the Bride and Groom and Nuptial Script, Medium 30pt with 28pt leading for the ampersand. I used black for all the “other” text and for the Bride and Groom, I used R 184, G 30
and B 87.

As always, if you want to use different fonts, check out my “More Font Ideas For Your Wedding Stationery” post. If you need help downloading new fonts on your computer, check out my post “How To Add Fonts To Your Computer“.

10. Space the text out the way you want it, align everything, and make final adjustments if you need to move any of the ornaments slightly.

That’s it!

These are pretty simple diy wedding invitations, and inexpensive to boot. I printed these on slightly off-white (natural) heavy card stock, cut it to size and trimmed the corners so they’re rounded. You can obviously use any color paper you want – I feel that stark white creates a bit more of a “glam” look, while the natural background gives it a more “cozy” touch. If you feel they need a bit more jazzing up, here are a few other ideas:

Take a small ink pad (like those used for rubber stamping) in a matching color (pick any of the colors in the design, they would all work, even silver) and run it along the edges all around the invite. My favorite ink pads for these types of projects are the ColorBox Cat’s Eye pads. They are small and easy to use, and the quality of the ink is great. You could also use a silver leaf pen for this, but they are more expensive than ink pads.

You can also print the invite slightly smaller than the 5×7 layout I’m using and glue it to a piece of 5×7 red metallic card stock (or any color you want) which gives you a glittery red border.

If you have other ideas that you want to share, I’d love to hear them, and if you have made your own printable wedding invitations with the help of this tutorial, I’d love to see the results.

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I recently had to throw a nice big Tiffany box out (it fell victim to our basement being flooded during a recent storm) and it really bothered me, I love to keep them and use them to store trinkets and paper craft supplies, etc. (why I had put it in the basement in the first place, I don’t know, it probably happened during a mad cleaning session!). Anyway, seeing it reminded me what a gorgeous color it is, and I was inspired to create today’s invite.

This is the invitation we’ll be making:

and here’s how:

1. Start by downloading the vector file we are basing the invitation on. It is called “Leaves on curly branches” and was designed by DragonArtz Designs. You can download it here and please make sure to read the license.

2. Open your downloaded file and copy the entire design. Open a new Illustrator document and size it 5.25×5.25. Paste the design into your new document. It will be much larger than your document, so in the Transform palette, put in 5 for the width (and make sure you have it set to constrain the proportions). It will be smaller than the document, but that’s fine, we’ll fix that later.

3. I didn’t like the roses in the design, so to get rid of them, you want to click on one with your white arrow and then go to Select – Same – Fill Color. That will select all of them, and you can just hit delete.

4. Next, select the entire design with your black arrow and move it up so that the upper left hand corner of the black square matches up with the corner of your document. With the design still selected, grab the square in the lower right hand corner and pull until it matches up perfectly with you document. Take a look at the top of the design once you’ve done that, chances are you need to adjust that again too. Zoom in to make sure everything is lined up correctly. You’ll notice that part of the branches are outside your document – that’s fine, don’t worry about it.

5. Now, to make things easier, I like to put the different parts of the design on separate layers. Select the background square (with the white arrow), cut it, create a new layer (which will automatically end up on top of the other layer, so pull it to the bottom), lock the old layer and paste the box in place (Cntrl + F) on the new layer. Lock that layer and go back to the other one.

6. Unlock the layer with the branch design and with your white arrow, draw a box around the branches in the lower left hand corner (make sure you get every little piece of it). Cut, create a new layer, lock the original layer and paste the branches in place (Cntrl + F) on your new layer.

7. We can leave the other branches on the original layer, since that’s all that’s there now. So now you have three layers to work with. Lock the top two, unlock the background layer, select the box, and now we want to change the color to the Tiffany Blue. With your box selected, double click on the fill square in the toolbar. This will bring up the color selection window, and you want to put 9AE4E8 in the hex color box (the last one in the left column). Click ok and your box is now blue. As you can see, the branches are perfect the way they are, so no re-coloring needed there.

8. Next, we need the “framedoodle” from the “Damask Engagement Party Invitation” post, so if you have created that one already, great, just open that design and copy the framedoodle. If you didn’t, hop over to that post and follow the instructions to how to create one.

9. Once you have your framedoodle, copy it and paste it on a separate layer in your Tiffany Blue document. As you can see, this is not quite right, so select the framedoodle, right click, go to Transform – Rotate and put in 90 in the window and click ok. Now it’s on the right end, but looks a bit narrow, so select it and pull one of the side boxes until you like what you see. Place it in the center.

10. This looks nice, but isn’t quite the look I was going for, so next, select the framedoodle, and change the fill color to C5EFEF (the same way we did it in step 7). Now, we want a nice thin white border too, so select it again, and change the border color to white. Make sure you have the Stroke color selected in the toolbar and just go to the color palette and click on the little white box in the lower right hand corner. If the border looks a bit heavy, like mine did, select the framedoodle again and in the Stroke palette, change the weight to 0.25.

11. This is starting to look nice, right? Just a few more tweaks… next, let’s add the text. Create a new layer and lock all the others. Pick the Text tool from the toolbar and type in the first line. Don’t worry about how it looks right now, we just want to get the text in there and then we’ll style it. Click on any other tool and then go back and select the text tool again and type in the name of the bride and groom. Click on any other tool and then go back and select the text tool again and type in the rest of the text. The reason for doing this is that we want 3 separate text boxes.
If you want the “other text” (i.e. not the bride & groom) in caps, type it in in caps, I’m not using an all caps font for this. It will end up looking something like this:

12. Now we want to make it look good. Change the fonts first. I used Autumn, Regular, 9pt for the “other text” and Ribbon 131 Bold BT, Bold, 24pt (with a 26pt leading) for the bride & groom. You also want the text to be centered, so in the Paragraph palette, select Centered. As usual, if you don’t have these fonts, see my “How to add fonts to your computer” post. Or if you want to use other fonts, you can obviously do that too!

13. Move the text around until you like how it looks and make sure the text blocks are lined up by selecting them and click on Horizontal Align Center.

14. I also changed the colors of the text. The “other text” is 494648 and the bride & groom 873C5B.

15. As you can see, part of the branches are hidden behind the framedoodle, so we want to fix that. Just select the layer (in the layers palette) with the framedoodle and pull it down below the branch layers, so that it ends up just above the blue box layer. Voila – the branches are in front of it!

If you like it like this, by all means leave it this way, but I wanted to pull the branches off of the text and to do that you need to:

16. Lock all layers and unlock one of the branch layers. Select it with the black arrow and either make it a bit smaller by pulling on one of the little white boxes, or just move it out to the side. Do the same thing with the other branch layer, and once you like what you see, it’s done!

I would print this on nice, heavy white cardstock, and you can fit two on a landscape letter sized sheet. Part of the branches are still going to hang on the outside of the invites, but it doesn’t matter, since they will be trimmed to size anyway.

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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:

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2. Beach Weddings – Invitation Tutorial III So far in our beach wedding invitations tutorials, we have...
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And for those of us in the northeastern part of the US (mid-Atlantic too for that matter), a palm-fringed beach with balmy breezes sounds pretty good right about now. So what better place to have a wedding than in such a beautiful setting where people naturally relax and feel happy?

I personally love beach weddings, and today, I’m starting a mini-series of Illustrator tutorials on making your own beach themed printable wedding invitations, each with a very different look.

If you’re pretty new to Illustrator and haven’t done any of my other tutorials, you may want to read the Illustrator Toolbar and Illustrator Problem Solvers posts. Also, my first Illustrator tutorial post, “Save the date postcards – A step by step Illustrator guide” goes through the tools and steps more thoroughly than I do here.

We are starting with a 1970s-inspired sunset invitation, perfect for a more unconventional, informal affair. It’s super-easy and fast to make. If this is so not your style, don’t worry – the next beach wedding invitation will have a totally different feel.

1. Download the illustration here

2. Unzip it and open the ai (illustrator) file in Illustrator.

3. Lock the layer with the palm trees and sun, and change the size of the background layer to the size you want your invitation (I made mine an A2 – 6.25×4.5). Make sure you’ve selected everything on this layer before you do this – there is more than one part to this illustration. Once you’re done, lock the background layer.

4. Unlock the layer with the palm trees, select everything and drag it over to the left hand side of the background. Just somewhere over there is good, we’ll fine-tune it later.

5. Lock that layer and create a new layer for the text.

6. Select the text tool and type in you text. I used Braddon regular at 18pts for the “Join us” and “Mr & Mrs parts” and 14pts for the rest. As always, if you don’t have this font, read my post about adding fonts to your computer. Or use a totally different font – you’re only limited by your own imagnation.

7. Make sure the text is placed exactly where you want it, and lock the text layer. Unlock the palm tree layer, select everything on it, and move them around until they look good to you. As you can see, my trees are hanging over the edge, but that’s fine, because I am going to cut the card to size so that part will just be trimmed off.

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Statistics tells us that 2.3 million couples get engaged every year in the US; 19% of all those engagements take place during the month of December and 10% on Valentine’s Day.

With those facts in mind, I thought this would be a good time to do a tutorial on DIY engagement party invitations.

I call today’s invite “Damask Engagement Invitation” and we are using free vector art (x 2) and Illustrator. As always, if you get stuck or are unsure of where to find a tool, read through a previous tutorial, and look at my posts about the tools and Illustrator notes and problem solvers. For font issues, see “How to add fonts to your computer“.

Now, let’s make the invitation:

1. Download the free vector file “seamless pattern” from seamless megapack 2 at designious.com.

2. Download the free vector file “framedoodle” from Pixels & Ice Cream.

3. Unzip the files and open them in Illustrator.

4. Create a new document, any size you want, I made mine 6.25 wide x 4.5 high (a size A6).

5. Go to the seamless pattern document. Select the background and damask pattern (not the text). Copy and paste into your new document. Size it to fit by typing in your document’s dimensions in the transform palette (with the entire design still selected). You may need to click the “constrain proportions” to make it work properly.

6. Select the background only (by clicking somewhere in between the damask pattern). Cut it and paste in place on a new layer (CNTRL + F will paste it in the exact same location on the new layer). If the new layer is on top of the pattern, pull it below.

7. Lock the layer with the damask pattern; we won’t be touching that again.

8. If you want to change the color of the background like I did, select it and pick any color you want (I used R207 G235 B242).

9. Lock that layer and create a new one on top of both layers. Select the Rectangle tool and click once on the artboard. A window will pop up where you can put in the desired dimensions of your box. I made mine 6.25 x .05″ and filled it with the same color as the background. Pull the colored bar to the middle of the card.

10. Go to the document with the framedoodle. Select the entire design, copy it and paste it in a new layer in your document. We only want the outer part of this frame, so with your white arrow, select and delete the inner part (the dots).

11. Once you have just the outer portion of the frame left, select it and group it. I wanted it to match the color of the damask pattern on the bottom of the card, so I selected it and picked a matching brown. Even though it seems like it is the stroke color that should be changed, it is actually the fill color.

12. As you can see, the frame is transparent, and we want a white background. Select the frame and look at the Fill and Stroke section of the toolbar. You’ll see that it has a brown fill and no stroke (even though it doesn’t look that way). Click the Swap arrow to reverse that. Then, select the paint bucket,  set the fill color to white (either in the colors palette or in the fill and stroke part of the toolbar) and as you hover over the frame, you’ll see a text that says “click to make a live paint group”. Click and the frame will be filled with white.

13. Re-size it if needed (I made mine a bit larger) and place it where you want it on the card.

14. Create a new layer and add the text. I used Carleton 12pt for the top and third row, Carleton 9pt for the fourth and fifth row, and Ribbon 131 Bold at 24pt for the names.

Voila! Your own homemade engagement invites! If you want to be really budget-minded when printing these invitations, you could make them smaller, and put four on a page. I suggest making them 5.25×4 – that way you can fit four of them on a standard letter sized page with a little bit of a margin around the edges (since many printers don’t print all the way to the edge). Print on nice heavy cardstock and cut to size. They will fit in a size A2 envelope.

If you don’t want to or can’t print them yourself, ask at a local print shop or office store – they will most likely be able to help you.

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In the two previous tutorials, we created Engagement Announcements using Microsoft Word, and today, we’re making one in Illustrator. You can obviously adapt this to be a Save the Date card, or even Wedding Invitations by making just a few changes (and perhaps doing a vertical instead of horizontal layout). To zoom in on the screen shots, just click on them and they will open larger in a new window.

If you’re new to Illustrator, you may want to take a look at my posts about the tools, notes and problem solvers and maybe read through another one of my Illustrator tutorials.

Today we’re making this card in two different versions:

and we’re using another vector file by one of my favorite designers, jlwDesign

This is how to do it:

1. Open a new document in Illustrator.

2. Draw a 6.25×4.5 box (which will fit in all standard size A2 envelopes).

3. Fill the box with R195, G160, B178 and make the border black.

4. Lock the layer with the box.

5. Download the Swirly Curls illustration here. (Read the License Agreement).

6. Unzip it and open the ai file. The easiest way to isolate the design element we want is to go through and click on everything we don’t want and delete it (don’t save the file after you’ve done that, just leave it open for now). Once you have only the swirly curls left, select all of them, copy and paste them into a new layer in your announcement document. While they’re still all selected, group them and then turn them 180 degrees (by right clicking and going to Transform – Rotate.) Go back and close swirly curls file without saving it.

7. On your card, pull the entire curly design as close to the upper left hand corner of your purple card as you can without too much of it going over the edge of your card.

8. Now, we need to tweak the illustration a bit, and what I did was this:

With your black arrow, click on the design and go to Object – Ungroup.

With your black arrow, click on the part of the illustration that is on the lower right hand side and drag it down into the corner.

We also need to delete a few pieces, so with your white arrow, click on the parts that you don’t want and hit Delete. I deleted these:

Now we want to make sure the design goes all the way out to the edge on the left and also that no parts are “hanging out” over the edges.

First, click with your white arrow on the leaf that’s too long on the bottom, and while it’s selected, switch to the black arrow. That puts a box around just that part of the design, and you want to pull on the handles until the leaf is inside the border.

Next, click on the white part of the design in the upper left hand corner and do the same thing, except this time, you pull the handles outward towards the border until it looks nice. You probably want to zoom in when you’re doing this, it’s pretty hard to get it perfect otherwise.

Next, click on the white part about halfway down and do the same thing.

Now, with your black arrow, drag around the entire design (except for the part in the lower right hand corner) and group it (by going to Object – Group). Make sure the layer with your purple box is locked when you do this, otherwise that’ll be part of the group. The curlies are a little bit too wide, so just grab the middle handle of the box around the design and push it to the left a little bit.

9. Lock this layer and add a new one for the text.

10. Select your text tool and type in your text. I put it in three separate boxes so that I could easily move them around. I used Bernhard Fashion BT 24pt with a 1pt border for the top box, and colored it R137, G53, B88. The middle box is Bernhard Fashion BT 28pt with a 1pt border in white, and the bottom box is Bernhard Fashion BT 21pt with a 1pt border, same color as the top box. Need help with fonts? Read my earlier posts about font ideas and how to add fonts to your computer.

11. Lastly, select your purple box and get rid of the black border (I like to have it there as a guide while I’m designing a card, but not when printing it.)

That’s it, you’re done. I would put two of these on each sheet, print them on heavy, white cardstock and trim them to size. I think rounded corners give them a nice, finished look, and it’s easy to achieve with a rounded corner punch, available at any craft store.

If you want to add a photo to the card, just create a new layer and to go File – Place and select one from your computer. What I did was place the photo on its own layer, created a new layer and drew a transparent circle. I then placed the circle over the part of the photo I wanted to show (but still on a separate layer), selected both and went to Object – Clipping Mask – Make. That turns the shape you drew into a clipping mask and you are left with just that part of the photo visible. I then added a drop shadow to make it stand out from the background a little bit. To do that, select your photo and go to Effect – Stylize – Drop Shadow. Play with the settings a little bit (with Preview checked) until you like it.

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As always, if you get stuck, see if you can find help in my Illustrator tips or by doing a quick review of the Illustrator toolbar.

Turning your Hummingbird Save the Date card into printable wedding invitations is super easy! This is how I did it:

1. Open the Save the Date card you created earlier.

2. Go to File – Save As and save it as Hummingbird Invite (or whatever you want to call it).

3. In your Hummingbird Invite document, go to File – Document Setup and in the dimension windows, put 5 for width and 7 for height (if you want to go the traditional route).

4. Unlock the bottom layer, click on your 5×5 background color square and in your Transform palette, put in 5 for the width and 7 for the height. If you don’t see the Transform palette, just go to Window – Transform and it will pop right up. Align your box with your document. Lock this layer.

5. I happened to like both where the illustration ended up by chance and the size of it on the invite, but you can obviously resize it and move it any way you want. If you want to do it my way, just leave it where it is and make sure that layer is locked too.

6. Go to your text layer and change your text.

That’s it!

If you want to keep the invite square, that’s obviously even easier. All I would do then is just make the illustration a little bit smaller and change the text. You may have to space it a little bit differently than I did on the 5×7 invite to make it fit, or change the wording slightly. Be creative and play around with the layout until it looks good to you.

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My inspiration for the Hummingbird card (which I think would be great for coastal or beach weddings) came from a really cute vector file called Cyber Plant, made by vectorjungle. You can download the file (an eps document) here. Read the License.

To create the Hummingbird Save the Date card:

1. Unzip the file you downloaded. Open cyber_plant_life_2.eps in Illustrator. Eps stands for Encapsulated PostScript and they are usually vector files that you can work with in Illustrator.

2. With your selection tool, select the plant/flower and the hummingbird in the left hand corner (you’ll grab more than you need, but that’s fine). To select both, first click on one, then hold down the Shift key and click on the other.

3. Create a new, 5×5″ Illustrator document.

4. Paste the flower and bird in your new document. The illustration will be much larger than your document, but don’t worry about that yet.

5. With your Direct Selection Tool, select and delete the parts you don’t want. The reason we’re using the Direct Selection Tool (white arrow) instead of the Selection Tool (black arrow) is that it allows you to select only parts of a design, even if it’s grouped. It can be a bit time consuming, but worth every minute. If you have a larger area of stuff you don’t need, you can always click and drag around it (while using your Direct Selection Tool) and delete a few parts with one keystroke. When you have deleted all the parts (if you do exactly what I did), this is what you end up with.

6. Click on any part of the illustration with your Selection Tool and then ungroup (by either going to Object – Ungroup or right click on your mouse and hit ungroup). Now click on either part of the two large stems and ungroup them as well.

7. Now, with the Selection Tool (black arrow) select the bottom part of the flower stem, the one that’s floating on it’s own on the bottom and drag it up to match up with the top one. Zoom in really close (either by using the Zoom Tool, just select it and drag around the area you want to zoom in on, or by hitting Apple and + or Cntrl and + on PC. Use – in the same way to zoom out) and just match the two parts up (it doesn’t have to be perfect, one can overlap the other a bit, that’s fine). Then immediately select both and group them (by going to Object – Group, or right clicking on your mouse and select group, or hit Apple+G or Cntrl+G for PC).

8. The next step is to move the bird and flowers on the side over to the “main flower”. So select all of that by just dragging around it with your Direct Selection Tool and then immediately switch to the Selection Tool and just drag them over. Zoom in where the smaller stem meets the larger one. As you can see, they don’t really match up so we need to fix that. With your Direct Selection tool, select the little stem, and click on it until you get two white squares on the bottom of the stem. Now, with your Direct Selection Tool, grab the little white square to the right and just drag it down until it meets up with the larger stem. This will change the shape of the little stem, but that’s exactly what we want.

9. I didn’t like the look of the bird’s eye – it looked a bit dinosaur-ish to me – so I changed it a bit by selecting it with the Direct Selection Tool (white arrow) and just pulling up on that little “handle” on the bottom. I also got rid of the little black “blob” in the corner of his eye by adjusting the handles there as well. The result:

8. Now comes the fun part – the coloring! Select and color the different parts of your resulting design as you wish. I made all the flowers the same color, but obviously, you don’t have to. If you want to do it the way I did, select all the different flowers, either by holding down the shift key and clicking on them with your Selection Tool, or by just selecting one and go to Select – Same – Fill Color (this only works if what you want to select has the same fill or stroke color, but it’s a good trick to know). If you want to make them all the same color, it’s a good idea to group them here. With the flowers selected, either click on a patch or fill in your color values in the color palette. I used R 239, G 183, B 192 for the flowers.

Note: if you want to save the color you just created, just click on the fill box in the color window and drag it down to the swatch window

To change the color of the stems and bird, select them and proceed as above. I used R 155, G 157, B 160 for mine.

10. Now select the entire design and resize it so it fits on your card (however large or small you want it to be).

11. Add a new layer and drag it so it’s on the bottom. Lock the layer with the illustration. Select the Rectangle tool, click anywhere in the window and create a 5×5″ box. Drag it so that it fits right in your document. Make sure there is no stroke weight or color, and fill your box with the color you want. Mine is R 255, G 252, B 213 with 42% opacity.

12. Add a new layer and lock the others. In the new layer, add your text, using any font you want. I used Century Gothic at 12pt, all lower caps for the general text, and Century Gothic, 18pt, all caps for the bride & groom. If you need font inspiration and help, check out my “More Font Ideas For Your Wedding Stationery” and “How To Add Fonts To Your Computer” posts.

Done!

As you can see, this is really easy to make, and you can personalize it in so many ways by changing the colors, keeping more or less of the original design, changing the font and wording, add more illustrations… Or make a totally different card all together!

Also, don’t miss the next post where we turn this card into a wedding invitation.

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2. “Funky Chic” Save The Date Cards – An Illustrator Tutorial Today’s Save the Date card is very easy to make,...
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Ok, let’s get started on what I call the “Funky Chic” card.

For this card, I again started by downloading a free vector file. This one is also by jlwdesign (love her designs!) and you can download it here. Make sure you read through the License and Usage Info.

1. After you download your design (make sure you select the Adobe Illustrator CS download option), open the ai (Illustrator) document in Illustrator.

2. Copy everything by pressing Apple+A (or Cntrl+A on PC), then deselect the text by holding down the shift key and with your selection tool, click on the 3 different rows of text (you have to click 3 times, and you will see that they are no longer selected).

3. Copy your selection by pressing Apple+C (or Cntrl+C) and paste in a new document (Edit-Paste or Apple+V or Cntrl+V) The new document can be letter sized, it doesn’t matter right now

4. Make sure everything you pasted here is selected and resize it to 4×6 (by typing in the dimensions in the Transform palette. The “swirly curls” will be a little bit distorted, but that’s ok, we’ll fix that soon.

5. Deselect everything by clicking anywhere on the document outside of the artwork.

6. Create a new layer and drag it to the bottom so that it becomes the bottom layer. You do this by clicking on the layer in the layers palette, hold down your left mouse key, and just drag

7. Go back to the layer with all the artwork and select the brown background only (by clicking on it with your select tool) and cut it (Edit-Cut or Apple+X or Cntrl+X)

8. Click on the new layer and hit Apple+F (or Cntrl+F). This pastes it in the exact same place as it were on the previous layer. Lock this layer.

9. Go back to the layer with the swirly curls.

10. Get rid of any parts you don’t want by selecting them with the direct selection too (the white arrow) and hit delete. (I got rid of the black, or perhaps it was dark brown, “blob” in the middle)

Now, select everything on this layer (which should be the parts you want to keep) and group them (by going to Object-Group or clicking Apple+G or Cntrl+G). A design like this is tricky to resize and move unless it’s grouped.

11. Switch to the selection tool (the black arrow) and select the artwork. Resize it any way you want by dragging any of the little white squares. I made mine a little bit “rounder and fatter” by pulling the middle bottom square upwards and then made it a bit larger by pulling one of the corners out and holding down the shift key at the same time – this keeps it proportionate

12. Place it where you want it on the background by just dragging it around until you like what you see.

13. Create a new layer and lock the others

14. With the Type Tool, click anywhere on the document to add your text. For SAVE THE DATE, I used Helvetica 14pt, and just typed one letter, hit return, one letter, return, and so on.
Once you’re done typing this text, switch to the selection tool and move the text to where you want it.

Then, select the text tool again; click right beneath the swirly curls (or anywhere, you’ll move it later) and type in the rest of the text. I used Helvetica 12pts for the date and “are getting married in Barcelona, Spain”, Helvetica 10pts for “formal invitation to follow” and Zapfino 14pt for the bride and groom.

15. Once you’re done typing, switch to the selection tool again, and pull the text to where you want it.

16. To make sure the background and text are aligned, unlock those two layers, select both with the selection tool and click on Horizontal Align Center in your Align palette.
That’s it!

You can also easily adapt this card into engagement invitations or printable wedding invitations, you just need to play around with the layout a bit and change the wording.

Added Bonus: This particular download also gives you a free brush kit. To open the brushes, go to Windows – Brush Library – Other Library and select your downloaded file. A small window will pop up with all the funky brushes. To use them select one of them, click on the paintbrush tool, and have fun!

Related posts:

1. Hummingbird Save The Date Card – A 12-Step Illustrator Tutorial This time, I thought we’d expand on our growing Illustrator...
2. Make Your Own Save The Date Cards Using Microsoft Word In today’s tutorial, we’re using Microsoft Word to create Save...
3. Save The Date Postcards – A Step-By-Step Illustrator Guide Making your own Save the Date cards is fun and...

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