In this tutorial, I will show you how to use most of the symbol tools. To begin, place your object in an illustrator file. The object must have a transparent background. Mine is a character made in illustrator so it has no background at all. Make sure it is all on one layer and lock this layer.

Make a new layer and off to the side make a square like the one below. (It does not have to be tilted) Make it small and zoom in.

Go to Filter>Distort>Pucker and Bloat, and apply a setting that looks similar to this one:

Copy this shape and press Control-F (or Paste in Front). Rotate the shape. Then paste another in front, and select it with the black pointer tool. Hold Shift and Alt and make it smaller. Your sparkle should look something like this :

Take off the black stroke and fill the shapes with whatever color you wish. You can change the color later on, but if you’d rather not, make it a bright color that complements your original object. If your background is dark, you should use light pastel colors. I applied “Pure Cyan” from the original Illustrator swatches to my bottom two shapes. I set their opacity on 50%. I made the top shape white with a 100% opacity. Distort the small shape by applying Pucker and Bloat to it again.

Then transform it and make it smaller. (Hold Shift and Alt)

Select this whole shape, and press New Symbol on the Symbols Panel.

Now that it’s a symbol, you can get rid of this sparkle you just made. Before you spray your symbol on, make your layers look like this:

First lets start with the “Behind Layer” which is surprisingly, behind the object. Using the tool that looks like a spray can, select the sparkle symbol and spray it generously.

Now your sparkles will look something like this:

Select the Sparkle Symbol group and using the Symbol Spinner Tool, vary the angles of your sparkles. The green arrows indicate the new angles.

Now, my sparkles are too big, your’s might be too small. Using the Symbol Sizer Tool, selected below, change the size of your symbols. If your symbols are too small, just select the group and apply it. If they are too large (Like in my case) hold Alt while you apply it to your symbols.

Now go to the top layer and start over and do the same thing. But before you start, lock your bottom layer.

Don’t apply as heavily on top. Follow the instructions above on getting the right angle and size.

You are done! Unless you want to change the color. Select the Symbol Stainer Tool (selected below), as well as a color. Select a symbol group and apply it. You can apply more colors to give your sparkles a rainbow look. Make sure you remember to do it on the top layer as well as the bottom layer. Lastly, if some of your sparkles overlap or look out of place, you can move them with the Symbol Shifter Tool, the second button on the symbol panel.

Now it will look something like this.

In the end I decided to shift some more of the sparkles, and stain them with red and orange.

Keywords: Adobe Illustrator tutorial, vector shapes, Symbols, Sparkles, Shiny, Lights, glow, Plastic, Kids, Cute, Pretty, Girly.