The luck of the Irish has been with me this year, perhaps it is thanks to my Irish heritage, or just after a tough year last year, I was due.  Whatever the reason I am very grateful. February was full of good things, and it left me very busy, so I haven’t had much time to work on my blog projects. But I did have time to design cards for all my nieces and nephews for St. Patrick’s Day. With the addition of my newest nephew who arrived last month, that means I had nine cards to design. So I thought in honor of St. Patrick’s Day I’d post one of those designs. I choose this one because it is a fitting image for the Irish Blessing that began this post. Here is the image, let me know what you think. Thanks for stopping by!

This was not just a cute and timely tutorial, but it was fun, and I made good use of Illustrator’s Pathfinder and Gradient Tools to create all the circles. The cartoon image of me is one that I created  to send out my new phone number to my family and friends after moving this summer.  I spent some time creating it and really like who it turned out, so I decided to re-purpose the image, with some slight alterations, to use in this image. And like I said, I wanted to star in the image as it is my Valentine to my loved ones. Here is the final image, let me know what you think. Thanks for stopping by!

I had a pretty busy week this week, so I wasn’t able to put as much effort into this image as I would have liked, but I am still happy with it. But I am happier with the Photoshop knowledge I gained while creating the image. The lines in the image are given depth and dimension solely through the use of layer effects, so I learned a lot about combining layer effects. Best of all I saved the effects as Styles so I can reuse them, all it takes is a few adjustments to change the colors for each one.   So as always, I had fun creating an image and learned some new techniques to boot.  Here is the final image, let me know what you think. Thanks for stopping by!

One of the styles covered in the book is Art Deco, which happens to be one of my favorite styles, yet I have never attempted to create anything in this style. There’s no time like the present, so for this week’s post I decided to create an Art Deco style Travel Poster.

For a reference image, I scanned a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge that I took on my first visit to San Francisco several years ago. The photo was taken from the other side of the bay just before you cross over the bridge into San Francisco.  I placed the image in Illustrator and used it as a template. The Art Deco style uses a lot of bright solid colors and angular shapes. Images are created using simple lines and shapes that simplify the image, so I traced the outline of the basic shape areas in the image — the bridge, the sky, the bay, and the land masses. Then I applied solid colors to the shapes to create the scene. Next I found a font similar to one that was popular in the Art Deco era, and created the text. To make it stand out and add a little more color to the image, I gave the text a light stroke in a yellow-orange color that complements the blue of the sky and ocean and blends well with the red and brown tones of the bridge and land.

Overall, the style was not too difficult to recreate. I spent the most amount of time on tracing the bridge and then spent some time searching for the right font style. I am glad that I finally attempted to create an image in one of my favorite styles. I am happy with how it turned out and now I have a new memento of my visits to the City by the Bay.  Here is the final image, let me know what you think. Thanks for stopping by!

The last remaining element to complete my image was the Genie’s lamp. I found an image of a lantern and used it as a reference to make the lamp. I created it in Illustrator using gradients and gradient meshes. Then I polished it up in Photoshop. (had to really make it shine so the Genie would grant my wishes). Finally, I brought all my elements back into Illustrator to create the final image. I made symbols out of all the swirls to make it easier to place them. I also saved them for later use.  Just when I thought I was done, I decided to copy the “wish” and make two more and have them float up the page following the direction of the swirls. It felt a little more balanced that way, and besides, don’t Genie’s always grant three wishes?

I really had fun with this one and think it is a fun and whimsical piece.  So here is the final image, let me know what you think. Thanks for stopping by!

I looked at a lot of vintage ads for sodas and many are set in diners or soda shops, so I chose that as my setting. I made the diner counter and chairs in Illustrator. The bottle of soda and its label were also made in Illustrator. I found a tutorial demonstrating how to make a drinking glass in Illustrator, and followed it to make my glass and used what I learned to create the bottle as well.  I created the tagline in Illustrator too, so I could apply the warp effects to it. Then I brought everything into InDesign to create the ad.  So here is the final image, let me know what you think. Thanks for stopping by!

I remembered seeing advertisements for the Chocolate Exhibit and thought a poster design for the exhibit would be a good way to showcase these two tutorials.  I added a chocolate drip from the text to tie the two images together. Then I needed to design a logo for the museum that has hosting the exhibit. I like contemporary art, so I decided that the museum would be a contemporary art museum. And naturally the logo should be modern and contemporary in design. I really liked the clean modern look of the font, especially the slanted “e”.  I chose orange for the background of the logo because I think it is a fresh and cheerful color. But I think the colors could be changed with the seasons or to match individual exhibits.   So here’s the final design, let me know what you think. Thanks for stopping by!

Today I looked through all my tutorials and combined two to create an image I call “Sunday Morning.” And as it is a Sunday I thought it an appropriate project for today.  The tutorials that inspired me were one that showed how to create a coffee stain and another that demonstrated how to use gradients to make light and shadow to create an image of a coffee cup. I thought these two images would go well with one of my hobbies – crossword puzzles.  The stains were made with a combination of Illustrator and Photoshop. The Pencil was made in Illustrator and everything else was created in Photoshop.  Here is the final image, let me know what you think.  Thanks for stopping by!