How to Warp and Bulge Text in Inkscape
In this video we will show you in Inkscape Version .47 how to warp, bulge, and squeeze your text. This is a very easy task to perform in the new Inkscape .47 using the Path Effects Editor.
Below is photo of the new feature in .47 the Path Effects Editor. This is what allows us to alter our paths that we create in inkscape. You can find this either by Shift + Ctrl + 7 or you can go to Path> Path Effect Editor.
Check out PapaSueCreative's Blog on how she used Warp and Bulge to Create her SVG file
Click Here
photo source: http://papasuecreative.blogspot.com
More Flourishes with Bezier Tool
This tutorial we will go over the Bezier Tool and using some new Spiro effects that are associated with this tool. There are several options when using just the Beier Tool. This tutorial requires Inkscape .47 which can be downloaded from the www.inkscape.org website.
You have Triangle In, Triangle Out, Elipse and Clipboard. We are going to discuss the first three and show you what each of them do.
So start creating your own flourishes and have fun!
Create Your Own Flourishes
Alright, in this tutorial should give you the result of a nice flourish with tapered ends that looks like a brush stroke. And after what seems like hours of messing around with it, I think I came up with a way to work it. I used the Bezier Tool to create the pattern, however this process will work using the Spiral Tool as well. I don't know if any of you have used the Spiro option associated with Bezier but it's a great option that gives you that slick look.
This tutorial you will be able to create your own flourishes and cut them out in Sure Cuts A Lot.
Grab inkscape 47 here: (Windows) http://thurly.net//7o4
We will use Pattern Along Path, Bezier Tool, and Spiro to create these.
Inkscape Tutorial: How to Arch Text
This tutorial you will learn how to Arch your Text in Inkscape so you can import it into Sure Cuts A Lot.
If you're looking for expanding text information please click the Read More Link.
We modified this idea from Kay at http://cleversomeday.wordpress.com/ which is a great place for Inkscape knowledge.
Below is Her Video Explaining: Once you have the Circular Pattern Cut, On How to Apply it to a Page.
The video is from Kay from CleverSomeday Explains how to apply this.
Creating Basic Stick Figures
I put out a new video tutorial today on how to create a simple stick figure. I was emailed last week with the question "I created a file in inkscape, looks good in inkscape but cuts only cuts a single line of the shapes. I was simply going to email the lady back to tell her about the "Stroke to Path" however she filled the wrong email address when she used our contact page. So I thought a good way to approach this would be to shoot a video tutorial and maybe she will be on the look out for our next video tutorial.
So in this tutorial it will go over the "Stroke to Path" "Breaking Apart Joined Nodes" and it will be using a little "Bezier Tool" to get the job done. It's very basic but you can get the idea on how you can create your own( hopefully more complex figure than mine ) As you will see I'm not an artist!
Here is the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ve0vnJ1IoI
Feel free to comment & rate it on the youtube site and if you enjoy the tutorials make sure you subscribe so you can be notified when new videos come out
Let's Talk Grouping: Inkscape and SCAL2
Someone sent us a file and a question on how to get things set up in Inkscape so they could import into SCAL 2 matching up correct sizes and cut based on color. So I Uploaded this video tutorial this past weekend to youtube. It demonstrates an easier approach than layering your SVG to import into SCAL 2. It's done by grouping... what you want to have grouped do it all in inkscape and imported in to SCAL 2 allowing you to Ungroup/Show/Hide/Move/Resize your pieces all around in SCAL 2. Works great for doing that multi-cut projects.
Inkscape Tutorial - Pattern Along a Path
This video will demonstrate how to get a pattern to repeat itself around a path in order to create these great patterns to use with your Sure Cuts A Lot software. For this tutorial you will need to download or have installed Inkscape. If you need to download inkscape you can at www.inkscape.org
This video is presented at a beginner knowledge and in less than 2 minutes you can create these patterns that you see below using the process in the video. The video will show how to create the Red pattern.
What we used in the above patterns...
The Light Blue pattern was created using a Large circle and a Smaller circle
The Dark Blue pattern was created by using the square tool with rounded corners and a Star pattern
The Red was created using a circle and the letter "O."
For written material on this method please visit : http://cuttingtime.blogspot.com/2009/08/inkscape-pattern-along-path.html
Check out this Blog to see what they created using this Tutorial!
The Artful Mama's Blog
Feel free to send us your blog so we can add it to the list if you used this tutorial to create something!
Freebie File and Tutorial Text Box Frame
Well we got a letter from someone asking for our help... "The one I am trying so hard to make is an enclosed box around the words and the middle does not cut out....I pretty much know how to draw what I want and how to weld the letters, but since I cannot erase the couple of lines the Cricut cuts those..."
So we took that design she drew and make it into an SVG.
And here is the final cut page she made using her Sure Cuts A Lot program.
Click Here to Download SVG
(You customize your own text)
If you don't know how to weld text in inkscape watch the video. We demonstrate how to weld towards the end.
How to Convert WPC to SVG
Things you'll need if you don't want to watch the tutorial
1. A virtual printer - CutePDF is what most use and it's free. It acts like a printer but prints as a PDF (Which is what inkscape can open) To get CutePDF... I just went to download.com (Safe website) and did a search for CutePDF
2. Funtime Software - The lite version is free and that's what I use in the video.. http://www.funtimescrapbooking.com/
(I guess that FuntimeScrapbooking doesn't have the Lite Version available - you can still download it here)
CLICK HERE for Funtime Scrapbooking Lite
3. Inkscape - To open up the PDF you create in Funtime
STEP 1. Install CUTE PDF
STEP 2. Install Funtime Software
STEP 3 (IN FUNTIME)
I open up the file in Funtime the (WPC)
then I go to File PRINT
I choose the printer that says CUTEPDF
Then go to properties and make sure that if you need Landscape mode you Chose that or Portrait Mode you Choose that... It depends on the layout of the WPC. (You will know you did something wrong if you get 2 pages that print instead of 1)
STEP 4 (IN INKSCAPE)
Then you can go to inkscape and open the PDF
Select everything and keep ungrouping until there is nothing left to ungroup.. .You will know by the information bar at the bottom it will say "No groups were ungrouped"
Then you may want to do a Path>Break Apart because sometimes there are lines stacked on top of eachother and in scal that means it will go over the same outline over and over.
Then you can Save it as a SVG and import into SCAL
Creating Circular Text in Inkscape
Sometimes you would like to create circular text to cut in SCAL or any other cutting devices. Sure Cuts A Lot can't do this with out the file being an SVG, because there isn't an option for this. We've all seen it before in Microsoft Word where you can have Circular Text or an Arch of text. Well, in this tutorial we will demonstrate how to do this in Inkscape so you can import it into SCAL.
We modified this idea from Kay at http://cleversomeday.wordpress.com/ which is a great place for inkscape and Sure Cuts A Lot software knowledge.
Below is Her Video Explaining: Once you have the Circular Pattern Cut, How to Apply it to a Page. The video is from Kay from CleverSomeday Explains how to apply this.
Welding in Inkscape - Text to Text & Text to Object
This video tutorial will demonstrate how to weld text letters together. You will also be able to apply this method to weld the text to an object just like you see below (welding text the baseball glove). We received an email asking us "How do you weld in Inkscape?" They wanted to attach the "Text" to a Glove. After watching this tutorial you should be able to do something like this. Although sometimes things like this are easier to do in Sure Cuts A Lot, there are some benefits to doing this in Inkscape.
Benefits to using inkscape rather than SCAL are:
- If you plan on using sharing this, the people you share with don't need that font installed
- Inkscape is easier to manage/design the look you want
- Once imported in the SCAL you can resize everything proportionally.
Drawbacks are:
- If you import the SVG into SCAL you won't be able to edit the text
Create a Simple Flower in Inkscape to use in SCAL
The Photo Below is what we will be creating in this tutorial.
Inkscape Tutorial: Using Outline View to Modify Your Cut
Last week we got an email saying the following:
- Hey guys! Big fan of SCAL myself. So far I haven't had any problems cutting anything, but today I designed a gift bag, and it has fat lines that are being double cut. I'll attach my original jpg file. The lines are one pixel wide in the file original, but they fatten up when I trace the bitmap and make it a svg in Inkscape. I can't find a way around those fat lines. Never had this happen before. I don't know if this is a common problem or if I am just stupid. Maybe you could make a tutorial about it... Thanks!
So we decided to make a tutorial based on this. Click the Photo Below to Work along with Us
Unlimited storage and Unlimited transfer for only $4.95
File Donated by Kate Smith
http://craftomatic31.blogspot.com/
Color Tracing with Inkscape
This is a tutorial for beginners. We will break apart this eagle by color so you will be able to possibly paper piece this using the Sure Cuts A Lot software.
What you will need for this tutorial.
- Inkscape from www.inkscape.org
- Download the eagle photo (if you want to work along side the video) - Just click the Photo Below
- Sure Cuts A Lot - If you would like to cut your separated files.
Click this Photo to Download
This is our end goal in breaking apart these colors. This technique works well with well defined areas and boarder images. The higher the quality of image the better the results.
Tutorial: Sizing Correctly in SCAL using multiple SVG files
Happy April Fools Days! When we first got SCAL we were wondering how are we going to save paper on cutting a pattern that has multi colors that needed to be cut. Well this technique that the video goes though should help you with this. The video goes though two different ways to accomplish the same goal. We know that there are other methods out there, but these two work just fine.
The reason for this tutorial is because when you import items into SCAL it isn't a 1 to 1 ratio. Meaning you will have to resize each SVG file as a whole to match all the pieces up.
This video will go over:
- Saving your SVG files based on Color
- Importing them into SCAL
- Sizing them up proportionaly so that all pieces are the correct size based on your original SVG file
What we do is we separate the files by color and we have one that is saved with everything with all parts and pieces on that file. We save it as BearALL.svg.
We then stretch out the BearALL.svg in scal to the size we want. Then we import each colored SVG (ie BearBrown.svg) and we size up the head to match the BearALL.svg.
We do this for all the colored pieces. Another way to do proportioning on separated SVG files is...
You can place a small Star (keep it the same size) somewhere on each of your seperated SVG file. That Star allows you to match up each file to the correct porportion once you have imported all of your Color Separated SVG files into SCAL.
Once you have everything the way you want I would SAVE the project because you can delete what you are not wanting to cut, and then to get all your pieces back just go to File> Open Project
Inkscape Tutorial: Combine and Break Apart
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Saving Paper for SCAL using Inkscape
The goal of this tutorial is to help new people that have SCAL and are new to SVG format using Inkscape. Using Inkscape you can save time and your paper by separating pieces by color. It helps when people have already have broken apart and grouped things by color for you. However in this tutorial you will see how to do this and then import and size them properly into SCAL.
Read More...
Creating a Cut file from a JPG
- Image file in GIF, BMP, JPG, PNG format
- Inkscape - Free program on inkscape.org
- Sure Cuts A Lot - a pay program from CraftsEdge
Just follow this video tutorial and you will be able to do this fairly easy. This is a beginner level tutorial.
