Free Adobe Illustrator Christmas Lights Brush To Download and Use

Posted by Jeff

Christmas Lights

Need to be able to draw lines that look like Christmas lights? I might have a tool for you…

I enjoy playing with patterns, and Adobe Illustrator makes it easy. Well, mostly, but I won’t nitpick. Here’s my latest brush which just simply makes a pattern of repeating Christmas lights, as in a string of traditional Christmas bulbs. I needed a small swath of bulbs, so I figured I might as well go full pattern brush, since it will no doubt come in handy at some point. And to increase those odds, I’m sharing it with the world. Have at it, I hope it’s useful.

christmas-bulbs-patterns

Get the Christmas Lights Brush

Download the brush here: http://jeffco.ca/blog-content/christmas-bulbs.ai

The brush is free, but please feel free to leave a comment if you find the brush useful. Thanks!

The brushes palette has four sizes of bulb (25%, 50%, 75% and 100% of what was originally created). I know that can be varied off of just one pattern brush, but I thought this might be easier. I thought about offering varieties of colours, but I figured people can do that themselves if they want.

Christmas Lights Pattern Brush

To that end, I left the original pieces of the pattern on the workspace, above the artboard. Feel free to play around and create something better. Or, use as is. Hope it makes your next project a little easier.

Window with Lights

Christmas Lights Strip

And if you found this one useful, be sure to check out some of our other free brushes:

Christmas Lights Strip

49 Responses

  2. Hi, yes, it’s an Adobe Illustrator file. If you open it in Illustrator, you can open your brush palette and you will have three sizes of Christmas lights brushes you can use to draw with or apply to existing lines. Only works in Illustrator though I’m afraid.

  13. i AM USING 2011 cs5.

    i HAVE THESE LOADED IN MY BRUSH PALLET, BUT i DON’S SEE A WAY TO USE THEM.

    Is it possible these will not work with CS5?

  14. Try drawing a rectangle with the rectangle tool, then clicking on the brush in the brushes palette. Does that work? I don’t know for sure if it will work in CS5, but if it works on a rectangle, it’s working…

  27. Working great, thanks! Need to change the color of the bulbs. Any easy way or recreate the brushes?

  28. Ha! Yes, I had to look it up, it’s been a while. But if you download the .ai file, at the top is the source for making the brush (it’s the corner section of the brush). If you recolour the bulbs as you want them, then you can use the sections to make the linear and corner sections of a pattern brush. I’m sure there’s tutorials online that can say it better than I can, but that top section with the linear bit and the corner section are all you need to make a new brush the way I did, but with whatever colours (or variations) you want. Give it a try and if you have any trouble just let me know. Good luck!
    (Or if that’s not worth the effort, just make the look you want, break apart the brush once done, select the coloured bulbs you want to change – select same colour – and recolour, that’s faster, but not as editable down the road…)

  37. Jeff,
    I would really like to use this brush in Illustrator 2022 or Photoshop 2022 but I can’t get it to work. I have downloaded the brush as an .ai file. I load it into illustrator, open a document, select brushes, select the christmas-bulbs brush and I get a message that says “The file “christmas-bulbs.ai” is in an unknown format and its styles cannot be imported.” I don’t have any old copies of Illustrator anymore. Is there anyway you can help? Thanks

  39. Hi Kathy, okay, it seems to work for me. Have you tried just opening the christmas-bulbs.ai in Illustrator? If that works, then you will have four bulb sets in your brushes palette (four sizes of the same pattern). If you can open the .ai file in Illustrator, you should be able to select a shape or line and apply the brush to it. If you can do that, you can also apply it to any line. Give that a try and let me know if that works. If not, I’ll see what else I can try.

  40. Hi Jeff,
    Now I have it. I was trying to download it in Safari and that was not a good idea. I redownloaded it using Firefox and it opened perfectly! Thank you so much! Time to play!!
    Kathy

  42. Help, not sure what I am doing wrong. All the other brushes I downloaded from here work but the Christmas bulb one does not. I open it in illustrator, and it show bulbs as a file, but nothing will show up in my brushes palette.

  43. Hi Dawn, happy to try to help. I just replied but I didn’t see the end of your comment. I just downloaded the ai file fresh, to see if it does the same for me. The brushes palette has four sizes of brushes available to use but you’re not seeing any. Hmmm. Any chance ‘Show Pattern Brushes’ isn’t checked in the Brushes palette? I assume it is, or the other files wouldn’t have worked, but I’m just checking…

  49. Hi Julie, it’s probably not you. Try making a wider curve, or making the brush smaller. It’s not a finesse brush, it won’t handle sharp corners, that would require individually drawn corner pieces and I didn’t need them so I didn’t draw them. But if you make a larger image, it will handle curves okay. Play with a little and see if that helps.

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