[private]In this tutorial we will be creating a horizon of Floating air balloons . During the process i will also show you how to create the starburst background which you can repeatedly use in your various illustrations. Lately starburst effect has been used widely and the technique i used here is quite simple .We will also make use of Gradient and Blur effect while we reach our target.

Final Result

Here is a final preview of our result that we will achieve by the end of this tutorial.

Step 1: Creating the balloon.

Now we want to create the basket i have created one square adjusted its nodes to give it a shape also use Rounded Rectangle tool to create two bars place one as the base of basket transformed to be a little smaller.

Use Line Tool to create ropes for the balloon.

Colour up your sections of the balloon

Create a few copies of the balloon and colour them up differently .

Step 2 : Making the starburst background

First i created a square clicked on one of its nodes and stretched it to create a shape similar to this one.

use the rotate tool and pick up the pointed corner of the stretched square shape to select as the rotation point.

while pressing alt > (creating a copy) move the stretched square beside the first shape drop! Hit CTRL+D couple of times to achieve a similar shape as below.

Create a copy of the starburst displace it from the first one , decreaste the opacity 50%

Draw a rectangle in front of the start burst shapes.

Hit Ctrl+7 (clipping mask) Now place a similar sized rectangle at the back with a significantly strong stroke of a lighter shade.

Step 3 : Creating Clouds

Create a few circles arrange them as they form a cloud shape select all the circles using pathfinder join and expand the shape. Create one copy with a gradient of blue to white reduce transparency to 50%. Create a copy of this shape and using filters and guassian blur , blur it off as seen below