: Pattern help for wedding name cards I am a super beginner in illustrator and have gotten as far as the picture attached. I am trying to make name cards for my wedding from the graphic I

@RJPawlick971

First of all, if you are using Object > Pattern > Make, what you are seeing is a preview of how the pattern will look like, that's why it disappears when you save it. But it actually does save it in your swatches panel and you can use later but forget about patterns cause that's not what you need.

You have created those cards and want to place more of then on a A4 paper to print more in one go. If you have only illustrator your course of action should be:


If you haven't already, add a text box to your card with dummy text that you can edit later with all the names.
Figure out your card size: 1/2 of A4 or 1/4 of A4 or whatever.
Create a new document with the size of a A4 paper (illustrator has a pre-defined size)
Group your already designed card (Ctrl+G)
Add a rectangle shape the exact size of you card, on top of it, select all and press Ctrl+7 (this will create a clipping mask, hiding the excess shapes that go beyond your design)
Copy the resulted card and paste it in the previously created A4 document.
Resize/rotate to place as many of them as you want.


That would be just about it.

Depending on how many you want on a A4 paper, it should look something like this:

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