I have been asked a couple of times before about my design process, so here is an example. This is a case where I scan the actual drawing, as opposed to doing the whole thing in Illustrator.
I draw the idea on a paper.
Then scan it into Photoshop. Using the magic wand, I select the lines, convert selection into points, then export to Illustrator. There's probably a better way to do this but I only know this way.
In Illustrator, I manipulate the image.
The final design. Sorry about the fuzzy image. I don't know why I took a photo of the desktop, when I could just saved the desktop image using the image capture thing. Anyway, from this, I will send the files to be made into polymer plates. We'll be printing the actual card soon...