Pinterest Finds: Useful Interior Design Tips

Simple find for today, but House Beautiful's Top Designer Secrets board is one worth bookmarking. 
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It's perfect for those creative spirits who want to get their hands dirty and plan hardcore interior designer in their own home.  The tips come from professionals with ranging styles, but the board is definitely a collection of information everyone can learn something from.  Also, it may trouble shoot a design disaster. Check the board out here!  Have a great Tuesday!

Illustrator Title Art Tutorial

How to Make an Interesting Textured Header on Adobe Illustrator. Plus some bonus tips.

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Find an Image

Find an Image/texture. If you're using Google Images, make sure it's set to Large, so you shouldn't have too much trouble finding one with a good resolution. -save to desk top -no watermarks. Open illustrator. Set the document to 8.5 by 11 or "Letter size" Go to Window>workspace> and then click "default" or in CS4 it's called "essentials". Go to file, place. Find the image you saved to the desk top and click. Check the size. How much space does it take up on the art board? Illustrator tells no lies. If it doesn't extend far enough to the width of the page, it's usually advised that you should just find another picture. If it is too large, to size it down, use the black arrow key to select it, grab one of the corners, and MAKE SURE to hold down "option" and "shift" on your keyboard to make sure the dimensions are locked. People screw this up more than you know. That's why things look unintentionally stretched or too pixelated. Looking ok so far? Bonus points if you open Photoshop, open your picture, and adjust the brightness/contrast or add your own extra flare to the image via color or a filter. If you do this you will have to remember to re-save it as a png or jpeg to place it back into illustrator.