Baby New Year Illustration

Last year, my cousin was pregnant and she wound up with a due date of January 1st—a new year baby! While brainstorming for her shower invitation, I kept coming back to the due date. That was something special! I decided to create a soft and sweet illustration of baby new year in sash and top hat.

I wanted to experiment with mixing patterns for this illustration. In my research, I stumbled up this lovely (and free!) floral Photoshop pattern at Pixels & IceCream, and used it as my jumping off point for look and feel of the piece.

Gypsy Garden by Pixels & IceCream

In Photoshop, I illustrated the baby, hat and sash using my tablet. I added the floral pattern to the sash around the hat, and another texture to the main sash itself. I also hand-lettered the text on the front of the invite. Using the pen tool, I created the border shape, and filled that with a single-tone version of the Gypsy Garden pattern.

Since our Baby New Year was to be a little girl, I carried over the sweet pink from the hat onto the back as a highlight color. (Please note I've changed the the text in the version below so as not to give out last names and personal contact info.)

Not long after the invites were sent out, my cousin's baby decided to make an extra early arrival and turned out to be a Turkey Day baby instead! What a fun invite that would have been to design! The little love is doing great and just wanted to keep us all on our toes.