This is my personal Expression project
 I chose the background to be brown and white because it is a neutral color, so I could make the colors I use for the words stand out more.Since my head was cut i made the word brain with individual text boxes and changed the font for each letter to represent the creativeness of my brain!!!!! eh its not that creative but i try, and for the word sticky I un-grouped all the letters and made the st ic and ky stick together because the word is sticky!

This is my attempt at making the Lilly pads as shown in the tutorial.
I started with gradient mesh and had to put different shades of blue to make it give the illusion of distance.
then I made the lily pads and it was pretty easy. Now for the part that gave me the most difficulty was making the flowers on the lily pads, I just could not get the pen tool to work.in the end of course i got the pen tool to work but was still really hard. After that i made the ripples in the water and then made the ovels with the eclips tool and put it to 20 percent

bellwork oct 16

object> create gradient mesh
then you select the Direct Selection tool (A)
then you click what anchor point you want

The top image is the one I had to try and copy, the bottom is my attempt.
I really enjoyed this project, because i learned to use a bunch of different tools( like the knife tool which is like playing fruit ninja!) and it help me progress. i encountered a few problems. the neck or where the neck and the chest are so post to connect i had trouble getting the lower part connecting to the neck so there is a sliver of green in the back ground. After that i made the basketball and I had a problem making the fingers proportional comparably to the basketball. But in all I would say that my attempt at the kid is a little bit bigger than the original.

logo

the top skull candy is mine
the bottom is the original

i chose to make to make mine red/black because i wanted to add my own touch. Surprisingly I din't have any problems using the pen tool. I made it easier on my elf by zooming in and making it more accurate instead of making it all choppy.