Hey Design Cutters!

Jo here. In today’s tutorial we’re going to be creating a summery garden party invite using a variety of resources from the TThe Gigantic Vector Elements Bundle. You’ll also get to sample a couple of items from the bundle as part of a special freebie pack.

We’ll be looking at how to build depth by subtly layering different vectors, textures and blending modes to create a warm, hazy design that’ll hopefully make you want to sit outside and smell the roses! We’ll also look at how to finish off an image with a soft, simple vignette.

Quick note: In this tutorial, the term “clipping” or “clipped layer” is used a few times. This means that the layer is only visible/applies to the layer directly below it. You can very quickly do this by holding ‘Alt’ down on your keyboard and clicking between the two layers. Here’s a quick demonstration.

Ok, let’s get started!

WHAT WE’RE CREATING:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Follow along with this tutorial: Download the freebies

Today’s freebie pack includes a wonderful spirograph vector from Ghostly Pixels, as well as a seamless vector pattern from Dreaming Lucy. Both of these resources are hand-crafted and really versatile.

Remember, this freebie is just a tiny sample taken from this huge bundle: The Gigantic Vector Elements Bundle at just $29 (91% Off). This is our biggest vector bundle yet, with thousands of elements from some of the best selling vector designers even at full price.

Enter your email below to download the freebie, so you can follow along with this tutorial easily.


Step 1:

Open up a new (A5) 2480px height x 1748px width document in Photoshop.

We’ll be working with a couple of extra resources for this tutorial, so let’s download these first:

Flower Background

2 Lil Owls Free Textures + Extras

Paste the floral background on to your canvas, scaling to fit and aligning the right side of the image to the right edge of the canvas. Having the space on the right hand side between the tip of the petal and the edge of the canvas gives the image a bit of room to ‘breathe’ from a composition perspective.

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Now we have this beautiful image to work from, let’s apply some rustic textures to give it an outdoorsy feel. To do this, go to the 2-lil-owls-textures-free folder you downloaded and paste 2LO Burnished 20 on to your canvas, scaling to fit:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Change the blend mode to Soft Light for some simple, but effective texture application!

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Step 2:

We’ve got the main base of the background set up, but we’re going to add a little more texture and some selective colour depth.

To do this, select 2LO Burnished 3 and paste to fit your canvas:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Set the blend mode to Multiply and drop the Opacity to 40%:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Create a layer mask and using the Gradient tool, create a Radial Gradient so that the centre of the mask is black. You can access the Mask layer directly by holding ‘Alt’ on your keyboard and selecting it in the layers panel.

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Now our background layers are ready, let’s keep things organised and put these together in a group called ‘Background’.

Step 3:

This bundle includes some great seamless pattern resources, so we’re going to use one now to create a Pattern Fill.

From the main gigantic-vector-elements-bundle navigate to: dreaming-lucy >72_vintage_seamless_patterns > PNG_300Dpi > Beige>Vintage_seamless_patterns-06.png and open in a new Photoshop window:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

We need to save this as a pattern to use on our main image. To do this, we’ll first need to reduce the image size to 300px square:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Then from the main menu bar, go to Edit > Define Pattern. You should get a pop up box similar to the image below. Keep the name as it is unless you particularly want to change it, and click ‘OK’:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Going back to our main working canvas, from the main menu bar select Layer > New Fill Layer > Pattern and you should see a pop up box similar to below:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

You can leave all the settings as default, then click ‘OK’.

You should then see the pattern appear, as the most recently saved pattern should show up as the default. If not, you can click the small triangle to the right of the pattern to see your pattern library, which is where it might be hiding ;) Again, you can leave the settings as default.

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

To complete the subtler effect we’re after, change the blend mode to Soft Light and reduce the Opacity to 85%:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Step 4:

To balance out some of the ‘flowery-ness’ we’ll include a rougher, but still natural-themed vector from Ember Studio.

From the main bundle pack, go to ember-studio > grunge-banners-and-boxes > wood-scratch.ai and select the highlighted design:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Copy and paste this on to your Photoshop canvas, rotating and scaling to fit as below:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Once you’re happy with the position, change the blend mode to Color Burn and reduce the Opacity to 35%. This keeps the image nicely balanced in colour and highlights the center of our canvas where the key information will be placed later in the design.

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Step 5:

To bring more attention to the center of our image, we’ll add another great resource from the current bundle. To grab it for your design, navigate to ghostly-pixels > Spyrograph-Illustrations > PNG-Format > Outlined > Spyrographics06-byGhostlyPixels. Scale and paste on to your canvas so it sits centrally and has a roughly 10mm gap at the top and bottom, and reduce the opacity to 85%:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

We’re going to use another resource from Ghostly Pixels to add a bit of texture to the Spyrograph via a layer mask.

Open the following in a new Photoshop window: ghostly-pixels > Wood-Texture > PNG-Format > WoodTexture-byGhostlyPixels-02.png

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Use the Magic Wand tool to select anywhere on the transparent part of the image, then press ‘Alt + I’ to invert the selection then copy:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Go back to your working window and create a layer mask on the Spyrograph layer. Press ‘Alt’ on your keyboard and click the Mask in the layers panel to access it directly. Then, paste the selection you just made from the Wood Texture image and position similar to the image below:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Click anywhere on the layers panel to go back to your working image and you should see the mask texture applied:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Finally for this step, create a clipped hue/saturation adjustment layer. Select ‘Colorize’ and bring the Lightness up to +100 to change the image colour to white:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Step 6:

Next up, we’re going to start adding some cute vector decorations, since there are plenty to choose from in this bundle :)

From the main bundle pack, navigate to tomodachi > vector birds and select a bird you’d like to feature on your design. I’ve gone for the one highlighted in the image below:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Copy and paste on to your Photoshop canvas so that it sits towards the upper right of the Spyrograph design. You may need to transform and rotate it a bit to get it sitting nicely. Once you’re happy with the position, change the blend mode to Hard Light:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Step 7:

Again from the tomodachi folder, open up the Loving Vectors document. Select the dotty ribbon to copy and paste on to your Photoshop canvas:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Paste on to your Photoshop canvas, scaling and rotating so that it sits diagonally along the top left corner:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

To make it stand out a bit more, we’re going to add a drop shadow and change it to a contrasting colour to the background.

For the drop shadow, double click the layer in the layers panel and apply the following settings:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Drop Shadow Settings:
Opacity: 30%
Angle: 150
Distance: 15px
Spread: 0%
Size: 25px

To change the colour, create a clipped hue/saturation adjustment layer with the following settings:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Hue/Saturation Settings:
Colourize: On
Hue: 125
Saturation: 50
Lightness: 0

Finally for this step, we’ll add a bit of texture to make it more in-keeping with the rest of the design.

Going back to the 2-lil-owls-textures-free folder you downloaded at the start, select 2LO Burnished 14 and position towards the upper left of your canvas so that a lighter area of the texture will cover the ribbon.

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Change the blend mode to Multiply and reduce the Opacity to 35%. Then, clip the texture layer to the hue/saturation layer below to see it applied only to the ribbon graphic:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

To keep things tidy, you might want to group these layers together and name the folder “Top Left Ribbon”.

Step 8:

We’re continuing with the decorative vectors, this time using the following (rather appropriate) resource: elena-pimonova > Garden-Set

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Copy and paste the wellington boots on to your Photoshop canvas. Reduce the Opacity to 80%, then scale and position so that they sit in the lower right corner similar to the image below:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

We’ll add a clipped hue/saturation adjustment layer to make the boots match the colour of the ribbon in the opposite corner as closely as possible. This creates a nice balance in the image since the boots also have a spotted pattern!

Create the clipped hue/saturation layer with the following settings:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Hue/Saturation Settings:
Colourize: On
Hue: 125
Saturation: 50
Lightness: +75

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Step 9:

We’re delving further in to this bundle now for some more plant-like decorative elements. For the next set of resources you’ll need to navigate to make-media-co > Vector_Megapack > Vector_Curls&Banners2_Master.ai and locate the following element:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Note: Keep this file open, as we’ll be using more elements from it later in the tutorial…

Copy and paste this on to your Photoshop canvas, and position similarly to the image below:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Reduce the opacity to 50% and we’ll add a clipped hue/saturation adjustment layer with the following settings:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Hue/Saturation Settings:
Colourize: On
Hue: 125
Saturation: 50
Lightness: +75

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Duplicate the vector image and clipped hue/saturation layer, changing the blend mode of the vector layer to Screen and reducing the Opacity to 45%.

Flip the image horizontally and place towards the bottom left of the image similar to below:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Step 10:

So far, our invite is taking good shape. However, it still feels like it’s lacking some, er, “garden-ness”. That’s where our next set of vectors come to the rescue!

In the layers panel, go back down to your Pattern Fill layer, and create a new group below it called “Flower Vectors”. We’ll be creating our layers within this group during this step.

To locate the vector elements we’ll be using, some of the accompanying Kelly Jane Creative freebies. If you’ve bought the bundle, you can find the full range by navigating to kelly-jane-creative > Kelly Jane Creative Petal Boutique Flowers 2

From there, you can take your pick from the PNG files to use in your design. If you want to follow along exactly, these are the individual elements used in the tutorial:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Once you’re happy with the placement of your floral vectors, we’ll finish off this step by adding a wreath in the background for some extra depth. From the same folder, paste Kelly Jane Creative flowers 42.png on to your Photoshop canvas, transforming and positioning similar to below so that the flowers sit outside of the Spyrograph design:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Change the blend mode to Screen and reduce the Opacity to 35%:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

We’ll add just a bit of extra warmth to this layer using 2LO Burnished 14 which you can duplicate from the “Top Left Ribbon” group and position so that it fills the canvas:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Change the blend mode to Soft Light and clip it to the wreath layer below:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Step 11:

Going back to working at the top of the layers panel, we’ll add a bit more texture to our design. Navigate to ghostly-pixels > Line-Textures > PNG-Format > LineTexture01-byGhostlyPixels and paste it on to your Photoshop canvas, scaling to fit:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Change the blend mode to Screen and reduce the Opacity to 70%:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Step 12:

We now need to prepare a few bits before adding text. To help it stand out, let’s use a banner for the invite headline.

From the Vector_Curls&Banners2_Master.ai you have open from earlier, locate the highlighted banner (we’ll use the highlighted key and heart shortly):

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Paste on to your Photoshop canvas, rotating and scaling so it fits as below:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

To make it stand out a little more, we’ll add a Drop Shadow with the following settings:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Drop Shadow Settings:
Opacity: 30%
Angle: 150
Distance: 15px
Spread: 0%
Size: 25px

We’ll now add a clipped hue/saturation adjustment layer so it matches some the turquoise/green shades we already have as accent colours.

Here are the settings you’ll need to do this:

Hue/Saturation Settings:
Colourize: On
Hue: 125
Saturation: 50
Lightness: +75

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Next up, copy and paste the highlighted heart from the Vector_Curls&Banners2_Master.ai file and paste on to your canvas. Duplicate the layer, flip horizontally then position the two hearts either side of the banner on the first fold, like below:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Once you’re happy with the position, merge the two layers and apply a clipped hue/saturation adjustment layer with Colorize on, and the lightness taken up to +100.

Then, duplicate the 2LO Burnished 14 copy layer from the “Vector Flowers” group and clip to the adjustment layer. This takes the edge off the whiteness:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Note: If you’re using Photoshop CS6 or above, you can apply clipped layers to groups. In which case, you can group the hearts layers instead of merge them to apply the clipped effects.

Step 13:

We’ve got a bit of space above the banner which we can fill with an image, rather than text. From the Vector_Curls&Banners2_Master.ai copy and paste the highlighted key images on to your canvas. Transform and rotate so that it’s placed horizontally like so:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

We’ll apply a clipped hue/saturation layer with the following settings to give it a soft, off-white colour similar to the hearts:

Hue/Saturation Settings:
Colourize: On
Hue: 47
Saturation: 75
Lightness: +90

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Step 14:

Now the vector decorations are ready, we can add some text.

Select a fun, friendly font to type “You’re invited to a Garden Party!” in a size that has it nicely fill the width of the banner, with #ffffff as the colour. I’ve gone for Ride My Bike Serif Pro Bold in this instance.

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

We want the text to follow the curve of the banner, which we’ll do with the Warp Text tool.

In the pop up box that appears, select ‘Arc’ as the style and make sure the ‘horizontal’ option is checked.

Move the Bend percentage up until the curve of the text matches the banner. This may vary depending on the font you use, but it should be around 6% (nothing huge):

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Once you’re happy with the curve, you might need to nudge the text up or down slightly to get it sitting nice and centrally within the banner:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Step 15:

For the next step we’ll add the rest of the text so people know when to turn up and where :)

Using a combination of the text used in the heading for the date, and a simple sans-serif font for the time and venue, type a date, time and venue:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

As it stands, the text is a little hard to read. We’ll add a hazy drop shadow to help it ‘pop’ a bit more:

Drop Shadow Settings:
Colour: #C42B2A
Opacity: 92%
Angle: 150
Distance: 0px
Spread: 5%
Size: 160px

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Step 16:

We’re entering the finishing touches now, and to give a sunny, slightly vintage look to the invite we’ll add a light leak effect from this awesome freebie pack from our buddy Chris Spooner:

Light Leak Texture Pack

Select 2.jpg from the pack, scaling and rotating to fit the canvas as below:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Set the blend mode to Screen and drop the Opacity to 50% to complete the effect:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Step 17:

For the final step, we’re going to add a soft vignette to the image so the focus is on the centre of the design.

Group all the layers together and create a duplicate group. Hide the original group and then merge the duplicate to create one flat layer.

Create a duplicate of the flattened layer and add a Layer Mask. Using the Elliptical Marquee tool, draw a large elipses where you’d like the vignette effect to be applied. With the selection still active, go to the main menu and navigate to Select > Modify > Feather so we have a soft, gradual fade. Put a large number like 100px in the pop up box that appears:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

Fill the selection with #00000 then change the blend mode to Multiply to see the full effect:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

We’ll finish off by dropping the opacity for a softer effect:

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

And we’re done!

Vector Garden Party Invite Tutorial

I really hope you enjoyed doing this tutorial and are left feeling nice and summery as well as inspired to create some of your own awesome designs now you have a taste of what’s available in the current deal.

If you’ve got any comments or questions, do leave them below and I’ll keep an eye out. Also, feel free to get in touch @rockportraits

Remember to share your designs on the Facebook page as we’d love to see which vectors from the thousands available you pick and choose to suit your own creative style :)

Hopefully this tutorial showed you just some of the ways you can use the thousands of elements in our current vector bundle. With such a variety of top quality resources you really do have endless possibilities for what you can use them for, you can still get this bundle for a whopping 91% off this week. Grab it below, while you still can:

The Gigantic Vector Elements Bundle (91% Discount, for the next few days only).