Create One of a Kind Gift Tags with Procreate

1. Intro: I love the holidays, from baking our family's favorite Christmas cookies, decorating the tree while watching our favorite Christmas movie. Taking a walk outside in the neighborhood and looking at all the pretty lights on the houses. I personally love wrapping the Christmas presents. I know a lot of people don't like wrapping gifts, but that's actually something I like to do. Hi, my name's Isabelle. I'm a graphic designer and illustrator, and in this class, I'll show you my way to create some original gift tags that you can use to decorate your presents this year. We'll be combining analog and digital techniques to create our gift tags. First we will be using Procreate to design our gift tags, and then we'll print them, cut them out, and decorate them. I'll be using stuff I find in my craft room like pretty twine, glitter glue, a metallic pen, some washi tape. You can use whatever you have lying around. Admit it, you probably have a stash of materials lying around, just like I do. I'll be showing you some gift tags to make for Christmas because it's the holiday time right now. But you can definitely use the same techniques and create gift tags for thank you gifts, birthday presents, whatever the occasion. I hope you'll join me in this fun class, and I'll see you in the next lesson, where I'll explain to you the materials and supplies that you'll be needing. 2. Supplies & Resources: In this lesson, I'll be showing you the materials that you'll need to create these gift tags. What you'll need for this class is an iPad, an Apple pencil or a compatible stylus, the Procreate app or another drawing app of your choice, a printer, some card stock, scissors, and some decorating items like glitter, twine, washi tape, glitter tape, foil, puffy paint, anything that you can find that you might want to use. I've also created some resources for you to download. I've created for you a prompt list to help you jumpstart your ideas for your gift tag designs. I'm also sharing my Procreate color palette that I use for my own gift tags. I've created two procreate brush stamps of tag shapes that you can use for your project. You can find the link to download these resources in the class description. In the next lesson, we'll go and search of inspiration. 3. Finding Inspiration: [MUSIC] Since it's the holiday season right now, inspiration is all around us. All you need to do is go to the shopping center, take a walk in your neighborhood at night, go to an outdoor Christmas market. Those are awesome. If there's no inspiration to be found outside, you can always set up your best friend, Google, and search Christmas doodles, holiday doodles, or winter doodles. You can also turn to photography websites like iStockPhoto or Unsplash, and search for holiday photos or Christmas photos. After going in search of all that inspiration, now you can sit down at your desk with a pen and paper and start jotting down all the ideas that pop into your mind. One thing to be careful when we're doing all these searches online is to really just get inspired by what we see and not actually copy what the other artists have done. Just get inspired by either the way they use linework or the way they do their shading, or the shapes that they create, or the feel, the mood that they have in their illustrations. You can get inspired by a lot of little different things and then just bring them all together in your own design. In the next lesson, we'll be sketching out our tags. [MUSIC] 4. Sketching Out Your Design: [MUSIC] Now that we have plenty of ideas to work with, let's start sketching out our designs. Let's start by creating our canvas. Tap the plus in the upper right-hand corner, and then the little plus inside the black box to create your custom-size canvas. I'm going to change the unit to inches because I'm going to be printing my tags on a letter-size cardstock, which is eight and a half by 11 inches. I'm going to leave the DPI to 300 because I want a high-quality print and I'm going to leave the color profile to RGB. I want to create a grid in order to be able to divide my paper into six equal parts. In order to do that, I'm going to click on the little wrench icon in the top left-hand corner. Tap "Canvas" and then I'm going to turn on the drawing guides, then select "Edit Drawing Guide". Change your unit of measure to inches and in the grid size box, tap on the number and change it to 0.9. That's obviously if you're using the same size canvas as I am. This will roughly divide your paper into 12 squares across. Count six squares from the top and draw a line at the center. Next divide it into three by counting four squares from the left, making a line down, count another four squares and draw another line. Your canvas should now be divided into six equal parts. Open up your Layers panel and add a layer above your grid layer by tapping the plus sign. Rename your bottom layer by tapping on it and select "Rename". I'm going to name it grid. I'm also going to name my new layer tag sketch 1. You can install the stamp brushes from the downloaded resources by simply tapping on it. Choose one of the brushes and tap on your canvas to stamp the tag shape. Repeat the same thing with the other tag for a total of six tags. I did three of each, but the number is up to you. If you need to undo something, all you need to do is tap once with two fingers on your screen or use the little back arrow that's on the slider in the left-hand side. One of the new functions, since the 5.2 update, is found in the Brush Library. If you scroll all the way up to the top, you now have a folder called Recent, and this is where you'll find the most recent brushes that you've used. Now let's add a layer above our tag shape and start sketching out some of our designs. You can refer back to the prompt list that you wrote down or to the one that I supplied with the resources. When sketching out your illustrations, keep in mind to leave a space either on the side of the tag or at the bottom, so that you can write a person's name. [MUSIC] I need to resize my tree because I didn't leave enough room for a name. If you need to resize something, use the selection tool that's the little S shape up in the top left-hand corner. Make sure that it's on freehand so that you can draw around the item. Once you've done that, you can tap on the arrow in the top left-hand corner, and make sure that your uniform is selected. Now you can resize it and it will keep the same proportions. [MUSIC] Here are my sketches for my first six tags. I'm going to sketch out six more tags. I'm going to add a layer above this one and I'm going to name it tag sketch 2. That way I only have the sketches of my designs on that layer and I don't have to re-stamp the tag shapes because they were on their own separate layer. Don't forget to turn off the visibility of tag sketch 1 layer. Through the magic of editing, I've quickly finished my second set of sketches, but you'll notice that there's one tag that I didn't sketch anything out and that's because I want to create a plaid pattern. I'm just going to write plaid here in the corner, so I don't forget. Now that we're done sketching out our designs, let's move on to the next lesson, where we will create our color palette and add a base color to our tags. [MUSIC] 5. Choosing a Color Palette & Coloring the Base: [MUSIC] Now's the time to choose your color palette. You can use the one that I supplied in the resources, or you can decide to create your own. I suggest matching your tags to your wrapping paper. But if you're somebody like me who likes to use neutral colored wrapping papers like black and whites and with just a little pop of color or craft paper, then go nuts with your tag. This is where you can make it really, really fun. For these tags, I decided to do a little twist on traditional colors by using red, greens, and gold, and I added some blues in there. I just played with different shades. My reds are ranging from pink to a dark medium tone red that is more poppy than Santa red, and my green is more in the mint green and sage tones. I have a navy blue and light denim color and a golden yellow. I've even added some blue-greens. Here's the color palette I've created for you. You can find it in the class resource downloads, and I will show you how to import it. Tap the little plus on the upper right-hand corner, select New From File, navigate to where you saved your class resources, and just tap on the color palette. It will automatically import it to Procreate. Since the last update, you can now name your colors by simply tapping on them. Another thing that's new since the update is whenever you select the color in a palette, that palette now becomes your default palette. Just keep that in mind if you're picking colors from multiple palettes when you're working. You can also pull out your default palette for permanent access. If you already have a color palette that you enjoy and you have the hex codes, you can create your palette by entering the hex codes. Simply tap on the empty square to add it to your palette. If you want to remove a color swatch from your color palette, you just have to hold down on the color block and a little trash can will appear. You can also choose your colors from a photo, and I'll show you very quickly how to do that. Tap the wrench icon in the top left-hand corner, select Add, then select Insert a Photo. In order to create a new palette, open up your palettes by tapping on the color circle, tap the Plus, and then create new palette. You would do the same process if you wanted to create a palette from hex codes that you already have. Now for the photo. With your finger on the screen, just hold down, you're going to see a circle that has two colors. The bottom color is the color that's in your color picker right now. In the top half of the circle is the color that you're now picking. Move your finger around and select the color that you want. Once you've done that, just tap on one of the empty squares in your palette. Keep doing that until you have a color palette that you're happy with. [MUSIC] Don't forget to name your palette. If you tap on the three dots on the top of your color palette, you have a few choices. You can either share your palette. That's how I shared my color palette with you. You can duplicate your color palette, or you can delete your color palette. We're going to start by adding color to the base of our tags. First, we need to do something on our sketch layer. Select your layer that has your sketch. Tap on the little n, that's going to open up your blend modes and opacity options. Set the blend mode to multiply and bring down your opacity to about 50 percent. Select your grid layer and tap the plus. This will add a layer just above it, which is below our sketch. We want to keep the sketch layer always at the top. I decided to use three colors for my base, so I'm going to select my first color. I'll be using mint green. Another thing that is new to the brush folder since the last update is that you can now save a brush size. That is a total game changer, my friends. It's so practical. Play with your slider until you get the brush size that you want to work with, and then up in the corner you'll see a little plus. Just tap on it, and that will add a bar that will stay permanently in your slider. Your brush size is now memorized. When you want to go back to that brush size, all you need to do is tap on the line and it will automatically give you that size. Go ahead and choose your favorite brush and let's color the base of our tags [MUSIC]. Keep in mind that we'll be cutting out these tags with a pair of scissors. So any texture that you would have on the outside edges is going to disappear. [MUSIC] I'm done coloring my first six tag bases, and I'm going to keep these same colors for my next six tags. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to duplicate this layer. In order to do that, select the layer with your tag-based colors and swipe it to the left, select Duplicate. I'm going to move the duplicated layer just below Sketch 2. Now that we've added the base color to our tags, let's move on to coloring our designs. [MUSIC] 6. Coloring Your Design Using Layers: [MUSIC] In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to color your designs using layers. Working with layers is a way to keep your designs modifiable. It's also called working in a non-destructive way. If you're interested in learning more about working in a non-destructive way, I go in depth in my class called Procreate Basics: Creating Fun and Easy Stickers. Now that we have the base color for our tags, let's move on to actually coloring our illustration. We'll be using multiple layers in this project. In order to stay organized, we should probably rename our layer. Since we'll be using layers to color our illustration, this will actually give us more leeway if we want to change things without having to redraw or recolor everything. We don't want to draw directly on our base color layer, so we'll be adding a layer just above it. I'm going to start by coloring my mistletoe. I'm going to select the dark blue-green color because the base of my tag has been done with the light blue-green color and if I use the sage green, it has some brown undertones and it just looks a little off, so I'm going to keep it in the blue family. I need to bring my brush size down to about 15 percent and I'm going to save that size because I know I'm going to be using it multiple times across my illustrations. [MUSIC] If you have anything drawn at the top of your tag and you decide to punch a hole to attach a ribbon, obviously there will now be a hole through your illustration. So you might want to keep that in mind when you're deciding what to draw. Now that I've drawn all the mistletoe leaves, I want to add some of the little mistletoe berries. I want to keep the option open if I ever want to change the color and I don't want to have to erase some of the leaves to do that, so I'm going to draw the berries on a separate layer. Open up your layers panel, tap the plus, and add a layer above. Let's move on to our Christmas tree. I'm going to go back to the first layer where I drew the mistletoe leaves. I'm going to draw the Christmas tree on this layer. You can basically draw an element from each tag on that first layer as long as they're not touching each other. For my tree, I decided to go with a non-conventional color. I'm choosing to use the denim, so my tree is going to be a dark blue. [MUSIC] Now that my tree is colored in, I want to add some details on my tree. So I'm going to select my white color. I'm going to create a third brush size for all the small details in my illustrations. I'm going to drop the size down to about five percent, and I'm going to save that size. [MUSIC] I'm going to select my base tag color layer and tap on the plus to add a layer above it, and at the same time that places this new layer below the tree color layer. Grab the brown and draw a tree trunk behind that tree. I'm now going to add the little stars and dots and little snowflakes on a new layer, and I'm going to put this layer above everything else. As long as none of these little elements are touching, I can put them all on the same layer. Here's a quick tip for you. If you need to erase and you're using a textured brush to color, just do a long hold on your eraser icon and it will automatically switch to the brush that you're using. That way you can now erase with the same texture that you were coloring your with. [MUSIC] Now on to the Christmas lights. I'm going to go back to my main color layer, so that's the layer with the Christmas tree and the mistletoe leaves, and I'm going to draw the light wire and light sockets of the Christmas lights. I'm going to select by midnight blue, which looks almost black. Next on a layer above, so the one with the mistletoe berries. I'm going to draw my colored light bulbs using red, yellow, mid blue, and light pink. [MUSIC] You could definitely leave it like this, but I'm going to add a glow behind the lights to make it look as if they're actually turned on and glowing. Tap the plus to add a layer. We want this layer to be below the light bulbs, so hold the layer and drag it underneath. I'm going to use a brush that's native to Procreate. It's in the airbrush section all the way at the bottom. I'm going to select the soft small airbrush and set it to a size of about 30 percent. I'm going to use the same color as the light and with the airbrush, I'm just going to create a dot underneath the light. Open up the layers panel and tap the N, change the blend mode to give it that glowing effect. Play around with all the blend modes and find the one that you like. I'm going to use the screen mode and I'm going to drop the opacity down. I'm going to keep coloring my designs and we'll come back once all of these are done. [MUSIC] I'm going to show you a neat little trick. I want to turn this candy stick into a candy cane, so I'm going to take two fingers and swipe right on the layer that has the candy cane. This will turn on the Alpha Lock function. You could also tap on the layer and select it from the list. Just keep in mind that when you're using the Alpha Lock, this is actually a destructive way to work. For example, if you need to erase the white lines, it would actually erase the red underneath. Sometimes it's a great little shortcut if it's for a symbol modification. Now that all my elements are finished and colored, I want to group everything from my first set of tags. I'm going to select my tag sketches and then quickly swipe right on all the layers that I want to group together. Once those are selected, just tap the group up in the upper right-hand corner. I didn't add the base color to my group because I want to resize my hot cocoa cup, and I don't want it to affect the base color. With your group selected, use your selection tool to draw around your hot cocoa cup. Tap the little arrow to resize it. I've colored in my first six designs, I'm going to go ahead and color six more designs. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you how to create a plaid pattern that you can use on one of your tags. [MUSIC] 7. Create Plaid Pattern: [MUSIC] In this lesson, I'm going to show you two ways to create a plaid pattern on your tags. The first way, I'll be using a brush that I purchased and it's a marker brush so it has some texture and some transparency. The second way I'll be showing you is by using things that are native to Procreate, like the rectangular selection tool and some of the texture brushes that come with the Procreate app. Now that all illustrations have been colored, I still have one tag that's plain and that's the tag where I said I was going to create a plaid pattern. The first way I'm going to show you is by using a brush that has texture and transparency. I'll be using a marker brush that I purchased and it has a very straight square edges. So it's actually perfect to create lines for my plaid. Choose your first color. I'm going to use red. Create a layer just above the tag-based color. Tap on this layer and select Clipping Mask. Now everything that I draw on this new layer will be clipped to the shapes that are on the layer below. I'm going to start by creating a very wide line. You'll notice that when you draw a line and you hold your pen down, it will actually snap to a straight line. Because this brush has a nice transparency to it, when I create my horizontal lines, you can see the place that the two lines overlap gets darker and it already starts giving you that plaid feeling. Select the second color. I'm going to go with the denim color and I'm going to reduce my brush size to create another set of lines. Even though this brush has some translucency to it, I did set my brush opacity to 50 percent to get a really nice overlapping colors. Next, I'm going to do some really thin lines. I'm going to go back to the brush I was using to color which has a little bit of texture to it, but because this brush doesn't already have some transparency to it, I do have to bring down the opacity a little bit more. So that would probably be around 35-40 percent. I'm going to do the same thing with the red and draw some very fine lines. So there you have it. That's the first way to create a plaid pattern. Now the second way I'm going to show you is by using elements that are native to Procreate. Start by turning off the visibility of the layers from the first way that I showed you. Add a layer above the tag base, tap on it, and select Clipping Mask. We're going to use a selection tool. That is the little s in the upper left-hand corner. Instead of using the freehand like we did earlier, we're going to use the rectangular selection tool. Make sure that the color fill is also selected. Select your first color and draw your rectangles. Now open your layer panel and select your layer. We need to set that layer to Alpha Lock. Take two fingers and swipe right on the layer or tap on it and select Alpha Lock. Drop the layer transparency to about 50 percent. Next, we're going to go add some texture to these lines. So go open your brush library. Scroll all the way down to the bottom to the native Procreate brushes. I selected Hard Rain out of the elements folder. Make sure that you are on the eraser function and not the brush and that your eraser is set to the texture brush that you just chose. Drop the eraser opacity down to about 60 percent. Next, tap lightly on your red lines to create texture. [MUSIC] Duplicate that layer and rotate it 90 degrees. I want to modify it a little bit, so I'm going to tap on the selection tool, that's the arrow at the top left corner, and I'm going to make sure that it is in free form. I'm just going to stretch it up and down so that it fits on the top and the bottom of the tag. I'm also going to squeeze it in a little bit so that the lines are more in the center. Let's keep going. We're going to add a new layer. Automatically, when you add a layer from a layer that is in Clipping Mask mode, it will automatically create that new layer as a clipping mask. Select your next color and make sure that that layer is at 50 percent opacity. Choose your selection tool and make sure that it's on rectangle in color fill and draw your next rectangles. [MUSIC] Open your layers panel and set your layer to Alpha lock. Make sure that your eraser has your texture brush set to it and add some texture. Next, duplicate that layer and rotate it 90 degrees. [MUSIC] Next, I'm going to go grab my sketch brush and I'm going to select a lighter color. I'm going to start with a really light blue color and I'm going to draw some fine lines on my blue layers. Don't forget to switch layer when you switch directions. That way you can keep the color variations when the lines overlap. [MUSIC] It looks like I'm having a little trouble with my red. It's not really showing up, and that's because my layer opacity is too low for that color to actually show up. I'm going to add a layer above my big red lines and draw my fine line details on that layer. Now you can see that the colors are so much richer and the lines really pop. I'm going do the same thing with the white. As you can see, I did my white line on the same layer as I did my red lines. Because it was sandwiched between the big red lines and the big blue lines, you can see that there is a change in color tone when it goes underneath the blue lines. I really like that look, so I'm going to create a few white lines underneath everything by adding a layer at the bottom of everything. Maybe I went overboard a little with the lines, but there you have it. A second way to create a plaid pattern using native elements to Procreate. I like everything that's been done so far for this plaid. I'm going to select all the layers of this second method and I'm going to squeeze them together to merge them. Just keep in mind, though, that once you merge your layers together, you can no longer change individual elements. You can leave it as is or you can play around with the opacity of the layer and the blend modes if you want. If we select the Hard Light blend mode, it's actually very similar to the finished look that we had with the first plaid pattern that we did using the marker brushes. In the next lesson, I'll show you how to add a fun little border to one of your tags and I'll show you how you can add the names to your tags before printing them. [MUSIC] 8. Creating a Border & Adding Names: In this lesson, I will show you how to use clipping masks to create a candy cane border around your tag. I will also show you how to use the text tool in Procreate to add the names to your tags. If you don't like any of the fonts that come with Procreate, I'll also show you how you can import one of your favorite fonts. We're going to go back to our first set of tags, and what I want to do here is I want to add a candy cane border around the edges of the tag with the hot cocoa. I'm going to add a layer above the base color layer, I'm going to select my red color, and all I'm going to do is color the edges of the tag in red. It doesn't have to be perfect because we're actually going to clip this layer at the end. Next, we're going to add a layer above the red border that we just did, and we are going to set this layer to a clipping mask. With our white color, we're going to draw in our candy canes stripes. Tap on the layer that contains the white lines and select Merge Down, this will flatten it onto the red layer. You can now set your candy cane layer to a clipping mask. There you have it. You have a nice, clean candy cane border on your tag. Next, we're going to go add some names to our tags. So open up your group and add a layer at the top of the group. You can rename it to Names. With my darkest blue color selected, I'm going to start writing a few names to the tags. Now, I'm not perfect when it comes to writing names by hand, so it's a little off-center. To fix that, I'm going to use the freehand selection tool, select my name, tap on the little arrow, and then move the name to the center of the tag. If you have your snapping guides turned on, you should have a line that shows up when you get to the center. I'm done adding the names on the first group of tags, so let's move on to the next group. I'm going to turn off the visibility from the first group and turn on the second group. Now, if you don't like your handwriting, you can use fonts that are in Procreate. In order to do that, we're going to tap on the wrench icon in the top left-hand corner and select, Add, then Add Text. Type in the person's name, double tap on the name to select it, and tap on the two letters in the top right-hand corner of the keyboard. This will open up the fonts panel. I'm going to select the font that's already installed, and I'm going to use Pacifico. Next, I'm going to show you how you can import a font that you've purchased. Same as we did before, we're going to tap on the wrench icon, select, Add, then Add Text. Type in a name that you want and tap on the two letters in the upper right-hand corner of the keyboard. This will open up the font panel. Now you can see that next to the Done button there is a Cancel and an Import Font function. Tap on "Import Font", navigate to where your font is saved on your iPad and select the font you want. It will import automatically. Hit "Done". All that's left is making sure that my name is centered on my tag. Up next, we're going to print, cut, and decorate our tags. 9. Printing, Cutting & Decorating: [MUSIC] So now that we're finished with the Procreate part of creating our tags, it's time to print them out, cut them, and decorate them. In this class I'm showing you how to create your tags on card stock but you definitely could create your tags as stickers. If you want to learn more about how to make your own stickers at home you should definitely check out my other class called Procreate basic, create fun and easy stickers. Now that we're finished with the Procreate part of this project, it's time to export our designs so that we can print them. Tap the range icon in the top left-hand corner. Select "Share", and then select the best format that works for your printer. I'm going to save mine as PDFs. I'm going to select the best quality. If you have a Mac computer you can airdrop your project but since I do not have a Mac, I use Dropbox to transfer my files. Do this for both sets of tags. I'm going to go print my tags and then I'll be right back. Let's cut out our tags. I find it easier to work on a smaller piece of card stock to cut out the individual tags. This is another reason why the grid is practical. I'm going to cut out my sheet into six parts and then I'm going to cut out my individual tags. Just be careful when you're cutting out your tags to not leave a little white edge. In order to do that, you either have to cut right on the line or a little inside the color. To create smooth cut lines, you want to cut with long strokes. If you cut with short strokes there's more chance that's going to give you a jagged edge. If you wish to attach your tag with a piece of twine or a nice ribbon, you can punch a hole at the top of your tag. Here I have some gold and some pink twine. I'm going to cut out a piece of twine and fold it in half, make a little knot at the bottom and pass it through my tag to attach it. [MUSIC] Let's move on to decorating some of our tags. A few things that we can use is some sparkle blue to add interest to our tags. I'm going to be using pink and making the little dots on my Christmas tree tag. [MUSIC] I'm also going to use a white puffy paint for the whipped cream on my hot cocoa. [MUSIC] If you didn't add all the names on your tags on Procreate, you can use glitter pens or metallic pens to write out the names on your tags. I have this liquid chrome metallic pen from Molotow that is going to be fantastic. [MUSIC] On this tag, I'm going to add some black outlines to the name just to make the lettering pop a little bit more. [MUSIC] If you have a straight edge tag, you can also use thin washy tape to create a border around your tag. For example, here on my snowman tag, I'm going to use glitter washy tape at the bottom to create an effect of snow. [MUSIC] Congrats, your tags are done. So what's next? [MUSIC] 10. Thank You: Well, you're probably wondering what's next? You got to finish that shopping, wrap up your presents so that you can use your wonderful original gift tags that you created. I would love to see your process for creating your own gift tags from your prompt list, to the sketches, to the finish tags. You can do this by going to the project section of this class and creating your own project. While you're there, don't forget to check out the other students' projects, and maybe leave a few encouraging comments. If you share your project on social media, I would love it if you tag me @isabellewood.art, so that I can also share your wonderful project. If you enjoy this class, I would really appreciate it if you took a few minutes to leave a quick review, and if you want to be notified of when I publish my next class, you can hit the follow button under my photo in my teacher profile. If you want to keep up with me on a more regular basis, consider following my Instagram account. It's @isabellewood.art, and if you just want to get the highlights of what I'm up to, you can go to my website isabellewood.com or isabellewood.ca and subscribe to my monthly newsletter. Again, thank you so much for joining me in this class and I hope you had as much fun as I did creating your own one of a kind gift tags for this holiday season. I'll see you next time.