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Saint Valentine’s Day is coming, soon millions of will be giving and receiving gifts to show how big are their love. This tutorial aims to guide you through the process of creating a unique St. Valentine’s Day themed pattern inside Adobe Illustrator.

Final Image Preview

Step 1

Will start from creating a number of objects for our pattern, and those will be :

1. A heart balloon
2. A pair of lips
3. An arrow in the heart
4. A Cupid
5. A box of candies
6. Nr “14” (as a date)

Open Illustrator and create a new document, 800×800px. Rename “Layer 1” to “Background”. Select the Rectangle Tool (M) and draw a 800 by 800 pixels square for the background. Fill it with #F0537F and lock this layer.

Since we are creating a two-colored pattern you may save #F0537F to your swatches, this will be our fill color for all objects. For the stroke will be using white.
Create a new layer and name it “Objects”.  Double click on your “Objects” layer in the Layer Palette to open up the Layer Options dialogue. Set the black color for paths to make them more visible on our fill color.

Step 2

We’ve finished all prep stuff so we can start drawing our objects. We’ll start by drawing the hear balloon. Make sure that you have selected the “Objects” layer, select the Pen Tool (P) and draw simple hear path with rounded edges and filled with color.

Press C to select the Scissors Tool and delete the bottom part of the heart.

Using Ellipse Tool (L) draw a small ellipse under the heart and then press Ctrl  + [ to this sub layer under the hear shape sub layer.

Select the Pen Tool (P) again a draw a rope under balloon. Press Ctrl + Shift + [ to move it under the ellipse path.

With Pen Tool still selected draw a small highlight on the balloon, make it no stroke and fill with white.

Select all balloon paths and group them by pressing Ctrl + G.

Step 3

Select the Pen Tool and try to draw the bottom lip.

And then the top lip. This may take a couple of tries until you get the perfect result.
Draw some lines between lips to add some details to them.

Just like we did with balloon, draw two highlights on the top lip.

Group the lips paths.

Step 4

Now it’s for the heart pierced by a Cupid arrow of love. Draw or import from somewhere a heart shape.

I’ve made the right side of the heart a little bigger and then rotated it a bit. Use Line Segment Tool (\) to draw two parts of the arrow.

Now draw the feathers and the arrowhead.

Don’t forget the highlight.

Group all this paths together.

Step 5

Now we will be drawing a Cupid, the true symbol of the Saint Valentine’s Day. Select the Rounded Rectangle Tool and draw a rectangle. You can adjust the angle radius using arrow key on your keyboard.

Cupids have curly hair, so, select the Ellipse Tool and while holding down the Shift key Draw many circles on the top of the rectangle.

With Ellipse Tool Still selected draw the Cupid’s eye.

Select the Pen Tool and try to draw a bow. Don’t fill this path with color.

Now draw an arrow.

Using Ellipse Tool again draw Cupid’s hands.

Create a wing near Cupid’s back.

Last thing Cupid needs is legs and then you can group him.

Step 6

We’ll be drawing a candy box now. Start again by drawing a heart.

Select it; press Ctrl + C and then Ctrl + F to make a copy of it. Move the selected copy up by about 30 pixels, depending on your illustration size.

Use Line Segment Tool to create two lines that will connect these two hearts.

Delete a piece of the lower hear to make them look like a box together.

Draw two lines with no fill across the box.

Draw a line connecting those two hears at their bottoms.

Group the candy box.

Step 7

Last thing on our list is the date. It’s much easier with that. Select the Type Tool (T) and type “14”.

Now type “th” somewhere near.

Underline it and group all text.

Step 8

We’ve made it to the most important part of the tutorial – creating the patter itself.  Create a big square in the center of the document.

Now try to fit in this square as many objects as you can. Copy them, reflect them, transform and scale them. This will be you future patter model. This is the most difficult part of the tutorial because you have to do it by yourself.

When the overall result is ready start filling in small gaps with scaled down copies of the same objects. Pay attention to the borders, if there is any object very close to a border; put the objects on the opposite side not so close to it to create differences. You will see your mistakes after you apply this pattern to a bigger path.

Select the square that we made and make it no stroke. Press Ctrl + A to select everything and then go to Edit > Define Pattern. Give it a name and hit Enter. Now select a bigger path that you want to apply this pattern to and select it from the Swatches Palette.

Final Result

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