Blog - Print Me Some Color

Reindeer Seamless Pattern

Posted on February 21, 2019

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Birdie Seamless Pattern in Adobe Illustrator

Posted on December 21, 2018

Hello people!

Do you like making cute drawings ? What about making seamless patterns? And learning Adobe Illustrator?

In today’s video we will learn how to make cute birdies and turn them into seamless patterns in Adobe Illustrator! This is a beginner’s tutorial, hence you will not need any experience with Illustrator.

What can you do with these seamless patterns?

So many things!

Make a wrapping paper for wrapping gifts this Christmas
Upload to print on demand sites like Redbubble to create bedspreads, tapestries, phone cases and a lot more!

Check out my Redbubble store here.

Make a selection of patterns and sell on sites like Etsy
Upload to Spoonflower and create your own custom fabric!
The list is endless, these are just a few of the options available.

Things you will learn today:

Using the Anchor point tool
Working with the curvature tool
Using Pencil tool
And learning to make seamless patterns using the inbuilt ‘make – pattern’ option in Illustrator

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Method to make this seamless pattern:

Select the Ellipse tool and make a horizontal Ellipse
Right click on pen tool and select anchor point tool
Click on the right most anchor point on the ellipse to make it pointed
Use the Curvature tool to give the shape of a bird
Select the Pencil tool and draw in the beaks and legs
Right click> Transform and reflect to create a reflected version of the bird
Make 2 more versions of the bird and color them
Select everything, Object> pattern > make
Choose your settings and click Done
Pattern gets saved in the swatches library
Use it to create patterns of any size!

Learn to get colors for your projects here:

Adobe Color

Watch the video here:

If you cannot view the video, you can find it here.

While you are there, don’t forget to hit subscribe!

Illustrator Tutorials

Learning Illustrator while making a logo

Posted on December 5, 2018

Have you been enjoying my series on mini tutorials? If you have, make sure to like and subscribe! Here is another mini tutorial on how to create a logo in 5 minutes!

Logo making in reality, is an intensive process. You need have multiple meetings with clients and figure out what their brand is all about, brainstorm ideas to make sure your logo is simple yet unique and the creation process itself takes time. We are not going to do any of that, we will make up a brand name and just assume client would love what we create.

This tutorial is not about making Logos! And let me warn you, I’m no expert in logo designs. This is just a fun little project to help you learn illustrator. I mean, who doesn’t love learning through mini tutorials!

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So, what will we learn today?

Creating shapes with Ellipse tool
Using the anchor point tool to define the pointy edges
Learning how to use the color library
Making use of the Rotate tool
Using Layers – lock, unlock and hiding layers (a must know for any Illustrator project)
Learning about Transparency tool to adjust opacity
Using Text in your designs

I have used a font that is available for free on Adobe typekit.

Download this font from Adobe Typekit here:

https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/trajan-color#fonts-section

Check this mini tutorial on how to get colors for your projects from Adobe Color:

How to find colors!

Scroll down for the video tutorial:

If you cannot view the video, you can find it here.

While you are there, don’t forget to hit subscribe!

Free Stuff Illustrator Tutorials

How to make a printable Holiday Card with Adobe Illustrator

Posted on December 3, 2018

Hello people!

It’s December and everyone is busy running around getting things sorted out for Christmas. I know it’s too early, but that’s how it’s going to be! It’s so crazy that we had our office Christmas party in November! NOVEMBER!

Anyway, like every year, you have to send out holiday cards and it’s challenging because you need to add a personal touch to these cards. Now, nobody’s going to judge you for not making it personal (except Aunt Janice probably). But you are a nice person, you love your people and you are going to send those cards filled with love and holiday cheer. Here is a step by step tutorial on how to create your own personalized holiday card using Adobe Illustrator.

Download the free vector pack onto your computer
We will duplicate, rotate, scale and reflect the elements in the vector pack to create a wide variety of elements
We’ll arrange these elements in a nice form to create the design for our card
We will apply this design onto our card template
Add in details to customize it and export it for print ready PDFs
Print and cut to make your own cards!

You can download the vector pack here:

Download here!

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There is nothing wrong in learning new things during the holidays. You get to learn these things in this tutorial:

Using vector elements and modifying them
Using Layers, lock, unlock.
Tools like Ellipse tool, reflect, rotate, scale, group and ungroup
Using Text tool
Arranging artwork to print as a card
Applying trim marks
Exporting an illustrator file as PDF

Too lazy to create the card? No problem, download the ready-to-print holiday card here:

Download here!

You can always create the elements yourself. They are made using just the pencil tool. Scribble something and you have some nice elements! Here is a tutorial on how to create a holiday themed wrapping paper from scratch (I made this during last Christmas). You can also download last year’s card here.

Fonts used in the tutorial :

https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/montserrat

https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/blockhead

If you don’t know how to get nice colors for your card, check out this tutorial on how to get colors.

OK, let’s watch the tutorial now!

If you cannot view the video, you can find it here.

While you are there, don’t forget to hit subscribe!

Illustrator Photoshop Tutorials

Adobe Color and how to find color themes

Posted on November 25, 2018

Adobe Color (formerly known as Adobe Kuler) is a website where you can find a number of ready-to-use creative color themes, which are free and can be saved onto libraries and accessed across adobe apps.

Have you ever started a project but struggled to find a good, appealing color theme? If yes, then you must watch this tutorial. In this tutorial, we learn how to find and save awesome color palettes/themes to our Illustrator/photoshop library.

You can do few amazing things with this online platform:

Explore and find awesome themes
Find a base theme and edit it to suit your needs
Use the color wheel to adjust and create your own themes
Upload an image and extract the color theme:

When you click create, you will an option to upload images from your computer. Adobe Color will automatically pick up a palette of different colors from the image. Apart from letting you adjust these colors to suit your project, it also lets you choose a Color Mood. Here is an example:

Color Mode: Colorful

Color Mode: Bright

Adobe color is also available as a mobile version for both iPhone and Android devices. The best thing about the mobile version is that you can capture colors on the go! There are many more things to explore in the mobile version, I will do a detailed video on that soon.

You can go to Adobe Color Here:

https://color.adobe.com/

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I created this pin it image and thumbnail using Illustrator scripts. You can learn to do it too, click here for the tutorial.

In this mini tutorial, we check how we can find, edit, save and use the color themes for our projects. These color themes can be accessed across Illustrator, Photoshop and other adobe apps. Adobe color also has a very nice mobile app with which you can capture color palettes on the go!

Let’s learn how to use this online platform and apply Color Themes to your projects :

If you cannot view the video, you can find it here.

While you are there, don’t forget to hit subscribe!

Illustrator Tutorials

Paper Fold Effect – Abstract Background – Illustrator tutorial

Posted on November 20, 2018

Today we will learn to create an abstract background with paper fold effect in Adobe Illustrator. There are two methods to create this effect:

Create a base pattern and then apply colors

We will create a base pattern with different shades of white and then apply a different color on top, making use of the blending mode. This method is mainly used when you have no clear idea on what color would look nice, or you want to create a set of different colors.

Colors used:

f25d5f

dedfe0

c4c6c8

ffffff

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Create the paper fold effect with pre defined colors

We will create the paper fold effect using the colors already chosen. Use this method if you have no intention of applying any other color, or you have no plans to create multiple colored sets.

Colors used:

f25d5f

dedfe0

c4c6c8

ffffff

Watch the video tutorial for creating the paper fold effect here:

If you cannot view the video, you can find it here.

While you are there, don’t forget to hit subscribe!

Illustrator Tutorials

How to create a Washi Tape in Illustrator

Posted on November 12, 2018

Today, I will walk you through the process of creating washi tape in Illustrator, with just a few easy steps. Although we make a plain washi tape, you can go ahead and apply pattern to these to make some cute ones! There are so many things you can create in Illustrator within just 5 mins! This is my first video in a new series that I’m planning to start. Short videos are my favorite things to watch and learn from and I want to make more such videos available to you in the near future.

Colors used in the Washi Tape in Illustrator:

f15d6a

233d4d

Steps:

Create a rectangle and fill with color 233d4d
Click on Effects > Stylize > outer glow and select the following settings:
Create a smaller rectangle on top of rectangle in 1 and color it white
Create another rectangle in the shape of a washi tape and color it f15d6a
Use the pencil tool to create jagged edges for the tape
Click on windows > transparency, and set it to 82%
You are done!

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Watch the video tutorial here:

If you cannot view the video, you can find it here.

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Illustrator Tutorials

How to Vectorize Watercolor image in Illustrator

Posted on November 5, 2018

An Illustrator tutorial on how to vectorize watercolor.

Vectorizing watercolors is not really a necessary step in my design process. I just scan my watercolors and edit them in photoshop to remove the backgrounds, fix some colors and I’m quite happy with the end product. But, sometimes, you need to work with these files in Illustrator and for that, you definitely need vectorized images.

In this video tutorial we will learn to vectorize watercolor artwork, which has been scanned and background removed in Photoshop. We will be importing the PNG image into Illustrator. To do this, we can use 2 techniques:

Drag and drop the image into illustrator file
Use File > Place

Once we have the image in Illustrator, we use the function Image Trace to vectorize watercolor image. We will also learn how to edit the settings under this menu to achieve better results. Next, we will learn to correct the minute errors in the vectorized image, to achieve that perfect high resolution vector, which can be used on print on demand sites.

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Materials used:

Disclaimer: This blog post contains affiliate links. It means I might earn a small commission if you decide to purchase the items from my links. Such commissions help me keep this site ad-free. The items listed are tried and tested by me, I will not link anything that I have not personally used and loved.

For painting:

For vectorizing:

HP Envy 4520 printer for scanning the images
Adobe Illustrator

Watch and learn how to vectorize watercolor in Illustrator:

If you cannot view the video, you can find it here.

While you are there, don’t forget to hit subscribe!

Free Stuff Illustrator

Free Download – Weekly Planner

Posted on November 3, 2018

Free download free printable weekly planners

A free download – printable weekly planner to get you organized like a pro!

It’s been a while since I gave out some freebies on this site. So, in today’s post, I give you weekly planner in multiple colors! The city I live in has already started prepping for Christmas and planning is extremely important during the busy holiday season. These weekly planners are the best way to plan out your activities for the week!

They can be printed out in 2 different sizes – A4 and A5! Each PDF comes with 2 copies of the same color, and you can use this to print it in a mini size, details on how to do this are given below.

To print in A4:

Download the PDF file below.
Open the PDF file in Adobe Reader.
Go to File – Print. In the print settings window, choose “Fit” under Page sizes and handling.
Print as many copies as you need on A4 paper. (Each PDF contains 2 copies of the weekly planners)
Chop off the excess paper using the trim marks.

To print in A5:

Open the PDF file in Adobe Reader.
Go to File – Print. Here, choose the following:
Page sizing and handling: Multiple

Pages per sheet: 2

Page Order: horizontal

Orientation: landscape

This will let you print two copies on one sheet (see the below figure).
Print on A4 paper.
Cut the paper along the trim lines. You now have two A5 sized weekly planners.

Printer I use: HP Envy 4520

Free Download the printable Weekly Planner pages here:

Please Note: The free download printables are for personal use only! So, you can print as many as you want but you are not allowed to share it electronically or re sell it.

Download Planner Type 1 Download Planner Type 2

Download Planner Type 3 Download Planner Type 4