Little Somethings by Little Lo Hood: Valentine How To & Free Printable

Hi wonderful people! I'm here today with such an amazing DIY valentine from Steph of Giveable Greetings. She was one of my awesome sponsors! Check out all her great greetings, she is so fantastic! Enjoy this tutorial & the super cute freebie!!

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Valentine's Day How To & Free Printable:

Create a cute little Valentine card in Adobe Illustrator
I don't know about you, but I found Illustrator to be completely overwhelming when I first started using it.
Turns out, it's really not hard to master. I thought I'd outline the steps I took to create this 3"x4" Valentine card so you can make one yourself, or use the link for the free page of printables at the end!

Create your document:

For this card, I made the size dimensions 3" x 4" and the color mode is CMYK (which you always want to choose for things you'll be printing).
Draw a red rectangle to fill the artboard.
Draw a white rectangle overtop of that so you're left with a red border.
Next you want to create a scallop edge around the white. Start by drawing a red circle.
Open the SWATCHES panel from the Window menu, and drag the circle you just drew in there. You'll see it appear next to anything that is already in your swatches panel.
Next, open the BRUSHES panel from the Window menu, and drag the same circle from your artboard in there. A new options panel will pop up like below.
Choose the New Pattern Brush option, and click ok. This will bring up another menu of options.
The first box will show your circle already placed there. This means anthing along a line will have a circle on it. Since we're making a rectangle, we'll need to take care of what appears in the corners too.
Click the 2nd box, then select 'New Pattern Swatch 1'. This is the circle you added to the Swatches panel earlier. You'll see it fill the 2nd box. Do this step again for the 3rd box.
Click Okay, and you'll see a new pattern brush with 4 red circles in it in your Brushes panel.
Next draw a rectangle within the white one you drew earlier. Click on it once to select it.
Click on your new pattern brush in the Brushes panel to convert the regular lines to the ones made up of your circles.
Ok, that's the border out of the way. Next up: Drawing the stuff inside.

First, draw a red rectangle.
Draw a second red rectangle near the end of the first and slightly below it.
Click on the Pen Tool in the pen menu and hold it down so that the other pen options are visible. Select the one with the little plus sign at the nib (add anchor point), and add an anchor point to the middle of the right side of your new rectangle. Select the WHITE arrow in the tools menu, click once on this new anchor point, and drag it in slightly. This forms the end of your flag.
Change the colour to a slightly darker red.
Next draw another rectangle below the first, overlapping the 2nd, and change this to a darker shade than the second. This forms the ribbon portion underneath.
Hold down the Pen tool in the tool window, select the one with the minus sign at the nib, and click the bottom right anchor point on this new rectangle to turn it into a triangle.
Copy these 2 smaller rectangles, flip them, and paste them below the original rectangle.
Add your text in your desired font.
Next up is the heart: Draw 2 circles and one square that you rotate so that it looks like below. Then using the pen nib with the minus sign, delete the top anchor point of the square so it forms a heart.
Copy and paste the heart on top, scale it down a bit, and select a light pink color for it.
Add an arrow by drawing a single line through the heart.
Click the Effect menu at the top, choose Stylize, and select Add Arrowhead. Choose a combo you like.
In the Align panel, make sure everything is aligned to the center of the artboard.
Add your 'From' field by typing From in one of the fonts used earlier, drawing a rectangle, then selecting Effect -> Stylize -> Round Corners, and choose how round you want them.
And there you have it! Your very own Valentine card.

Now you can make your own using these instructions and customize it as you'd like, or download this pdf page of 6 printable cards which you can cut out and distribute among your friends. Just like in junior school! :)