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:

1. Beach Weddings – Invitation Tutorial I Who doesn’t like the beach? Good things happen on beaches...
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.

Related posts:

1. Beach Weddings – Invitation Tutorial II In the previous beach wedding invitation tutorial, we made a...
2. Beach Weddings – Invitation Tutorial III So far in our beach wedding invitations tutorials, we have...
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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.

Related posts:

1. Engagement Announcements In Purple, White And Gray – An Illustrator Tutorial This is part 3 in my series of tutorials for...
2. Save The Date Postcards – A Step-By-Step Illustrator Guide Making your own Save the Date cards is fun and...
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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.

Related posts:

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2. Make Your Own Engagement Announcements using Windows Vista This starts a series of tutorials for those of you...
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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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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!

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This guide assumes that you have a (very) basic knowledge of Illustrator, or have at least played around with it a little bit. Please make sure you read these Illustrator notes/problem solvers first, and you might also want to take a look at the Illustrator Toolbar.

Illustrator uses and creates vector files (which can be resized and warped without losing any sharpness at all). There is tons of free vector art available online, but before downloading anything, read through the licensing rights. It’s usually clearly stated, and while many will let you use their designs for free for your own personal use, not everyone does. And if you plan to do something else with them, make sure you know what the deal is, and play by the rules. You wouldn’t want someone stealing your work that you put all that work and time into.

OK, let’s get started on our first card, which I call Elegant Pink

For this first card, I got my background pattern from createsk8.com. It is by jlwdesign and it’s called the “Elegant Vines Pattern” (you can get it here). Read 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. You might encounter a few error messages: just hit OK and/or CONTINUE and/or OPEN, it doesn’t matter.

2. Select the color block you want with either the selection or the direct selection tool (for this particular design, you want to click on the tiny square you want with the direct selection tool, and while it’s selected, immediately click on the selection tool in the toolbar. This assures that you get the entire square copied, and not just part of it). Copy it by either going to Edit – Copy or by pressing Apple+C (Cntrl+C for PCs).

3. Open a new illustrator document (can be any size, we’ll worry about that later)

4. Paste your selection in your new document (by either going to Edit-Paste or by pressing Apple+V (Cntrl+V on PC)

5. select the rectangle tool (your arrow will turn into a small cross), click anywhere on the page

6. a window will pop up where you fill in the dimensions of your new box (I made mine 6″ wide by 4″ high). Your chosen pattern will automatically fill your new box. After your 4×6 box shows up, make sure you delete the tiny square you copied on the page (by selecting it and hitting Delete).

7. Make sure your new box is selected (you’ll know it is if you see tiny white squares in the corners and on the sides of the box) and set the opacity to 40

8. Add a new layer and lock the bottom layer (with your vine design box in it).

9. With the rectangle tool selected, click anywhere on your second layer to make the photo box (I made mine 2.5×2.5″)

10. To make the frame pink, make sure your new box is selected (it will probably be filled with the vine pattern, don’t worry about that), go to the color palette and make sure you’re coloring the stroke, not the fill Type in the values for the color you want (I used R 216, G 178, B 173 If your color palette is displaying something different than RGB (CMYK for example), go to the fly out menu and select RGB I used a 1 pt stroke for the width of the frame. If you want it thinner or thicker than that, go to the Stroke menu and type in the value you want To fill it with white (I find it helpful while working on the design), make sure the “fill” box is in front on the color palette and click on the little white box in the lower right hand corner

11. Create another layer and lock the others

12. Select the rectangle box again to make the pink “ribbon”. Like before, click anywhere on the page and type in the dimensions (I used 2×4″)

13. Fill with same pink as frame ((R 216, G 177, B 173)

14. Set opacity to 65

15. If you want to move it on top of the background box at this point, double check so that the layer with the background box is locked, select the ribbon (with the Selection tool) and pull it on top of the box (by pressing down your right mouse button and dragging).

16. Make a new layer and lock the others.

17. Select the Type tool and click anywhere on the page (if you want to type on top of the ribbon to see what it looks like, make sure that layer is locked)

18. Type your text (I used Myriad Pro, 14pt, bold)

19. Unlock all layers

20. Select background box and ribbon box and align them on top (“vertical align top”)

21. To add your photo, create a new layer, right underneath the frame layer and lock all others

22. In your new layer, go to File – Place and select your photo

23. Resize it by pulling the handles (hold down the shift key while dragging in one of the corners – this will keep it proportional) or by left clicking on your mouse and selecting Transform – Scale and type in a smaller value. If you know the exact size you want it to be (which we do here, since it needs to fit right underneath the frame, make sure you’re photo is selected, and up top, just beneath the File, Edit etc. headings, you will see two windows with an W and H in front. Just type in your dimensions here (2.5×2.5″).

24. Unlock the layer with the photo box

25. Select both the box and the photo and align them

26. Make the box transparent There’s your photo in the frame! Tip: to keep the photo and frame together so you don’t accidentally move one without the other, select them both (the easiest way to do this is to make sure all other layers except these 2 are locked and with the Selection Tool, pull and drag around the boxes until both are selected) and go to Object – Group (or you can left click and select Group).

This may seem like a lot of steps, but once you know it, you can put a card together in a few minutes. If, after going through the step-by-step instructions you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

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1. Hummingbird Save The Date Card – A 12-Step Illustrator Tutorial This time, I thought we’d expand on our growing Illustrator...
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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The important thing to remember is to switch tools when you go from one task to the next (and deselect what you just worked on before doing so). When I started using Illustrator, there were many times when I thought I was going to do something and something entirely different happened on the screen – all because I was using the wrong tool. Check out my “Illustrator Notes & Problem Solvers” post for more info and tips.

You will also find more thorough descriptions of how and when to use these tools in my step-by-step Illustrator tutorials(“Elegant Pink Save the date“, “Hummingbird Save the date cards“, “Funky Chic save the date“, engagement announcements, engagement party invitations, beach wedding invitations). This is just a quick overview so you can get a visual of the different tools I’m talking about. The letter in parentheses after each tool name is the keyboard shortcut key for that particular tool.

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Below are a few tips and problem solvers that may come in handy. I plan to build on this list, so keep checking back.

• Always work in layers. It will save you tons of time later if you want to make changes, or just use a few layers for a new document. You can turn layer visibility on and off by clicking the little eye next to the layer name in the palette. You can lock and unlock one or several layers by clicking the box next to the eye.

• It’s a good idea to name the layers. This is especially helpful if you are working on a huge document with tons of layers, or if you are two or more people all working on the same document. Or if you want to go back and make changes to one particular layer say a year after you created the document. To change the layer name, click on the flyout menu on the layers palette, click on Options for “Layer 1″ and type in your new layer name.

• If you can’t see the palette you need (transparency, color, align etc.), go to the Window menu and click on the one you need – a small window of your selection will pop up

• If you add photos or other images to your design, make sure you embed them in the document. Otherwise, if you move those images on your drive, or put them on a different drive, Illustrator will not be able to find them. You embed a photo (or image) by opening the Links Palette (in the Window menu). You will see thumbnails of all the photos in the document. Make sure the photo you want to embed is selected, and click on the flyout menu and go down about halfway and select Embed Image. That’s it!

• If you want to save a color you created in the color palette, just click and drag on the little square filled with your new color (it’s right underneath the ikons for frame and fill) and pull it to the swatches menu. There, you can name it if you want.

• There are always more ways than one to do pretty much everything in Illustrator: you can go to a menu and make your choice, use shortcut keys (Apple+Key on a Mac and Cntrl+Key on a PC), or right click and make your choice from the menu. Once you get comfortable using Illustrator, you’ll find the method that best fits your work flow.

If things are not doing what you expect them to, or an area you want to change is grayed out, there are a few things you can check:

• make sure you have selected the appropriate tool (your current tool will be shaded in the tools palette

• check so that you’re in the right layer (the layer you’re on will be shaded in the layers palette)

• make sure the layer you need isn’t locked (if it is, just unlock it by pressing the lock symbol next to the layer name)

• If the toolbox and all the palettes suddenly disappear, you probably hit TAB by mistake. Just hit TAB once again, and they will reappear

If you want to try your hand at Illustrator, check out one of my step-by-step tutorials:

• Save the Date cards
• Engagement Announcements
• Engagement Invitations
• Wedding Invitations
• Beach Weddings

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