Yep… The holidays are upon us. You can smell it in the air, and feel the temperatures dipping a bit. It’s even cooled down to a crisp 85 degrees here in Texas… Burrrr. So to help bring in the holiday spirit I’m going to talk a bit about creating vector snowflakes in Adobe Illustrator. Knowing how to create these festive flakes comes in very handy when adding a touch of winter wonderland to your designs… and remember no two flakes are alike so all the more reason to create your own from scratch.

First up… create a shape however you like. This shape will be one arm of your snowflake design. I created this shape below by using a custom brush and various shapes, and then combined them into one graphic by clicking “Add to Shape Area” in the Pathfinder Palette.

Once you’re happy with your snowflake arm shape, select the shape and choose the Rotate Tool from the tools palette. Then click the bottom middle of your snowflake arm to place the central anchor of the rotation.

Now hold the Option key (Mac) Alt key (Win) and drag the arm over to create the first copy. Once it’s positioned right release the mouse to place the copy.

Now press Cmd+D (Mac) Ctrl+D (Win) to duplicate the last action until you’ve created enough copies of your snowflake arm to complete the circle. And there you have it! Eezy Peezy.

To combine all of the snowflake arms into one graphic, select all of the arms and press the “Add to Shape Area” in the Pathfinder Palette, then hit the “Expand” button.

Bam! Instant Holiday.

Related Posts