Make Your Own Ghosts

Yesterday a reader sent me a question about making ghosts with Design Studio.  She has a small collection of cartridges and there doesn't seem to be a ghost on any of them.  Some shapes are easy to make and others are very time consuming.  I thought that a ghost should be pretty easy to make so I agreed to take a look at the cartridges she had available and make some suggestions for assembling ghost parts!

The inspiration for the type of ghosts she wanted was this cute ghost stamp from the "Happy Hauntings" stamp set by Lawn Fawn that Christina  featured on her blog (Creations with Christina) recently (please click HERE to go to Christina's blog and see her adorable card).

The trickiest part of this ghost is the tail with an inside curve.  Since you can't just draw your own shapes in the Cricut software, you have to find a shape that will create this line.  Then you add other shapes and weld them together to create a new ghost image.

I looked around through the cartridges on her list and found this shooting star shape on the Camp Out cartridge.  This cartridge has a wood cut style with rough edges so the curve isn't completely smooth but the slight angles give an interesting character to the ghost (you could also smooth the cut with scissors if you wanted to).

Another type of shape that would work is a leaf with a curved tip.  I found one on Classic Font which was one of the cartridges on her list.  There are leaves on many of the cartridges, including Plantin Schoolbook and Don Juan but, unfortunately, not on George.

Another shape that I found with that inside curve for the ghost tail was this heart on the Home Decor cartridge.  I didn't continue to look through the cartridges once I had these shapes to work with. 

To create a new image, you need to look carefully at the shape you want to make and figure out which shapes are included within it, then add bits and pieces until you create a similar shape.  The last step is to weld them all together.  In the preview above, the dark solid lines are the lines that will cut and the lighter gray lines show you the shapes that I put together to make the "ghosts."  You can add eyes and mouths with pens, small ovals and circles that you cut and glue to the ghost cuts, or place some small ovals and circles in the proper position on the mat so the features will cut with the shape.  You do not want to weld these shapes or they will disappear inside the larger welded shape.  It might be easier to place them on a second page of the file using the preview as a guide.

By adjusting the shapes with the handles (stretch, rotate, and skew) you can "tweak" them to fit your needs.  This sort of thing is much easier to do in Design Studio or the Cricut Craftroom because you can work with the handles.  The Gypsy will require a lot of trial and error to get the shapes the way you'd like them.  You would need to unlink the width and height and then adjust them independently.

In order to get a good idea of the shapes of the ghosts, I previewed them without the welding against a black background.  At this point, it is simply a matter of playing around with the shapes to get the result you are looking for.  After each adjustment or addition of a shape, you can preview the result until you are happy with it. 

It is much easier to work at a large size and then make the image smaller when you are happy with the shape.  Design Studio does not have a complete grouping function (you can not copy and paste a grouped collection of shapes to repeat the image quickly).  If you want to make multiple sizes of the ghost, you need to copy and paste each of the image pieces onto a new mat and then resize the new image.

 

To group the pieces of the image, you click with your mouse at one corner of the mat and drag to draw an "imaginary box" around all of the shapes (you will see a dotted line as you draw this box - this is called a "marquee tool" in other programs).  When you release the mouse you will see little dots all around the shapes and the last shape you added to the group will have the customary "handles" around it.  You can move the group around on the mat with the top right handle (just as you would move an individual shape).  Once you click somewhere else on the mat, you will have to redraw the box to group the items - they don't stay grouped as they do on the Gypsy or the Craftroom.

If you want to resize the group and keep the images in position, you must hold down the control key on the computer keyboard while you work with the handles.

If you are not very familiar with Design Studio, this is probably easier to understand by watching the design process on a video. 

I made a couple of videos almost a year ago that show you the steps for grouping and resizing in Design Studio.  You can find the first one at THIS POST and the follow up video at THIS POST.  There is a tab at the top of the blog (HERE) which has a list of videos that might be helpful if you are new to using Design Studio.  I haven't made any videos for quite a while but I have been getting video requests lately and I may try to do an updated series on Design Studio for the people who prefer to use it.  My YouTube Channel is HERE if you want to subscribe and be notified when I do post some new videos.

Design Studio, the Gypsy and the Craftroom all have some advantages and disadvantages.  I would like to have one program that combines the best features of all of them.  There are also some basic capabilities that are missing from all three options (such as one click shadowing) and the lack of some of these features is what led me to buy a Silhouette machine.  The Silhouette software makes some of the things that I used to spend hours working out quick and easy to do.  There are also other software options available for other machines as well as some programs that work with multiple machines.

I get lots of emails with questions and I try to answer them all.  Sometimes it make take a while for me to get to the end of the inbox but eventually I get there!  If you ever try to contact me and don't get a reply within a week or so, please resend your message since things do sometimes fall through the cracks - particularly when I am traveling or have lots of family things going on. 

I hope you have a great day - have fun designing!

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Under the weather...

The sun is finally shining here and I have come down with a dreadful cold.  I was fine yesterday morning, started with the sneezing and watery eyes last night and woke up feeling terrible.  Very little crafting was done today.  I do have things to share but, unfortunately, I have no energy to edit the photos and write up a "normal" post.  I can only hope that I recover as quickly as I caught this!

I have received several emails with questions about welding.  Welding is the key to the way I use my Cricut cartridges.  I usually work with Design Studio because it is easier to see and I prefer the speed of the computer for the complex welds that I like to make.  I sometimes forget that not everyone has been reading my blog since the beginning and since there is so much information in older posts that is helpful, I thought I post a few links to some of my tutorials and videos about welding.

There is a words and pictures post explaining welding HERE.   If you prefer videos, there is a list of Design Studio videos HERE. 

One of the things that is a little tricky is welding inside a frame - there is a video explaining how to do this HERE.

If you want to keep the detail or "webbing" cuts inside shapes that you weld together, you need to follow certain steps - this LINK will take you to the posts that explain how to do this. 

Blogger is giving me some trouble with the links so I hope that you will be properly directed - I'll try to check all of the links Saturday morning - while sipping tea and fighting off this nasty cold!

I hope you have a nice weekend!

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Scalloped Heart Tutorial

I wanted to share this file quickly since many people are working on Valentine's Day projects now.  For a variety of reasons that I won't go into now, I haven't made a video but I will explain briefly how I designed this heart.  I used Plantin Schoolbook for the heart but you could try with any other cartridge with a circle.  A heart shape is helpful but not required.

There are more and more cartridges with scalloped shapes available.  Standard scalloped squares, circles, rectangles and ovals are on quite a few cartridges.  Regularly shaped scalloped hearts are a bit harder to find.  There are some wonderful scalloped hearts on the Martha Stewart Cake Art cartridges.

You can use one of these hearts as a template to help you design a plain scalloped heart from circles and other shapes.  I chose this heart from the MS Seasonal Cake Art cartridge and placed a four inch image on the mat.

Then I selected a circle from the Plantin Schoolbook cartridge and adjusted the size to fit neatly in one of the scallops.

You can quickly fill the outline of the shape with circles by copying and pasting and repositioning the circle.  To make  the process go more quickly use the keyboard shortcuts "control C" to copy and "control V" to paste and hold down the "alt" key to temporarily make the handles disappear as you place the circles around the heart.

You can work on the same page as the template heart or you can preview the heart and work on another layer of the file to create the circle outline of the heart.

When all of the circles have been placed you can preview the design.  Be sure to weld the circles.  If you checked weld on the very first circle before copying and pasting each circle will already be welded.  If you did not check weld for the first circle, you can click your mouse on a corner of the mat and drag it to include all of the circle shapes and then check weld for the entire group at once.  You now have a frame which needs to be filled in.

For this heart, I added the heart from Plantin Schoolbook and stretched and squeezed it a bit to fit the heart shape.

When I previewed the design, there were four spots where the heart left a gap between the edge of the heart and the heart frame made from circles.

 I added a couple of circles that I stretched and rotated to cover the gap areas.

When the design is previewed, there are some problems with the welds.  The gaps remain on one side and the new shape will cut from the shape without welding.

To fix this, you need to change the order in which the items are added to the design and "burp" the heart.  To do this, simply select one of the outer circles near the inner circle that covers the gaps and then Copy-Delete-Paste the circle back again.  Do this for both sides - you may have to do it to more than one of the outer circles but eventually the preview will show proper welds.

Here is the final shape.  There are two circles near the top that I adjusted to be slightly larger to keep a good fit and continuity with the design.

Here is the preview of the scalloped heart.  To change the size of the entire shape, click on the mat and drag your mouse to the opposite corner around the items in order to select them.  Then hold down the control key and use the handles on the one items in the shape to resize the group as a unit.
 

I decided to make a separate layer with the circles only to use as a trim on the heart shape.  I did this by simply copying and pasting the circles to another mat.

If you want to do a color preview, you will need to click, drag and select the entire group for the heart or the frame and then uncheck the weld box.  Be sure to redo the weld before cutting or you will have a mess!

The Martha Stewart cartridges are full of great images, fonts, borders and sentiments.  You will probably want to add all of them to your collection because they are so versatile.  It would be very difficult to recreate most of the images.  However, if you need a certain shape right away (perhaps you are a late night crafter like me?) and don't have the cartridge with the image you want, you can sometimes use Design Studio or the Gypsy to make your own version.

It doesn't take too long to make this heart and I encourage you to try it out following these directions.  If you are impatient you can download my file at the link below.  This is still a 4shared link as I haven't had time to set up a new account somewhere else.  I hope that there will not be any issues with the downloads after all of the trouble I had with the gypsy files.  This is a Design Studio file.

These are my trial cuts. I'll add some bling and use them for a card.  They would also make cute "paper cookies" for a Valentine's tree (I wonder if any of you put up a Valentine's tree?).

What other sweet projects are you working on?  I hope this heart comes in handy for you.

Scalloped Heart

Happy Australia Day to all of  my Aussie friends! 
I am finishing my packing today and should be flying to LA early tomorrow morning to meet up with Mandy, Jane, Enfys and lots of others at CHA.  Keep your fingers crossed for me that the storms don't keep me from flying... 


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Happy First Day of Spring!

The weather was fantastic here today for the first day of Spring!  I hope it was lovely wherever you are.  I have been busy with Spring projects around the house and garden (well, to be honest, the garden is mostly my husband's domain).  I also have been working on some "secret" projects that will be revealed soon...

We don't have tulips blooming yet (the photo at the top is from a couple of years ago) but there are several clumps of crocus in bloom and the iris are about four inches tall already.  We have some iris from my husband's grandmother that are this beautiful dark purple color.

Another favorite each year are the pansies - they are so colorful and sweet.

I have been doing a Design Studio for Beginners Series on the Cuttlebug Challenge Blogspot   The series appears on the third Saturday of each month.  Today's post is about the two methods of welding in Design Studio with some tips and tricks to make it easier to copy groups of images for multiple cuts.  You can read the tutorial HERE . If you have any questions you can post them on the Cuttlebug blog or on this post.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Have you figured out which new cartridges are on your wish list yet?  Decisions...decisions...

How to Weld with Cricut Design Studio

This post originally appeared on the Cuttlebug Challenge Blogspot on March 20, 2010.

Hi, it's Diane from the Design Team.  Welcome back for another Design Studio Saturday.  If you missed the first two installments, you can find them HERE and HERE.  I hope that the tips I shared last month were helpful.  The theme for this month is "All about Welding."  I will show you the two basic methods of welding and share some helpful tips.  (All of the images can be enlarged by clicking on them to see the details).

Before we get started, I want to be sure that you know that two days ago, on "Hello Thursday," quite a few new Cricut cartridges were announced.  "Hello Thursday" is the third Thursday of the month and you should always check the Cricut.com site to find out about new products and check for Design Studio and Gypsy updates.

If you have the current version of the software (1.0.31101.0), you will only need to download and install the updated Font Pack.  You can check your version by using the "help" menu and choosing "About" to pull up the information box.

To update your Design Studio program to include these cartridges, go to this LINK (you will need to be signed in to the Cricut.com site) and download the Font Pack.  Be sure to SAVE the download and then run it to install the new cartridges.  Your Design Studio software should be closed when you do this.  When you open the program, the new cartridges will be included in the "All by Category" list.

Now that you are up to date let's talk about welding.

There are two ways to created a new shape or a connected word by welding.  For the first, which is most commonly used for welding words, all of the letters are entered in the same selection box, kerned so they are touching and the weld box checked once for the entire group.  Here are some screen shots to help you see how this works.

I used the font on the new Nursery Rhymes cartridge to spell the word "LOVE."  I double clicked on the mat at the top left to place the cursor in position, selected the shift of the font feature and typed in the letters.  In order to weld items, they must be touching with a slight overlap.  A weld can only be made when there is contact between the letters or images.

The next step is to apply kerning to the word.  Kerning is used to adjust the amount of space between letters.  A negative number will bring the letters closer together and a positive number will widen the spaces between the letters.  I usually start with a value of -.1 for the average sized word.  To complete the kerning you must click the "apply" box directly to the right.

In this screen shot you can see the difference between -.1 and -.2 kerning.  You can move the letters to a position that you find attractive - as long as they are touching they will weld.

You can "fine tune" the location of the letters by using the nudge arrows.  Click on a line of the letter you want to move - it will turn into a dotted red line to show that it is selected.  Be sure to check the "weld" box while the word is selected (with the "handles" around it).

If there is more than one cutting line for the letter part will be dotted red and part dotted black - it doesn't matter for nudging but it can be easier to see the part of the letter that will be welding if you click on the center of any letter with an interior cutout such as "o."  As I mentioned in the tips last month, the first letter can not be nudged - it is positioned by using the handle at the upper left corner of the selection box.

When you preview the word the dark lines indicate the lines that will cut.  If you see color, the letters are not welded - you should click on the word to select it and check the weld box.

To see the welded word more clearly, create a new page and preview the design on that page.  You will see only the actual cutting lines - the overlapped areas that were pale lines will not show on the new page.

When you weld using this method you can copy and paste the welded word and apply all of the operations of the handles (resize, stretch, rotate, skew, compress) to the word as a whole.  This is usually the preferred method for welding but it does not work for all situations.

If you want to apply some of these operations to a single letter in the word you will need to use the second  method of welding.  For this method, you enter each letter or shape individually by choosing the letter and adding it to the mat, then clicking somewhere else on the mat to deselect it.

If you look carefully you can see the pale gray line around each letter.  When using this method, you have to check the weld box while each letter is selected.

This method gives you a lot of freedom in designing your welded word or new shape.  Unfortunately, there is no way to copy and paste the four letters as a unit.  In other words, you will not be able to easily fill a mat with multiple copies of the new word art you have created.  You also can't change your mind about the size of the item you have created and easily change it.   A "select all" and "group/ungroup" feature will be fantastic improvements to the program when they are added (they are "in the works" but there is no date for when these will be added to Design Studio).

Here is a tip to help you duplicate a word or image you created using the second method with individual selection boxes.  Copy and paste the first item (the "L" in this example).

Check the value in the "X" box (the horizontal axis).  Then move the pasted letter to the right to start a new group.  Try to position it so the difference between the two "X" values is a simple number.

In this case, I was able to add 5 to the value and have the "L" positioned to start a second group.

Repeat the process for each letter, by copying and pasting and then adding 5 to the "X" value (the letters will jump to the right when you press enter or click on the mat after changing the "X" value).

The same procedure can be used to duplicate the word lower on the mat by copying and pasting and then adding a consistent amount to the "Y" value.

You can create a vertically welded word all in one box but it will take a fair bit of nudging.  If you only need one copy, it will be faster to use letters in individual boxes, check weld for each and move them into position with the top left handle.

When you nudge horizontally, the letters to the right of the letter you are nudging will "follow" to preserve the kerning.  When you nudge vertically, the other letters stay put.  You can hold down the nudge button to keep the item moving - you do not need to click repeatedly.  (Beware - occasionally the nudge arrow will "stick" and the item will keep moving even after you release the arrow,  fatally corrupting the file.  Be sure to do a "save as" often as you work and rename the file with version1, version2, etc.  This problem was fixed and I hadn't encountered it for months and then it happened to me just a week or so ago.)

Here are some copied, pasted and altered versions of the vertical word.

The last tip for today is that you can add the items into a selection box at different sizes and from different cartridges and still have them stay together in the group.  You simply change the setting of the slider bar and browse to different keypads to find the items you want to add.  As long as you keep the group selected, all of the items will be added in the same box.

In the screen shot above you can see that I entered the Nursery Rhymes "L" at 3 1/2 inches, a heart from George at 2 inches, the "v" and "e" at 2 1/2 inches and a butterfly from Serenade at 1 inch.

After kerning they look like this.

After nudging and welding the word looks like this.

I can quickly and easily copy and paste and resize to create many small duplicates of the image I have created since all of the items are in the same box.

I hope that you will feel more confident with welding now - go ahead and experiment with creating interesting combinations in one box using different sizes and making good use of the nudge arrows.  There are a couple of old videos on my blog demonstrating the two methods of welding.  They are listed and linked in the side column.  Here is the link to my blog, Capadia Designs.

Be sure to check in next month for a lesson on more advanced welding techniques.  Please don't hesitate to ask any questions - I will check the comments and try to help you if you are having difficulty.

Have a great weekend!

Please note - This post was written before the update to the Design Studio program that added the ability to group and resize items in separate boxes.

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