Finding the right icons isn’t always easy and in this case i had the perfect socialbookmarking icon set by fasticon, except one problem, it was missing a Designer float icon!  so i  decide to create one my self.

In this tutorial i will create a Designer float icon using adobe Illustrator that will match with the awesome fasticon set…

Getting Started

The icons i want my Design float to match are Fasticon.com’s Social Bookmarks Circular icons.

the pack has 10 of the main socialbookmarking sites. Blinklist, Delicious, Digg, Flickr, Furl, Magnolia, Newsvine, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Technorati.

you can get the set from here

Step 1

Open a new Document, use the Ellipse tool (L) and draw a perfect circle by holding down the Shift key, then fill using this blue 0081C1 color.

Step 2

Now draw another circle using the same tool but a few pixles smaller and  use the color 8DD4F7.

Step 3

Draw a third circle a few pixles smaller, Use a Liner Gradient fill of dark blue to light blue and set the angle to -90

So far its been too easy right? but now it gets tricky if your not  familiar with Illustrator. to start designing the floaty will need to create hallow shapes, unlike Photoshop we won’t be using the Subtract from selection option, in illustrator we  do this by  using the Pathfinder, read on to see how.

Step 4

Draw a white Circle and another much smaller black circle in the centre.

Step 5

To select both white and black circles, First click on the White circle then hold down the SHIFT key and click on the black circle, now with both circle selected go to your pathfinder Panel (SHIFT+CTRL+F9) and click on the Subtract form shape area icon.

Step 6

Now that you know how to create these hallow circle we’re going to repeat it a few times with out me going into details.

Create a smaller hallow circle using the color orange F8A73B.

Draw another White hallow circle that will go around the centre of the hole.

one last white hallow circle. you can see now its starting to look like the floaty

Step 7

Now use the Rectangle tool (M) and draw a rectangle using the same orange colour we used before “F8A73B”. then duplicate it so you have 4 of them.

Now we need to align them on each end , use guides to help you get the alignment perfectly.

Step 8

To create the glassy transparent effect, will use the same technique as the hallow shapes i explained in step 5. as you can see in the example below all i did was use bigger circles.

Step 9

Adjust the Opacity to 23 from the Transpracy panle (SHIFT+CRTL+F10.

Step 10

now for the little shadow, use the Ellipse tool to draw a black oval shape and place it at the bottom.

Step 11

Now we need to adjust the oval, so select the Delete anchor point tool (-) then delete the bottom point.

Step 12

Now select the oval shape and go to Effect>Blur> Gaussian Blur and set it to 4.8. once you do that right click on Arrange >Send to Back. finally adjust the opacity to 60%. that’s it you done

Conclusion

Very easy tutorial right?  just to see whether my icon fits with the rest, i’ve put them side by side. i think they look perfect together, what do you think?

Download the vector source file (AI/EPS/PNG)