by Sandy McCauley | May 8, 2008 | Aspect Ratio, Decimal, Fractions, Smart Bar
For those who find fractions a pain in the head, note that in KNK Studio the little window boxes up on the Smart Bar are “calculator integrated”. Thus, if you want to change your 4 x 6 rectangle to 4 1/8″ x 6 1/8″ and you can’t remember the decimal equivalent for 1/8″, not to worry! Just click on the lock to unlock the aspect ratio. Then click on the 6 to turn it blue and then type in 6 + 1/8 and then hit the enter key. Bingo, a value of 6.125 will appear! Then do the same for the 4″: change to 4+1/8, press the enter key and 4.125 will appear. This will work for other mathematical signs such as “x” for multiplying and “-” for subtraction.
One more thing… if you test this out and your results get rounded to, say, 6.13 x 4.13, again, not to worry! Go to Options>Klic-N-Kut Setup>Display Units. You can change the number of decimal points used throughout KNK Studio to 3 (or more, if you like). 🙂
by Sandy McCauley | May 6, 2008 | Free Videos, Print and Cut
The only problem with auto-tracing clipart for a print and cut (and this is true in all of the vector programs I’ve tested), you often get the tracing too far to the outside of the image. Thus, when you cut your printed image, there ends up being white edges showing here and there. Not a good thing!
Alas, there’s a quick and easy fix for this in Klic-N-Kut Studio. After you create your image, use the Transform>Inline feature to basically duplicate your outside trace line, but shrink it just enough to fit within the colored boundaries of your clipart. Here’s a link to a quickie video I made to show how to do this! Let me know if you have any questions!
PandCTrick
by Sandy McCauley | May 4, 2008 | Belkin, Dongle, KNK, Toolbars
Thanks to Sharon M who discovered this USB adaptor
Philips Dongle Protector
that would be perfect for those dongle owners who need even more protection from small children or curious pets! This dongle protector has an extension cord, thus you can hide the dongle behind a computer or a desk or just some location completely out of site. 🙂
For those using Klic-N-Kut Studio, you might want to save your toolbar configurations if you’ve performed any customization. We’ve had some reports of toolbar changes vanishing and I’ve experienced some problems with this, as well. To save your current setup, go to View>Toolbars>Save, type in a file name and your settings will be saved. Then, if you ever find your toolbars suddenly defaulted back to the original settings, you can simply go to View>Toolbars>Load and retrieve. This is also a nice feature if someone else in your home or work location use KNK Studio and prefers their own custom setup over yours! As far as I can see you can save as many different configurations as you need.
Also, spend some time looking at the customizing choices! I bet you’ll find some of YOUR most common functions in that list and you’ll enjoy having them right on your screen, rather than buried in a menu tree. 🙂
by Sandy McCauley | May 3, 2008 | Blade Length, Craft Robo, KNK, Silhouette, Wishblade
A HUGE thanks to Lynn B for emailing me and pointing out that when you go to my profile and check out my interests (and the first three were cutting, cutting, cutting), they were all LINKS that took you to blogs where people were into… well… stuff that none of US would want to look at! Yikes! But I think I fixed it! I got rid of my “cutting, cutting, cutting” words. And surely my interest in cardmaking, scrapbooking, and mathematical puzzles won’t lead any of you to bondage sites? lol
So… let’s get to a tip of the… weekend? I can’t commit to frequency… lol These free tips/videos/tutorials will always be based on inspiration and not the calendar! 🙂
Don’t expect your blades to always be the same length! Heck… don’t expect your bladeholders to be identical. And that’s okay. With the KNK system, you simply back off or increase the blade length, as needed, to match the thickness of your cutting material. With the WB/CR/SIL replacement blades, check carefully when you install a new one and just assume you might need one LOWER colored blade cap than usual. If you previously needed the pink cap to cut your favorite cardstock, then you might find you need the yellow one now.
As I always preach at the Yahoo groups and to my WB/CR/Sil students, more blade never equals better cutting, so the KNK owners shouldn’t be extending that blade out all the way and, for the WB/CR/Sil owners, don’t ever think that the pink cap is the key to perfect cutting for ALL materials. Nope… that’s just not right! I even found the other day that I could easily cut Sam’s Club white cardstock with the blue cap on my Craft ROBO! This is something that I would NEVER have even thought to test a few years ago. My guidelines were always what was being said at the Yahoo groups and I would read posts from these super-confident, supposedly expert cutter owners who would post such absurd comments as, “I ALWAYS cut all materials with the the pink cap” or “I always cut using the fastest speed but no O Rings.” Those comments are really sad because, unless you ALWAYS cut the exact same material, then you are just WRONG about using the same settings every time.
So, get that blade length just right so you aren’t using the most important part of the blade to etch your designs into your mat, and you’ll find that you get much better cutting. And if your blade tip isn’t cutting into the mat, then you can use more pressure or even multi-pass cutting and not worry about damaging that blade. Instead, you’ll be getting better cutting and that’s what it’s all about! 🙂
by Sandy McCauley | May 2, 2008 | Free Videos, Invisible Colors, Job Palette, Print and Cut
Users of KNK Studio will discover that some files they import or open will have white or invisible colors. These can both be very misleading and I always get rid of them as quickly as possible! The only time I might choose to use either is with a Print and Cut file where I wish to hide my cutting lines for the printing portion. But even then one can usually just send the trace lines to the back so that the raster image hides them… but that’s another tip for another day! lol
So, here’s a quickie video that shows how I get rid of invisible lines. Note that I have the Job Palette showing on the right side (View>Show Job Palette) and then I’m simply dragging a new color (with my left mouse button) and dropping it on top of the invisible color on the Job Palette. One thing to note… I don’t let go of the mouse button until I see that little black circle disappear. Watch closely for that.
ChangingColors
Now…. go practice until you master that little trick. It comes in handy! 🙂
