Make Your Own Snowflake Tag for Christmas Presents!

This is a very simple drawing on illustrator that you can personalize for your christmas presents this year, and fit it uniquely for each and every person on your list. I'll just show you the basics, and then you can use your creativity and mix it around all you like!  Hope you enjoy it!  =)

Step 1: Your First Couple Lines

Alright, so now we're going to make just a couple lines to start the snowflake's pattern.

1)  Open up Illustrator (I'm using CS3, in case yours is slightly different in the location of instructions)

2) Use the line segment tool (left side bar) and just create two or 3 lines. If you want a more interesting pattern, create maybe 2 lines longer and 1 line shorter.

3) Join them at the center so that the ends touch.

Step 2: Drawing Your Pattern

Use the Paintbrush Tool (left side bar) to draw any sort of pattern / drawing / random squiggles that you want. *Only on one side of the lines though.*

Step 3: Reflecting Your Pattern

1) Object - Transform - Reflect - Vertical

Select your pattern for one of the lines, copy and paste, and then reflect the copy. Position it opposite your original pattern, so that it makes a full pattern for one of your lines.

2) Repeat step 1 for your other lines.

Step 4: Making Your Whole Snowflake

Copy and paste everything that you have now (2-3 lines of patterns) and, using the reflect tool from the last step, keep copying and reflecting and positioning until you have a full snowflake. I did it about 4-5 times, and then filled in some empty spaces with one of the little lines. If your lines don't fit perfectly, you can take some bigger lines out and replace them with a few smaller lines that you make.

Step 5: The FUN Part!

Now that we made our snowflake, we can almost decorate it now. First, select everything from your snowflake and group it (object - group) so that it's easier for you to change color, shape, orientation, etc., without having to keep going back and selecting each part.

You can change the colors to whatever you want now. Make a background color for the tag, with whatever size you want, and also make a round circle (elipse tool in the left side bar) so that you can cut out the hole later to string ribbon through. Play around with the line width, color, filler color, size, of the snowflake, as well as the placement of it on the tag. You can make it funky and fresh, or sophisticated and elegant. Have fun and hope you enjoyed this! I have some examples if you're stuck for ideas. =P

I almost forgot, now you print it and cut out the hole for your string!


*NOTE: For my last 2 images, I have no idea why the color is like that.. the florescent purple is actually supposed to be a nice hot pink. I've tried saving it as jpg and bmp already, and it's the same thing. So.. hope it's not TOO ugly for you. =P