It’s Saturday morning and I’m designing Illustrator brushes. Who am I anymore? ;-) I’m not sure, but I like where this is headed.
One of the cooler things I learned in design school was how to make custom Illustrator brushes. I KNEW that this was going to be something I wanted to explore more after graduation when I had the time to dedicate. I see little embellishments like this on blogs and websites all the time, but I assume most are custom-made for single use. I wanted to try my hand at making some “string lights” with the thought that if I needed them on a project, I wouldn’t have to recreate from scratch every time. That’s the beauty of a brush versus a graphic!
>>download here<<
I’m also sharing these cause they’re pretty fun! Download at the link above. :)
To open and use: in Illustrator go to Window > Brushes. In the upper right corner drop-down menu select “Open Brush Library” > Other Library. Then load up the file and you should be good to go! Select the brush tool and paint away! You can also create a shape and then click on the brush as a stroke which gives it outlined shapes (like the squares shown above). You can change the stroke size to change the size of the bulbs. Pretty cool, huh?
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Hi! I really would love to use those brushes, but the download link seems to be broken :(
Hi Grace! Sorry about that – it’s working on my end. What kind of error are you getting?
Can you tell me how I can change the color of the lights? I’ve tried changing the stroke and that’s not working.
Thanks!
Changing color is not intuitive for these, I had to look it up again myself. :) I’m using CS6 and the best way to do it is to open the brush panel (Window > Brushes). Then click on any of the pre-made ones and find the little icon at the bottom of the brush panel that says “Options of Selected Object”.
There is a box that says “Colorization Method” – you can select “Hue Shift” and press OK. Now whatever you change the stroke to should also change the brush color. Hope that helps!
The download isn’t working. I do get a PDF message regarding the file, but nothing downloads (at least to my knowledge). I made my own and am working on making it into a brush!
Hi Karin,
Thanks for letting me know. This is super frustrating because it’s working on both my machines, so I can’t quite tell what the problem is. I’m going to put the brushes in another location and try zipping them – here is a direct link : http://girlgonegraphic.com/files/girlgonegraphic_strung_lights_brushes.ai.zip
It sounds like you worked it out anyway! Hope they turned out well! :)
The download isn’t working. I do get a PDF message regarding the file, but nothing downloads (at least to my knowledge). I made my own and am working on making it into a brush!
How do you make the string of lights? Is there an easy way?
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