Tutorial Tuesday: Illustrator Brushes!

It's Tuesday. Thus, Tutorial Tuesday! [If it happens twice, does that make it tradition?]

Today, we play with CONFETTI!

Summer is almost here [c'mon, Portland!] and time for fun garden parties, and even more fun garden party invitations!

If you have Illustrator (part of the Adobe Creative Suite), creating brushes is stupid simple once you get the hang of it.

Step One: Create a document. Any size, any dimensions--go crazy.

Alright!

Step Two: Now, time for picking your confetti colors. Since I'll likely be printing this on a desktop printer, I'm not going to mess with Pantones. Actually--the only time I ever use Pantones are if I'm working on a specific brand color [gasp!]

So, I'm pulling some inspiration from a couple of my favorite sites for color-spiration: Kate Spade, J.Crew and Fabric.com.

Then, I drop images with my favorite colors into Illustrator. Then grab my eyedropper tool (press I), select the color, and press the little 'new swatch' button on the Swatches Panel. Like this:

That little piece of paper with the corner folded up is the 'New Swatch' thingy.
Click that after you grab the color from the eyedropper. 

Cool. Now we have colors.

 Step Three: Make a pattern. Go crazy, do whatever you want. I'm trying to make a confetti pattern...

Party!

Okay, now the hard part is over. 

Step Four: Once you have your pattern, select everything you want to be part of your brush. Then, go to your Brush panel, and press the 'New Brush' button (paper with the corner flipped up...) When the dialogue box comes up, select 'New Art Brush.'

Illustrator has some real ugly 'standard' brushes...ick.

Okay! 

Step Four: After you select OK on the 'New Art Brush,' another box will come up with options. Since I don't want to change the color of this brush, I'm selecting Colorization Method: None. If you want to be able to change the color of your brush for a later project, select Colorization method: Tints and Shades or Tints. Make sure you check the box 'Proportional' at the top--that will keep the dimensions of your confetti. Also, you can select the direction of your brush, and how you want it to flip.

After you press 'OK', it'll appear in the Brushes Panel (It might look a little funky in the panel, but that's OK:

So! You have a brush!

Now, play.

Depending on how you have your brushes set up, the size of your confetti will change with brush pressure and stroke length, so have fun playing around with it.