Glitter Glow Text Effect

In this Illustration tutorial we will learn how to create an eye catchy effect. I call it glitter glow effect. I will also show how to create textures and how we can apply these to the text.

1. Creating the Pattern:

We will create the pattern for our text effect first. For better drawing first turn ON the grid from View menu OR simply by pressing Ctrl/Command + ‘. Also turn ON the Snap to Grid option from View menu OR simply by pressing Shift + Ctrl/Command + ”.

Using the Pen tool (from Tools Pallet) draw a simple triangle and apply a gradient to it. You can take sky blue color and use two shades (dark & light) of it for the gradient. Draw one more triangle in opposite direction like shown in the picture below and use a light gradient. Keep the stroke OFF while drawing these triangles.

Select these two triangles, hold down the Alt/Option key and make a copy of these triangles by dragging. To create a row of these triangles just press Ctrl/Command + D multiple times. We will have a row of triangles as you can see below.

Drag down a copy of this row in the same manner (holding down the Alt/Option key) and arrange it in zigzag fashion.

Let’s make a pattern of it -> select these two rows and drag down multiple copies of it to form a pattern.

To make a pattern out of it, draw a square on these triangles using rectangle tool. While drawing this square be careful about the tiling of the Left & Right as well as Top & Bottom edges for repetition. The picture below will help you understand how to draw this square.

We can tweak this pattern a bit by varying the shades of some of the triangle as you can see below.

Let’s finalize the pattern. Select the square and set the stroke to none. Send this square to the lowest layer by pressing Ctrl/Command + Shift + [ , so the tiling area is defined while we build the pattern swatch. Scale down all the shapes at a time by uniform scaling. Now open the swatches panel from Windows menu and drag the newly created pattern to the swatches panel. The swatch pattern is now ready.

2. Applying the Swatch to the Text:

Take a black patch as background and type in some text, like ‘BLUE SKY’ with the type tool. With the help of tracking option in Character panel (Windows : Type : Character Panel OR Ctrl + T) increase the distance between the letters. Now apply the newly created pattern to this text.

We will apply some effects to the text. While the text is still selected, go to Window menu and open Appearance panel. Click the options arrow at the right top corner of the Appearance window and select Add New Fill.

Then go to Effects menu and select Offset Path from Path sub menu.

In the offset window put 5 pt in Offset field and press OK.

In the appearance panel drag down the new Fill under Characters and apply a gradient to this Fill. You will notice a highlight appears to the text.

3. Applying Effects:

Let's add some glow to our text. From the Effect menu, select Outer Glow under Stylize sub menu.

An Outer Glow window will open. From the small color box next to Mode field, select a nice light blue color and change the values as shown in the picture below. You will see the glow appear around the text.

We will add some more special effects to our text. Draw a rectangle over the text and fill it with linear gradient. Open Transparency window from Window menu (OR Shift + Ctrl/Command + F10). In the Transparency window select Overlay from the drop down menu. And set the Opacity to 50%.

You should get an output like this.

Now let’s add one more effect to the text, which will be sparkles . Using the star tool, draw some stars and apply a radial gradient to these as shown in the image below (While drawing the star, without releasing the mouse click, you can press the Up/Down arrow key to add/reduce the points of the star. Also you can hold down the Ctrl/Command key, while dragging, to set the thickness of the star arms).

Alright, now scatter these stars on the text to give it a glittering effect. Select all the stars and in the Transparency window, select Screen from the drop down menu. See how it looks like.

That is it! Sparkly, glowing BLUE SKY!