Candy Wrapper's for Your Christmas Creations - Adobe Illustrator 10 Tutorial

Jacquelin Vanderwood 1 Well it's Christmas again and you want to make candy as gifts to give to friends and family. You need your tasty creations to have a personalized touch to them. A great idea is to make your own candy wrappers. What could be easier to do with your own computer right at your fingertips? Let's get started. My suggestion at this point is that you have your candies already made and that each type of candy is approximately the same size as every other one in the group. We'll work on one candy for now. Let's use the candy pictured below for this illustration. First thing you will want to do is wrap it either with cellophane, thin foil, or plastic wrap as neatly as possible. Take a sliver of tape and attach to secure the opening on the underside. Now you are ready to apply a decorative wrapper. Measure the circumference of the candy and add 1/2". Measure the height and subtract 1/4". We don't want the candy completely hidden.  Next open Illustrator.  2 In this illustration we'll use the measurements, 3" x 1". Press Control+R to open up the Ruler. In the upper left corner of the ruler you'll see a vertical and horizontal dotted line crossing one another. Press the left mouse key and pull that down onto the corner of the print area (that tiny dotted line you see surrounding the page). This will set the ruler for exact measurement. Click on the Rectangle Tool and create a rectangle. 3 Now we have a blank canvas to work on. First decide what color you would like the background to be. Since this is a Christmas demonstration, let's choose a light green. 4 Next, unless you are an artist you'll probably be resorting to clipart, so go ahead and locate the clipart you are going to use. Or, you can even use a photograph. We'll use a little holly to bring it to life. Placement of the clipart is important as you will want it to show from the front. You can readjust it's placement once you have the text centered on it. 5 Let's add some text to identify the piece. If the text dialogue box is not open, press Control+T to open. You'll see two tabs, Character and Paragraph. Click on Paragraph. Select the Align Center box. 6 Now select the Character tab. First we'll type in the text and then change the font. I'll type in Grandma's Chocolate Yummy's.  7 With the Text tool still selected, highlight Grandma's. 8 I'll use NevisionCasD. Before you deselect the text, select the color red.  9 Now, if you want to change the rest of the text, go ahead and select it and find a font that looks fun. You can leave it black so that it stands out more. 10 Select the clipart, press the Alt key drag to duplicate. Select the Rotation tool and press the Shift key and rotate 180 degrees. Using the Selection tool, move the duplicated clipart to the right. Press Control+A to select all and then press the Shift key and deselect the rectangle. Using the arrow keys, adjust the placement of the text and clipart.  11 Let's add some less apparent decoration to finish the design. Select the Line Segment tool. Choose a muted green.  Press Control+A to select all. Press Control+G to group. You are now ready duplicate the label. Press Control and Alt (with the Selection tool highlighted) and drag the label down. Now press Control+D to continue duplicating. Once you've hit the bottom of the page, stop. Press Control+A to select all the labels. With the Selection tool still selected, press Shift+Alt and drag right. Now press Control+D to duplicate more columns. You are now ready to print. (You may have to try this several times to set up the labels just where you want them but it will be easy to do.) If you make a mistake anywhere along the way, press Control+Z however many times it takes to get back to where you want to be. 12 To complete the wrapper, make sure to purchase a narrow double sided tape, and apply to the ends with one side overlapping the other.   Copyright 2002, Jacquelin Vanderwood, All Rights Reserved