a peek at the redesign process of bellafaith design.

Redesigning my own site has proved to be a challenge. I originally wanted a design with some hand illustrated elements. At this point, I’m still leaning that way. Last night, I finished the floral illustration I have been working on. Now, I just need to figure out what I want to do with it! I have had the initial layout for this redesign sketched for a couple of months, however I haven’t nailed down how I want to lay out the interior/blog pages so that they complement that sketch [of the homepage]. So, while I figure out how I want that done, here’s a peek at the floral design & how I created it..

First, I sketched the floral design with pencil & paper {the left picture} & then I scanned the sketch onto the computer {the right picture}. However, now comparing these side by side, the photo I took of the sketch seems to be clearer than the scan!

Next, I traced the scanned sketch in Illustrator, using the pen tool. {You might be able to see some of the lines from the sketch behind the dark black lines.}

Then, I added some embellishments to fill up the remaining space around the original floral design & placed everything strategically so the design would repeat in a seamless pattern.

Then I added some color & tested out the seamless pattern as the temporary background for this blog. {Wow, this is really hard to see as it blends in with the background right now.}

Looking at the steps laid out like that makes it seem fairly simple, but tracing the flowers, setting it up right for coloring & for the seamless repeating pattern were quite time consuming. Now I just have to figure out what final colors I want to use & how to integrate all the page designs together.

Update: After I posted this, I showed my husband one of the color combinations I liked but was having trouble implementing. And of course, he really liked these colors too:

My husband really liked this color combination I've been struggling with today. All day, I've been asking myself: Is this too busy for what I want to do?

Tagged as: bellafaith redesign, design peek, Illustrator, seamless pattern