Customize your default swatches in Illustrator via Colorburned

If you are not doing this, you are not saving time.

40 Adobe Illustrator text effect tutorials on Noupe

20 seamless plaid patterns for illustrator on Colorburned

Gold vector guitar tuner on Vecteezy via wgsteele.

I really haven't a need for a guitar tuner, but it is quite amazing. I do like to experiment with "faux gold" elements and this file gives you a ton of swaches and gradients to play with.

Use the swatch palette options (the little arrow in the top right) to "select all unused" and trash those, then "add used colors". This gives you a cleaner look at only the colors you need.  I saved that swatch library as "Gold" :)

Apply, text splatter font from YouWorkForThem.  How nifty! (I straight up used their image, cause it's perfect)

40 tutorials for creating highly detailed icon designs - On BlogSpoon

Another great pattern from Pattern Head.

30 text effect illustrator tutorials on Vandelay Design

on Vectortuts

Wow, how wonder full are these? The answer is very. Download them Here on Vecteezy from PerfectDecember

"Retro Geometric shapes; Vector-to-Photoshop Tutorial" on Abduzeedo.

Floral vector seamless (almost) pattern. This one has a few stragglers that need to be deleted before it's seamless.
By sergeypoluse on deviantArt. Via VectorArtBlog

If there is 1 thing I know, it's how to "Prepare artwork for shirt printing" and
this list sound advice for anyone submitting shirt designs. The printers will thank you

On JustCreativeDesign

On Vector Art Blog, that ribbon was also one of the brushes,

It could (and did) come in handy

I don't ever need to make bar graphs... Ever! But if I did, they'd look like this

on Vectortuts