logo needs help!!!

I finished a 72 page ad book and it looks pretty good - not bad for a newbie stay at home Mom - but i am stuck with this last lousy logo. He buys a color cover! :eek:

Also, I would love a really good live trace and paint lesson - any good tutorials or books to recommend?

Have a look here all the tutorials are well written and you will see one on "Pixel Perfect" which looks at live trace. The easiest way and the cleanest, after a bit of practice, is just tracing it by hand using the Pen Tool. Place the gif or jpeg using the Place command under the file menu then double click the layer on the layer palette and the in the window click the dim function. Make a new layer putting it below the photo then working on that layer trace the shape. I have to go & see a client just now but look back in about 3 hours and I might have a bit more for you. Rushing this at the moment!
Link for Tut:http://www.layersmagazine.com/category/illustrator/

Hi,
Thanks so much for the link - there is some great stuff there! Unfortunately, this guy is way past the deadline, so I am not sure i will have time to redo - though i will use the exercise to redo anyway for next year - let's hope i make it. Rest of book was submitted Monday morning!

Thanks again - i am looking forward to learning the technique!:)

Might want to look to see how I did this it might help. Best thing to do is to buy a decent Adobe Classroom book as their basic instructions are good as you seem to lack this type of knowledge. Their is is great Trace & Live Paint that comes with CS2 and it is in their Help Files, I think, cant afford to upgrade.
By the way if you have a decent copy of the file you might what to replace the gif image that I use from your file as it was a bit hairy & poor in quality. Then use the Direct Selection Tool to edit my vectors.

I am a stay-at-home Mom, so i just went with the cheapies - Publisher and webeditor to do stuff for their schools, my golf group... i really only had one client.

I decided to try and upgrade my skills and i went for the adobe suite right before i had to do this book. I, too, was waiting for the money!

Anyhow, I got through a bit of the classroom book a few months ago when i had the trial versions on my machine. Then they expired and i had a big lag before having the money for the software.

So, now the ad book is finished - i made it through - i am sure i did a lot of things in a clumsy way. So now i will go back to the classroom book!

Thank you again for you help and the links!