Making Artwork on a (Shoe) String in Illustrator

You typically use the Scatter brush to scatter objects randomly along a path, but you can rein in all the settings to make this brush place objects in an orderly manner along a path, as though they were strung like beads on a necklace. Just follow these steps:

1. Create any object that you want to place along a path.
In this instance, we create a pearl to use to form a pearl necklace. To create the pearl, we use the Blend tool to blend two circles — a small white circle and a larger white circle. This technique gives you a little more control than the Gradient Fill and also creates a simpler object.

After you create the pearl using the Blend tool, you need to expand it by using the Object➪Expand command. Unfortunately, some artwork that you create in Illustrator is just too complex to be made into a brush. Artwork created by using the Blend tool just happens to be one of these objects.

Fortunately, you can use the Expand command to simplify an object without changing its appearance. A blended object that has been expanded can be made into a brush.

2. Choose Window➪Brushes and click the New Brush button.
Before you can create a new Scatter brush, the artwork that you want to use in the new brush must be selected. If the artwork isn’t selected, the Scatter Brush option is grayed out in the New Brush dialog box.

3. In the New Brush dialog box that appears, choose New Scatter Brush and click OK.
The Scatter Brush Options dialog box appears.

4. Specify the settings for the new brush.
For this example, we set the Size and Spacing to 100% and set the Scatter and Rotation to 0% so that the artwork doesn’t change size or rotate when it’s applied to a path. We also set Size, Spacing, Scatter, and Rotation to Fixed to make sure that the previous settings don’t change.

We set the Rotation Relative To option to Page. This setting makes the artwork keep the same rotation, no matter which way the path turns. Finally, we set the Colorization Method to Tints so that the color of the pearls matches the Stroke color.

Click OK and voilà — you have a new brush based on a blended object. (Is that sneaky or what?)

5. Test the new brush.
Choose the Paintbrush tool from the Toolbox and paint a loose loop, like a necklace. The result is a string of pearls.