Fun with Adobe Illustrator CS4

What does it look like I’m running here? Monkey business? Good, because I AM.

I just finished a project for a baby shower. It was the perfect excuse to finally learn some of the ropes of Adobe Illustrator CS4. I usually avoid it like the plague and stick to Adobe PhotoShop CS4. I know, bananas, right?

The parents-to-be registered for safari animal decor, so the invitation theme was taken directly from one of their registered items, the ever-fun Pop Monkey (picture to the left).

I used the live trace feature to create a vector image of the monkey. I also found some Creative Commons licensed leaves, which I used to create a vector image as well. From there, I brought the images home, to Photoshop.

Change up the weird monkey hands, add a pleasant monkey smile, give him some texture, and you’ve got yourself an inviting monkey card. Just to give my computer’s RAM a run for its money, I opened up yet another Adobe program: InDesign. The inside and back of the card were completed here, and I also made monkey envelopes.

Here are the finished products. Because of a tight budget, they were printed in-house. Had there been a little more spending room, the monkey texture would have shown up nicely on glossy cards professionally printed.

This is why I love freelance! So many opportunities to monkey around and learn new things every day. You know what I always say: Running your own business is like the monkey bars; sometimes you have to let go to move forward.

OK, I don’t really say that. I just wanted another excuse to say monkey. I’m done.

P.S. You can check out some of my other invitations here.