Weddingbee Blog

If you’re looking to make a bold graphic statement with your invitations or any of your paper products, a pattern is a pretty good way to do that. I decided to use a pattern to tie together our Dorothy Draper theme but unfortunately, couldn’t find anything pre-printed that fit my colors or ideas.

So I’m going to share a little chevron pattern tutorial. We’re going to be doing this the dumb way — there is a way to make patterns in Illustrator, but these directions will work in Word.

1. Start with a filled rectangle shape. Depending on how thin or wide you want the chevrons to be, adjust your rectangle’s size. Then rotate it. I do 45 degrees, but this is also a personal preference thing.

2. Now make a copy of the rectangle and paste it. Reflect it vertically.

3. Zoom into your screen for this next part. We’re going to shimmy the second rectangle up into a flush angle with the first one. Pro tip: it’s a lot easier to see where they align if your rectangle is not outlined.

4. Select our new angle and copy it. Paste! Shimmy into place.

5. Copy the whole thing. Paste. Shimmy. If your page isn’t filled yet with a whole row of chevrons, repeat step 4 again.

6. Select the whole row and center it the way you want it. Copy the row. Paste. Scooch it down, depending on how much space you want between rows.

7. Copy your two rows. Paste. Scooch. Repeat over and over (i.e. copy and paste 4 rows, then 8 rows, etc) until you fill the page.

8. Now you have a pattern! For our save the dates, I just copied a chunk of them into InDesign. In Word, you should be able to group them into one object and create your invitations, too.

Have you taken the design of your paper products into your own hands?