A Christmas design for new couples - Our first Christmas together 2014 - a card and heart in one for Moobaacluck

© Gabriella Buckingham for Moobaacluck.com

Today I decided to create the art work for this Christmas card for new couples; it's very niche! I thought to myself that I would tackle it using Ai alone (Illustrator), that's only party true in that I had drawn all the elements in black ink with either a brush or a pen and used the "Live Trace" function for the most part and then had a lot of fun colouring it in! I learnt a lot but also realised how little I know still. For example how to print out from Ai; instead I copied and exported to Photoshop to print. Gah! I can see a little thing I need to fix, don't look too hard.

It's amazing how much you learn or realise you don't know when you see something through completely. I also realise that I don't know how to click on the stroke points to pull them into shape - if needed which is frustrating as I know I've done that by accident and just clicking and dragging. In fact as I write this I'm almost sure that clicking with the white arrow selected might have done the job...

I am heartened though - there is hope that Illustrator will become a tool I use regularly...next step to investigate what I can do with my Intuos and the brush tools which I've hardly touched since January when my husband gave one to my for my birthday!!