I hate Adobe Illustrator!! Know of any affordable, quick graphics people on WF? Where?

I mainly do SEM/SEO work and run analytics for offline clients - I do some simple mobile sites if their traffic demonstrates the need - but I inevitably need some basic graphics: sliders - timeline graphics - buttons - etc. - I am not talking big layouts, webpage design or logo design - I know that costs more . . .

I either get guys who are amazing (real artists) but they take FOREVER - and really worse than that - they have no idea how long a project will actually take. "Sure it will be done next week" . . . . and then months go by . . . .
OR - They are pretty quick and the graphics are crap - I mean its worse than what I could poke around and do.

Even with Odesk and Elance - typically they are good at the beginning and (if they are good) they burn out because I presume they take too many jobs at once.

And Fivver sucks because the good guys are out two or three weeks . . . I have had two different guys that were doing really good little projects for $5 - $10 each - and now they are 3+ weeks out . . . .

What are fellow warriors doing for these things - I hate to send clients away too much to design firms as I know they are likely going to start dripping on them for the services I perform, yet I can't stand client questions like - "Can you change the button to a "different" color of orange - oh how about blue - or green . . . .?" (on a page that no one will ever see anyway!) :-)

Thanks for any suggestions or direction . . .