Key

For this piece, we were playing with the gradient tool.  We had an image of a key we were basing it off of.  I made swatches from the original key image with the eyedropper tool, so I could incorporate the same colors.  I traced the entire key with the pen tool, creating a key shape.  I then made that entire shape a gradient by going to window, gradient and selecting the gradient fill with linear style.  I changed the colors on the gradient to be some of the swatches I had made.  I then added a few colors to the gradient by clicking underneath the big spread on the right.  I messed around with the gradient sliders until the pattern I wanted was what I was seeing.  I then started from the left side and made layers of smaller gradient pieces, making it look more realistic, and followed the same steps as above.  For the end of the key, I made a horizontal shape and made that gradient have a 90 degree angle to make it horizontal.  In the end, I had a key that I had completely made using both the pen tool and the gradient tool.