Cutting Samples with the Klic-N-Kut

by | Jun 13, 2008 | Balsa, Chipboard, Clear Rubber, Fabric, Felt, Stamps, Vinyl

Here are some photos of items I’ve cut with the Klic-N-Kut to show the intricacy possible with this cutter:

White Cardstock from Sam’s Club


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Vinyl cutting: Note the smaller lettering is only 1/4″ in height

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1/32″ thick Balsa Wood

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1/16″ thick, flexible chipboard using the sliver blade

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Clear Rubber for making your own Acrylic Stamps

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Stiffened Craft Felt

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What the Heck is Pouncing?

by | Jun 11, 2008 | Dashed Line Cutting, Pouncing

Today’s blog covers Pouncing in KNK Studio, with some tips about using it. First off, pouncing is the exact same thing as dashed line cutting or perforating in other programs. Instead of a solid cut line, you get dashes cut and you can specify how long the dashes will be and their spacing. Some applications for this would be:

  1. Fold up projects, such as gift boxes, bags, and pop-up cards.
  2. Adding dashed cuts to the interior of your die cuts for dimension, such as you see with the Sizzix dies.

  3. In paper piecing, dashed cuts on the main background piece can serve as guides for placing the other cuts you glue on top. (Thanks to Klo Oxford for this great idea!)

To do pouncing:

First, pouncing must be done in Sign Blank mode. Otherwise, if you are using Page mode, the pounced lines will be sent to the origin for pouncing and then the cut lines will be sent to the origin for cutting and they will NOT line up! Thus, go to Cut>Plotting Defaults, and check Sign Blank near the bottom. Then click on Save Default and click on OK.

Next, select the lines to be pounced and change their color. For example, in the image to the right, the black line will be cut and the blue line will be pounced.


When you enter the Cut Preview window, RIGHT click on the 6th icon from the right in the Cut Tools toolbar.

Enter the dash and space settings from the popup window:

Click on OK and make sure the Pounce icon is indented.

Then, if you have more than one image in your window, and you need to ONLY do the Pounce on one color, then click on the second icon from the right.


Uncheck the color you do NOT want to Pounce. In this case, we uncheck black. Then click on Cut.

After the line is pounced, then click on the Pounce icon to outdent (no longer indented), use the second icon from the right again to now uncheck the color you just pounced. In this case, the blue would now be unchecked. Click on Cut and your image will be cut.

That’s it!

Creating a Wreath

by | Jun 10, 2008 | Array, Free Videos, Wreaths - Designing

Sorry I didn’t have a chance to post for several days. I was at the Great American Scrapbooking Convention in Arlington, Texas! It was lots of fun and the best part is meeting my customers! I taught 14 students in private or semi-private classes and one of the favorite items was definitely the On Arc with Rotation feature. I decided to make a quick video for my blog so that everyone can start using this very cool design feature! Enjoy!

KNK Blade Holder Adjustment

by | Jun 5, 2008 | Blade Length, Bladeholder

About 4 months after I wrote the KNK User Manual, it was discovered that the newest silver bladeholders for the KNK were shorter than the original ones released in Spring 2007. This causes the tip of the blade to be too far above the material to have enough force to properly cut anything from cardstock on up. Thus, if you are a relatively new owner of a KNK, then YOUR bladeholder will probably need adjusting so that the tip of the blade can be just above the cutting surface. (Refer to the photo.) This is VERY easy to do! 🙂

Simply unscrew the top of the bladeholder and move the flange upwards by also unscrewing, and then tighten the top down onto the flange.
Note that it is then NOT necessary to push the bladeholder all the way down in the grip. See next photo below. The bladeholder should be positioned so that the tip of the blade is around 1/16” above the material you are cutting before the cut begins. Don’t forget to tighten the grip firmly so that that bladeholder doesn’t slide upwards during the cut. AND… of course, ONLY have as much blade exposed as the thickness of the material you are cutting.

Handy Circle Tip

by | Jun 3, 2008 | Circles, Editing

Before I get into today’s tip, I wanted to let you all know that I will be gone to Texas to teach cutting classes for the rest of the week, so I may not get a chance to post! Hopefully, I will find a few minutes to post something new, but if not, then know that new tips and tidbits will appear again next week! 🙂

Okay, todays’ lesson: When auto-tracing images, you will often find that circles end up…. well… wonky! lol Here is a fish image that I traced from a free pdf file I found at the Coloring Page link at the bottom of my blog:

You can clearly see that the bubbles and the eye of the fish are NOT very desirable circles.

Well, in KNK Studio, there is a QUICK way to convert any path to a circle. First, select the image and go to Arrange>Break Path so that the individual paths can be selected.

Double click on one of the circles to bring up the nodes:
Now… are you ready… this is SO easy you may miss it… Click on the letter “O” on your keyboard. Bingo! The wonky circle vanishes and it’s replaces with a perfect circle!

Now just repeat for each of the remaining circles and your final result will be:

Note that this works in both polyarc and polygon modes. Have fun making your life more round!