With a few simple tricks, you can mock up realistic lace trim in Illustrator (and a bit of Photoshop). Bonus trick? You can even change the color of your lace (even though it’s a photo) directly in Illustrator. Not what you wanted? Here’s how to create a lace repeating pattern swatch.

In this tutorial, you will learn:

• 00:33 How to crop one repeat of your lace trim in Photoshop (using an image from the internet or one you took)
• 01:15 How to check and make sure the edges of your lace trim will line up seamlessly to create a clean repeat for your pattern brush
• 01:45 How to clean up the seam edges with the Clone Stamp
• 02:37 How to delete the white background from your lace so it’s see through
• 03:44 How to get your lace from Photoshop into Illustrator
• 04:00 How to turn your lace into a Pattern Brush in AI
• 04:12 How to automatically create corners for your lace trim (only in Adobe Illustrator CC and newer)
• 05:20 How to fix white breaks in your pattern brush
• 08:18 How to change the color of the lace in Illustrator (not Photoshop!) <— This trick is MAGIC 🙂