| Interlocking Hearts in Illustrator CS - Page 4 | |
(If you arrived on this page from a search, you should begin the tutorial from page one.)
Variations
On step 11, make the stroke thicker. This one is 30 pt. Go to Object > Path > Outline Stroke and then continue with steps 12 through 17. On step 18, here are some alternate settings for the Inner Glow. Follow step 19 to finish.
Fills and Strokes
Instead of interlocking the hearts they can be filled or stroked. After Step 10, try various strokes or fills. The one below used a floral brush on the stroke.
Using Graphic Styles
Graphic Styles are preset fills and/or strokes you apply from the Graphic Styles palette with one click. Simply select the heart, and click on a style in the palette to apply it. These hearts have various graphic styles applied. Click here to download a zip file of the styles used on these hearts. These were created in Illustrator CS for windows. They do not work in earlier versions of Illustrator and have not been tested in Illustrator CS for Mac.
To use the graphic styles, right click and choose "Save Target As" and save the zip file to your hard drive. Inside the zip file is an Illustrator Graphic Styles file called northlite_hearts.ai. Unzip the file, and remember where you placed it. Open the Graphic Styles palette (Window > Graphic Styles) and from the palette options menu, choose Open Graphic Style Library > Other Library. Navigate to where you saved the file northlite_hearts.ai and double click on the file to load the styles for use in Illustrator.
These also use graphic styles but have Symbols added. Open your symbols palette from Window > Symbols. You can load other symbols from the Symbols Palette options menu. Drag the symbol from the palette to the heart with the selection tool (V) and resize by dragging the bounding box.
There you go! I am sure you can think of a lot of ideas to use your new heart shape.
©2005 Sara Froehlich
