today i'm going to take you through the process of creating a colorful embroidered patch based on the kinds of designs associated with national parks the artwork will incorporate a landscape scene at sunset which helps keep the design simple with a silhouette graphic and a warm color palette you can find some inspiration in my showcase of embroidered patch designs on spoon graphics which features a range of cool little badges by various talented artists many of those examples have been physically made in thread but stick around till the end of this tutorial to discover an easy way to make your digital design look real with stitching and embroidery effects but first if you want access to a library of resources including the tool we'll be using to create this realistic embroidery effect sign up to envato elements envato element saves you time effort and money with unlimited downloads of premium design and stock templates including print templates graphics photos fonts and now royalty-free audio tracks too check them out today by hitting the link in the video description below i hear tatooine is nice this time of year so that's the location i'm going to base my patch design on open up illustrator and create a new document i'm just using a typical a4 size document with pixel units but to give yourself a nice large work area go to view and hide artboards patch designs come in all shapes and sizes but i'm basing mine on a hexagon find the polygon tool under the shape tools and draw a shape while holding the shift key to keep it straight you can use the cursor keys while dragging to alter the number of sides holding the space bar also allows you to reposition the shape before releasing the mouse click and drag near the corner handle of the bounding box and hold shift to rotate the shape by 90 degrees stretch out the width while holding the alt key so both sides are scaled proportionally adjust the height by dragging just the top or bottom handle choose the direct selection tool then click and drag one of the corner widgets to round off the corners of the shape i actually managed to find a color palette with the name tatooine in adobe color which perfectly suits this retro style design it incorporates a dark brown that will work nicely for the silhouette in the foreground then a nice group of warm colors to depict the sunset you can import the palette into your library but i find pasting a quick screenshot into illustrator is an easy way to make these shoes accessible find the pencil tall then draw a wobbly line to represent a slightly hilly horizon continue the shape around the main hexagon and back to the starting point activate the eyedropper tool and hold the shift key while clicking the darkest tube from the palette to sample it as this shape's fill to trim away the excess switch to the selection tool then hold shift and click the hexagon to add it to the selection grab the shape builder tool then hold the alt key and click the unwanted area to delete it activate the pencil tool again and quickly deselect everything by clicking on some empty space while holding the command key or ctrl k on windows to toggle the selection tool draw another slightly more mountainous shape across the design looping it back to the start use the eyedropper tool to sample the purple colour from the palette add the hexagon to the selection with the selection tool then trim away the excess with the shape builder tool before deselecting everything again with a click on some empty space with the selection tool this purple shape is overlapping the brown shape so select it then right click and choose send backward the next three warm colors can be drawn as horizontal rectangles to create a gradual change in color in the sky and to create a cool retro striped look draw a shape that overlaps the purple mountains and takes up roughly a third of the remaining empty space give this rectangle the darkest red fill using the eyedropper and use the send backward command to place it underneath the previous shapes delete the excess using the shape builder using the hexagon as part of the selection to identify where it needs trimming to the next rectangle can be easily snapped into place if you have smart guides enabled from under the view menu follow the same process to eye drop the color and trim the shape to size since this rectangle is buttered up exactly and doesn't overlap no altering of the stacking order is necessary when it comes to trimming the final shape it can be difficult to select the hexagon when it can no longer be seen a handy technique is to draw a selection to capture the outline and another shape then hold the shift key and click the unwanted shape to remove it from the selection choose the ellipse tool from the shape menu to draw one of tatooine's two suns we've run out of colours in the palette so double click the fill swatch and manually choose a light yellow hue hold shift while drawing the shape to keep it circular and overlap it with the purple mountain so it will appear to dip below the horizon if we try to use the purple shape to trim the excess with the shape builder it will punch out both shapes leaving on a wanted gap an alternative technique is to make a duplicate of the purple shape under the edit copy and edit paste in front menu commands right click on the shape and choose arrange bring to front so it sits on top of the yellow circle shift and click the sun so both shapes are selected then click the minus front button in the pathfinder panel draw tatooine's second sun using another ellipse this time with a paler yellow film use the technique of drawing a small selection then shifting clicking the unwanted shape to activate just the hexagon clear out its default fill colour then click the stroke setting and sample the same pale yellow colour used in the second sun holding shift while clicking will sample just the hue whereas without the shift key it would load the shape's appearance and add the colour as a fill head over to the stroke panel and increase the weight to 5 points then set the stroke alignment to outside open up the appearance panel i tend to keep mine in the bottom left of my screen but yours may be elsewhere in your interface if not activate it from under the view menu click the small menu icon in the corner and choose add new stroke with the eyedropper tool still active sample the dark brown color drag this brown stroke underneath the paler stroke so it's not obscuring it then increase the weight to 20 points to create a thicker outline click on some empty artboard space to deselect the hexagon then click the brown shape to load its appearance with just a brown fill use the rectangle tool to draw a small square to represent one of tatooine's iconic moisture farm buildings switch over to the direct selection tool and deselect everything in order to then select just the top two corner points using the shift key drag the corner widgets to fully round off this top edge draw two more shapes and round off just one corner to create a recognizable silhouette grab the type tool to add some text to the design i'm using a few fonts from the titling gothic family which you can activate from adobe fonts using the link in the description scale this text element to size and give it the same pale yellow fill as the sun shape to center up the text accurately right click and choose create outlines you can then add another shape to the selection by holding the shift key then release shift and give the shape an extra click to make it the key object click the horizontal align center button in the align panel set up the word national park using the compressed version of titling gothic with a high tracking value of 400 give this text the other yellow fill create outlines and center it up within the design [Music] a simple decorative shape can help fill out some empty space zoom in and draw a small circle with the selection tool active hold the alt and shift keys and drag the shape to make a copy position this duplicate on the other side to center up these circles relative to the other objects select them both and create a group so they can be aligned as a pair add one of the other shapes to the selection click it again to make it the key object then align everything up use the wide variant of titling gothic to add the wording outer rim and position it in the leftover space within the badge composition scriptorama is a cool retro style font from adobe fonts that can be used for the words visit the go to object transform and share and configure the settings to vertical at 5 degrees to add a simple rise effect to this script give these text elements fills using colours from the palette and follow the procedure to center them up a little detail we can add to the sans serif text elements is to subtly round off the corners use the direct selection tool to adjust the corner widgets to around 1.5 pixels for the larger text and 0.5 pixels for the smaller text elements that's the main design finished using these same techniques you can create embroidered patches for any location or subject by illustrating simple graphics with illustrator's basic shape tools next i'll show you how you can transform this flat vector design into a realistic looking embroidered patch in photoshop but first there's a couple more steps in illustrator required to clean up the artwork draw a selection across everything then go to object and expand appearance click the divide button in the pathfinder panel which splits all the shapes where they overlap each other right click and choose ungroup to separate everything then click some empty space to deselect choose a shape then go to select same and fill color click the unite button in the pathfinder panel to merge all these shapes into one pick another shape of a different colour and repeat the process continue with shapes of each remaining colour until all the objects of a particular fill colour are combined into one object go to file and export as choose photoshop psd as the format make sure the resolution is set to high and the right layers option is checked open this new psd file in photoshop quickly add some additional space around the canvas with the crop tool to create a realistic embroidery effect i'll be using an aptly named photoshop action called realistic embroidery it's part of the envato elements library along with over 2 million other assets or you can find it individually for 8 links to both places you can download it down in the description area i'll leave the finer details to the instruction manual included with the product but to create the effect from a multi-color design the action steps need to be applied to each color individually first let's tidy things up by renaming the layers in my example the orange and red stripes seem to have been combined into one layer so a quick magic one copy and paste job separated them onto different layers again [Music] the first step of the action sets up the stitched outline for the shape then the inner area can be filled by repeatedly playing the second action step once the temporary shapes have been applied click the render action to process it with a realistic embroidered look make sure you rename the layer before applying the actions to the next colour layer otherwise it will throw up an error because it tries to select the wrong layer i added just one outline of stitching to the main brown colour layer so the inner portion is filled with the finer fabric texture the action generates a blue thread colour by default this can be removed by bringing back the visibility of the original colour layers and dragging the group to the top of the layer stack change the blending mode to overlay double click each of the smart objects layers in turn to edit the effect settings turn off the blue color adjustment layers while you're in there you can modify the other features too i removed cloth displays for all shapes except the brown layer turned off the drop shadow and removed the border on any layers with small text save and close each of the psb smart object files to return to the main document finally you can adjust the stacking order of the layers to arrange them into the appropriate order once all the layers have been configured the artwork looks like a realistic embroidered patch complete with the fine texturing of thread and stitching using adobe illustrator for the main design meant we can easily use the basic shape tools to construct a simple illustration in a scalable vector format then this fantastic photoshop action quickly processes the digital artwork to make it look like a real patch so if you enjoyed this tutorial or learn to new tips and tricks please give the video a thumbs up to help recommend it to others subscribe to my channel to stick around for more of my content and head over to my spoon graphics website to bag yourself my free design resources bundle as always thank you very much for watching i'll see you in the next one