Expanding Borders  E-mail
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Written by Christopher Lands   

expandbordersAlways keep this in mind: When something looks funny, Expand it.

I have never understood why Illustrator offers so many presets for brushes and borders and then when you try to apply them you can not seem to be able to edit them.

It's a simple but often overlooked step for the beginner/intermediate users.

Here's how you do it.







1. Create any SHAPE. For ease of teaching, I just created a circle set in Red.

 

 

2. Add a STROKE to your SHAPE. I added a 1pt black STROKE to the circle. The color you choose to STROKE it with does not matter at this point. Try to start with a 1pt STROKE in size though as they tend to expand greatly when you add an Illustrator border to it.

 

 

3. With my STROKE selected I opened the dropdown menu for BORDERS (WINDOW/BRUSH LIBRARIES). For this tutorial I chose a pattern from the "ORNATE BORDERS" library.

 

 

4. You will notice that the border was applied with the color that it shows on the menu and NOT the color you apllied to the STROKE. Go ahead, try and change the color of the STROKE...you can't. You will notice that if you select the SHAPE it appears as one item - you will only see that the original circle is selected. With the circle selected go to OBJECT/EXPAND APPEARANCE. You will now notice that the circle and the ornate border are their own elements.

 

 

5. Use the GROUP SELECTION TOOL and click on a piece of your border now. You will see that now you can select the border to edit. Want to match the color of the circle? With a piece of the border selected do a "SELECT ALL" (OBJECT/SELECT ALL) and fill with the same color as your circle. Presto.

 

 

6. Why not try and make it more interesting? With the "SELECT ALL" still in use try to add another color to the border...try to put a border around it as a stroke. Try and select pieces to pull and push as you please. Now it is fully editable.

 

 


 

 

christopher lands


surrender art & design


www.surrenderart.com


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