How to Apply Brush Borders in Illustrator

Apply interesting border effects using Illustrator's brush patterns.

Adobe Illustrator’s pattern brushes contain different tiles for each corner and direction of stroke allowing you to make interesting, intricate borders around objects and pages. By default the Illustrator Brush panel contains a sub-folder called “Borders” that contains about seven pre-made pattern brushes specifically for borders. Of course you can always create your own and save a User Defined library.

Instructions

1. Select the desired shape tool -- Rectangle, Circle, Polygon or Star -- from the Tools panel.

2. Click inside the artboard and draw the border width and height.

3. Click on the “Window” menu and select “Brushes” to open the Brushes panel.

4. Click on the flyout menu, hover over “Open Brush Libraries.” Hover over “Borders” of “User Defined” and select the desired border brush library.

5. Click on the “Selection” tool and select the border path that you drew.

6. Click on the desired brush pattern from the Brush library.

7. Double-click on the brush in the “Brushes” panel and adjust as desired. Scale changes the size of the border pattern. Spacing adds space between each pattern sequence. Click on the desired location tile and select a pattern from the box below to adjust the shape of the pattern around the border.

References

• Peachpit: Tips for Drawing with Brushes in Illustrator CS2
• Adobe Illustrator CS5: Create Corner Tiles for Brush Patterns