So I’m working on the artwork for my Valentine’s Day class, which is tomorrow. I have been very busy with lots of projects lately, so creating the artwork for this class has been put on the back burner until now. Also, marketing this class has been put on the back burner, which may account for that fact that I’ll only have two, maybe three students. Which, if I’m being totally honest, I don’t mind all that much, even though it means less (shh! can I mention stuff like this here??) money (gasp!). It makes it feel more like getting together with friends and hanging out and playing with Illustrator. And since when is that a bad thing??

The funny thing is that since I’ve had to leave this work till the last minute, I feel like it’s all too late for Valentine’s Day. Which it’s totally not, because I planned my V-Day class 10 whole days before Valentine’s Day! So I’m getting kindof excited about the idea of printing some of these things out and giving them out in time for Valentine’s Day!

Here’s a sample of a card that I just barely finished.

Mike asked me how I came up with it, so I’ll share my creative process with you:

I went through copious amounts of fantastic inspiration online. (How would I even survive without design bloggers?)

I found a card by Egg Press that had little macaroni noodles. The noodles reminded me of magnets.

I found a reference photo for my magnet. 

I used the reference photo to make a magnet in Illustrator.

I wondered what I could put my magnet with.

I already had a repeat pattern in my document that used these little hearts. I thought the hearts could look like metal filings.

I pulled apart my repeat pattern and used the hearts! Yay!