Advanced Techniques - Using/Creating Brushes.

 Tutorial One: How to make a custom Illustrator Brush

This is what my brush looked like:

 Created with my brush:

 Created with my brush and shapes:

Tutorial Two:  Design with Swirls & Flourishes

I really loved this tutorial - other than one step which once I read slowly I understood - It was really easy to follow and the result is really nice. I liked that it used both Illustrator and Photoshop as I feel that I need to do more work in Photoshop to improve my skills within the program.

Anyhow, Here is my version:

As the original textures were no longer accessible I simply sourced my own textures via google images. I search "Green Grunge Texture" and "Orange Grunge Texture" and changed the image size to large. I picked the two I liked and used them in place of the originals.

I am happy with the results. ^_^