Lately, I have been using gradient mesh vector backgrounds more often. They are much easier to control and manipulate than raster type images. I have quite created a few of them in my design arsenal and I would like to share five of them today.

Gradient mesh is a great and easy to use Adobe Illustrator tool that can give vector realism to your artwork. It might take a little practice for novice Illustrator users but it’s all worth it. There are a lot of dedicated tutorials on this tool all over the Web. You won’t have trouble finding good ones if you really want to learn how to use it. I think I touched a little about Illustrator gradient mesh tool in one of my tutorials here in designfreebies.org. You may want to check our “Vector Tutorial: Creating Your Own Vector iPhone” to learn a few things about gradient mesh tool.

So here they are, five free soft vector gradient mesh backgrounds. Download links are provided further down. Two types of vector files are provided for you to choose from, Adobe Illustrator ai (CS4) and EPS (CS up). Enjoy.

Download links:
Free Soft Vector Gradient Mesh Backgrounds (Adobe Illustrator ai) – 3.1MB
Free Soft Vector Gradient Mesh Backgrounds (EPS) – 13MB

You don’t have to be a baby boomer to enjoy and appreciate retro design of the good old days. Although retro design is often considered as being outdated, looking old and dull, there’s something unique and nostalgic about it that draws attention, arise feelings, awake memories and makes us feel attached to it.

So if you’re looking to impress your audience or simply want to surprise them with some vintage retro designs, here are some of the funkiest retro backgrounds and patterns that you can use for free. This collection is a mixture of Photoshop patterns, tile and seamless patterns, background images, vector and raster types. Enjoy!

1. 40 Retro Backgrounds and Patterns from Backgroundlabs

2. 158 Free Tiled Retro Patterns

3. Warm Autumn Retro Patterns (large 1024  x 1024 pixels)

4. Warm Autumn Retro Patterns Part 2 (large 1024 x 1024 pixels)

5. 9 Retro Grunge Wallpaper Patterns (740 x 740px)

6. Grungy Retro Wavy Photoshop Patterns (740 x 740px)

7. 78 Retro Patterns (square patterns or 150 and 100 pixels)

8. 12 Vintage/Retro Photoshop Patterns

9. Retro Lights Hi-resolution Patterns (3888 x 2592 px)

10. 10 big textures – retro show

11. Flower Power Retro Patterns

12. All Seamless Vector and Pixel Retro Patterns from Patternhead.com

13. Back to the 70′s! set of 20 RETRO patterns

14. Retro Tiles Background Vector

15. Retro disco Background Vector

Easter is next Sunday. Easter or Resurrection Sunday is a very important day for christians to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. The origin of the English name “Easter” is not certain, as well as other aspects surrounding Easter observance such as eggs and bunnies, which has been the symbols of Easter adopted by various cultures. Although officially and traditionally, Easter’s colors are just white and gold, Easter has been transformed into a colorful event represented by brightly painted easter eggs, colorful ribbons on colored baskets, and spring. A colorful Easter that should be the most joyful time of celebration of the church year. Celebrated against the shadows and darkness of Lent and Holy Week, this season truly represents the living expression of the hope that God has brought into the world through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

So If you are still searching for some easter vector cliparts for your design, you’re on the right track. Here’s our ultimate collection of free easter vector graphics containing over 1,000 cliparts. Happy Easter everyone!

1. 200+ Easter Vector Clipart Mega Collection from Garcya.us

2. Free Easter Vectors from DryIcons

3. Pierce Easter Clipart Collection

4. Free Vector and Pixel Repeat Patterns – Easter Theme Set 1

5. Vector Eggs by PajkaBajka

6. Easter Vector Doodle by Contadgreen

7. 300+ Easter Vector Clipart Mega Collection

8. Easter Eggs Vector from freevectorstock.com

9. Easter Vector Clipart Eggs

10. Vector Easter Egg Collection from Vectorilla

Hello everyone. Unlike other design blogs that always gather other designers’ works, round them up and blog about it, in as much as I can, designfreebies would like to offer you a wide variety of unique and original design resources like wallpapers, free vectors and images, tutorials, and many others.

So after two consecutive round-up blog posts, today I’m featuring some special vector badges that I did few years ago for a product badge design. These are just extra design studies I found lying around in my archive so I thought about sharing it and make it useful for someone else looking for design ideas for badge type logos and labels.

These are just ten designs for now. I hope I could find time to do more next time. Preview images of all badges are shown below. Download link for the archived file containing both Adobe Illustrator ai (CS4) and EPS files are provided further down. Enjoy.

Download link:
Free Vector Badges for Logos and Labels (ai and EPS) – 1.17MB

It’s been a long while since I last shared my vector t-shirt designs last year. And while searching my archive for some vector graphics, I came across these rare and beautiful vector t-shirt designs of eastern mystic and oriental martial arts that we did for a clothing line long time ago. So allow me to share these with you and hopefully some of you will find these vector t-shirt designs interesting and useful.

Again, these are all vector graphics that you can easily modify, play around and customize to your own design preferences. These can be used for many other design projects and not just t-shirt designs.

If you have missed our other t-shirt design freebies and are really looking for more t-shirt designs, please check our related posts below for more free vector t-shirt designs.

Preview images of the designs are shown below. Download links are provided further down. Enjoy

Download links:
Free Vector T-shirt Designs: Eastern Mystic and Oriental Martial Arts (EPS) – 7.14MB
Free Vector T-shirt Designs: Eastern Mystic and Oriental Martial Arts (ai) – 5.26MB

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: (Ecclesiastes 3:1, ESV).

This seasonal thing is very timely as we approach near the end of winter season, and enter a new cycle of earth’s seasons. It always remind us that God appointed times and seasons for everything, in every place, circumstances, and events in our lives. We may be sad one time and happy afterward. We may be living easily and conveniently this time but some difficult matter gets in our way the next time around. But in every situation, always remember that God has it all under control. We may not see the whole picture for now, but in time we will see all things fall into place according to His purpose.

And as we talk about seasons, here are two sets of four seasonal sale announcement posters all in vector formats. Good thing about these designs is that you can use these not just for sale posters but for all posters or even other designs like brochures, flyers, web, etc. that needs seasonal theme concept.

The download links provided below comes in two vector formats, EPS and ai (Illustrator CS4). Download and use these vector graphics for all your design needs without any usage restrictions (for personal or commercial use). Enjoy!

Download links:
Free Vectors: Four Seasons Sale Announcement Posters (EPS format) – 1.66MB
Free Vectors: Four Seasons Sale Announcement Posters (ai format) – 1.0MB

Instead of giving you a list of resources where you can find free vector Valentine graphics, I’m giving away this set of beautiful vector hearts, flowers and butterflies. These vector graphics are just few but I hope you’ll find them useful to create your own Valentine greeting cards, posters, banners, and other Valentine inspired design materials. These are also perfect to use in combination with our previous post of “400+ Free Valentine Textures and Backgrounds“.

This vector set comes in two different vector file formats, vector EPS (Illustrator 10) and Adobe Illustrator ai (CS4). Use them all freely for personal or commercial use. Happy Valentines day everyone. Enjoy!

Vector Hearts

Download link:
Free Vector Hearts (EPS and Illustrator ai) – 992KB

Mirror link:
Free Vector Hearts (EPS and Illustrator ai) – 992KB

Vector Flowers and Butterflies

Download link:
Free Vector Flowers and Butterflies – 9.3MB

Mirror link:
Free Vector Flowers and Butterflies – 9.3MB

While on vacation this holiday season, I was able to do some pending works and random design freebies to share in this blog. While doodling around, I came up with some nice wavy lines in Adobe Illustrator using the “blend” tool to blend paths.

Creating these wavy lines is easy. You simply create two wavy lines using the “Pen” tool. Define the blend options by going to Object > Blend > Blend Options and select “Specified Steps” for spacing and type the number of steps you want your two wavy lines to create. After that, select both lines and click Object > Blend > Make. That’s it. You now have your own abstract wavy lines. If you need a more detailed step by step tutorial about this, let me know so I can feature one.

The background was created using Adobe Illustrator’s mesh tool to blend and create some nice colorful backgrounds. I have provided two Adobe Illustrator ai version files, CS2 and CS4. I didn’t do any EPS file this time as EPS files are way too huge for these vector graphics. I am providing large JPG files (2400 x 1855 pixels)  instead for those who don’t have Adobe Illustrator and can’t open the ai files.

Preview images of all 7 vector backgrounds are shown below. Download links for the 3 set of files are provided way down after the preview images. Download and enjoy.

Download links:
Colorful Abstract Vector Bacgrounds with Wavy Lines – CS4 ai
Colorful Abstract Vector Bacgrounds with Wavy Lines – CS2 ai
Colorful Abstract Vector Bacgrounds with Wavy Lines – JPG

I should have shared this earlier. Because I know most people have already printed or produced their 2010 calendar and should have been distributing them by now. But I would like to share this anyway just in case some of you are still looking for templates or something that you can use to do your own personalize 2010 desk calendar.

What we have here is a desk calendar measuring 15 cm by 15 cm square. It has 24 pages for the 12 months (2 pages per month, front and back) and 2 pages for the cover (front and back). I made two separate files, one for the cover and another for the inside monthly calendar pages. The monthly calendar Illustrator file is neatly layered with one layer for each month which you can just toggle on and off to generate the monthly calendar instead of having separate files for each month.

I made this generic 2010 desk calendar with dummy text and graphics (vector product images) which you can easily replace with your own content. You will also notice the tiger graphic element I included in the design corresponding to the year of the tiger come 2010 according to chinese lunar horoscope. I just figured some of you might like the year of the tiger theme so I included some tiger design on it. But still, the design is so generic that you can transform it to something different as you wish. Please find the download links provided below in two file formats, Adobe Illustrator ai (CS4) and EPS (Illustrator 10 up).

Cover

Sample monthly calendar pages

Download Links:

Mediafire
2010 Desk Calendar Illustrator Template (ai format) – 3.99MB
2010 Desk Calendar Illustrator Template (EPS format) – 3.84MB

4shared
2010 Desk Calendar Illustrator Template (ai format) – 3.99MB
2010 Desk Calendar Illustrator Template (EPS format) – 3.84MB

It seems like ages since I last shared a vector tutorial here. The last one was “Vector Tutorial: Creating Your Own Vector iPhone“, and with the quite busy schedule I’ve had these past few months I haven’t got much time to do another lengthy tutorial until this time. Luckily, I was able to find time to do one. Probably my last tutorial for the year. So I hope you’ll be able to get along with this one.

It’s December, and Christmas Season is in the air, so there’s nothing more appropriate than to show you how to create some shiny vector Christmas balls using Adobe Illustrator (CS4). So lets get it on.

Here’s a preview first of the Christmas balls that we will do with this tutorial.

Part 1 – The Christmas Ball

Step 1: Creating the basic shape

The Christmas ball shape consists of just two basic shapes, circle for the body and a small rectangle for the neck.

(1) Overlap both shapes as seen above.

(2) Open the “Pathfinder palette” and use the “Unite” tool to combine the two shapes into one.

(3) Cut the shape exactly in the middle to leave just one-half of the shape. To do that, you can overlap a rectangle big enough to cover half of the shape and use the “Minus Front” from the pathfinder palette (icon next to unite tool).

Step 2: Creating the 3D ball

Fill the whole shape with white and stroke to none. After that, go to Effect > 3D > Revolve. Set the parameters as shown in the 3D dialog box image below.

To set the “shading color” click “More Options” to reveal the additional options. Use “Custom” as the Shading Color and set the color to red (R-255, G-0, B-0). Click “Ok” to apply the 3D settings and produce the 3D ball shown below.

Step 3: Adding shade and highlights

Now let’s add some shade and highlights to our dull looking 3D ball. They consist of three shapes, one cresent moon shaped shade and two highlights in circle and droplet shape as shown in the image below.

After creating the 3 shapes, apply the following effects and settings to each of them.

Shade: Fill with “Gradient” using “Fade to black” with settings as shown below. After filling with gradient, apply “Gaussian blur” effect (Effect > Blur > Gaussian Blur) with radius set to “20″. Then set the “Transparency” (Window > Transparency) to “Multiply” with “70%” opacity.

Highlight 1: Select the circle shaped hightlight 1 and apply gradient fill using also “fafe to black” with similar settings shown below. Apply the same “Gaussian Blur” with radius set to 20. Set transparency to “Color Dodge” with 100% opacity.

Highlight 2: The second highlight is similar to the first in gradient fill settings and transparency (color dodge) but without the Gaussian blur effect.

So there you go. We have completed the first part of our tutorial where you should already have one shiny red ball similar to the image shown below.

Part 2 – The Crown

Step 1: Creating the crown shape

(1) Create a comb-liked shape similar to the one shown below. Add a middle node on top of the shape using the “Add anchor point tool” from the “Pen tool” then copy the shape.

(2) Move the node up a bit using the “Direct Selection tool” (white filled arrow from the toolbar) to create a similar curve shown below.

(3) Now paste the previously copied shape on front and do the same node shifting but this time moving it down to create a similar curve.

Applying color, shades and highlights to the crown are done in five easy steps shown below.

(1) Fill the bigger crown shape with R-187, G-135, B-50, then move inside just a little bit the two sides of the smaller crown shape on front (using direct selection tool on nodes to be moved).

(2) Select the front crown shape and copy it first (for the shadow), then apply “Fade to black” gradient again using settings shown above. Apply Gaussian blur with 2.0 radius and transparency set to 100% “screen”.

(3) Now paste the copied object at the back, fill it with black and apply Gaussian Blur with 2.0 radius and set transparency to “Multiply”.

(4) For the crown shade on top, create an oval shaped object on top, fill it again with “Fade to black” gradient with similar settings as seen on the 4th image above and set the transparency to 100% “Multiply”.

(5) Finally, create an irregularly shaped object (an oval shape will do) as our final crown highlight on the top rightmost part of the crown. Fill it with white and apply Gaussian blur with 5.0 radius.

Step 2: Adding the string hook and string

(1) Create two circles then subtract the inner from the outer circle using the “minus front tool” from the pathfinder palette to create a donut shaped object.

(2) Create a bigger circle similar to the image shown above, then subtract it again from the donut shaped object.

(3) Curve both ends of the hook by editing the nodes using the “direct selection tool” (white arrow on the toolbar).

(4) Fill the object with linear gradient with colors from dark (R-96, G-57, B-19) to light (R-187, G-135, B-50).

Next thing is to add a string on the hook. You simply create two oval shape loops and shape the string using the “Pen tool”. Fill all objects with gradient from ochre (R-187, G-135, B-50) to yellow (R-249, G-237, B-50) with angle set to 24 degrees and slider location at 80% near yellow.

Putting it all together, at this point, our Christmas ball is almost done. We just need to add some shadow later on.

Part 3 – Adding shadow, changing colors and decorative patterns

Step 1: Adding shadow

Adding shadow is very simple. I have covered much about this in past vector tutorials. So quickly, you just need to create an oval underneath the Christmas ball. Position it somewhere on the left against the light’s direction.

Fill the shape with “Radial Gradient” from black to white “Aspect Ratio” set to 50%. After that, apply Gaussian blur with 20 pixel radius.

Step 2: Changing Colors

Changing our Christmas ball color is easy. Select the 3D ball object, then go to “Window > Appearance” to open the “Appearance Palette”. From the “Apperance Palette”, click “3D Revolve” to open again the 3D dialog menu.

With the 3D dialog menu open, select “More options” button to display additional options. Click the “Shading Color” current color tab (red in our example). The “Color Picker” dialog menu will open where you can now mix and set your new color. Click “ok” for both the color picker and 3D revolve dialog box to apply the new color.

We can try “green” this time.

Step 3: Adding decorative patterns

Let’s add some snow flake pattern to compliment our Christmas theme and add a variety of Christmas balls to our collection. You can get your free snow flake vector graphics from our previous post, “Free Vectors: Early Winter Snow Flakes“.

First, you need to copy your vector pattern and convert it to symbol. Open the “Symbol” palette by simply going to “Window > Symbol”. Drag your pattern to the symbol palette to convert it to symbol.

Now select the 3D Christmas ball and open the 3D dialog box similar to what we did while changing color. In the 3D dialog box, click the “Map Art” button.

In the “Map Art” dialog box, you basically need to do 3 things. First, select the surface where you will apply the pattern to. In our case, it’s surface number 2. Then select the symbol you’d like to use, in our example, it’s the snow flake symbol. Then lastly, turn on the “preview” option so you can see how your pattern is positioned in your surface. You can adjust the pattern’s position and size inside the Map Art dialog box. Clik “ok” when done to apply.

And here’s our new Christmas ball with some cool snow flake patterns.

That’s it. Whew!

Finally, once more, here’s the collection of some colored and patterned vector Christmas ball that we did for this tutorial. Download link for the source Adobe Illustrator file after the break.