Embroidery art has been given a new lease of life in this month’s tutorial. Using Adobe Illustrator and a good dose of imagination, we’ll show you how to make an ordinary font stand out!
Step 1
Start off by creating some text on your art board using a thick, bulky font.
Step 2
Click on the Appearance palette and add a new fill to your text.
It’s best to follow this sequence:
i) Go to Window and select Appearance. Alternatively, you may use this shortcut: Press Shift F6.
ii) Select your text and give it a new fill color: orange-yellow (C10 Y95).
Step 3
Select the stroke of your text in the Appearance palette and change its color to grey 60%. Set the weight of the stroke to 14 points.
Step 4
Next, click-and-drag the stroke option, placing it below the orange-yellow color fill in the Appearancepalette.
Step 5
Add another stroke to your text using the Appearance palette.
Step 6
Set the color of the new stroke to orange (M40 Y100) as well as the weight of the stroke to 1 point, bring up the stroke preference panel by clicking on ‘Stroke’, and add a 3-point dash, as shown in the screen capture.
Step 7
Go to Effect > Path > Offset Path. Offset the dashed stroke by -2 pixels, leaving the other options as default.
Step 8
Repeating Step 7, add a new white 1 point stroke to your text and offset it by 2 pixels.
Step 9
Create the Zig Zag Stitch by adding two more effects to the white stroke. Firstly, apply the Roughen effect to smooth over your stroke path (Effect > Distort and Transform > Roughen). Next, add theZig Zag effect to accentuate all of the extra points we just added (Effect > Distort and Transform > Zig Zag). Below are the settings used.
Step 10
Duplicate the white Zig Zag stroke and change its color to grey 80%. Adjust the offset mode of the new grey 80% stroke to 7 pixels.
Step 11
Add one more stroke to your text to fill in the area between the yellow color fill and the white Zig Zag stitch. Set the new stroke weight to 4 points and the color to the same yellow as your text color fill. Proceed to click-and-drag the new yellow stroke below every other stroke and just above the original text color fill in the Appearance palette.
Step 12
Then, create tiny circles for the background and paste the text on it.
Step 13
Finally, you can feast your eyes on this terrific transformation!
Before After