It’s Spring! Let’s Design a New Flower!

by | Mar 24, 2009 | Array, Flowers - Designing, Free Files, Free Videos, Outlining Images, Transformation



Thanks to Pam Z for requesting help in designing a particular kind of flower to cut from vinyl. As always, these requests motivate me to try new things in the software and I found a way to design a different kind of petal and then use the circular Array function to create a quick flower from the petal. The video can be viewed at:
Creating a Hollow Petal Flower
If you’d also like the .knk file of the two flowers I show above, then just grab it from here:
Hollow Petal Flowers

Meet Me In St. Louis!

by | Mar 12, 2009 | Events and Retreats, Retreats, Training


Kelly Daggett and I are hosting a Klic-N-Kut Retreat in St. Louis from May 29-31. It will actually be held at the DoubleTree Hotel in Collinsvillle, Illinois (just outside of St. Louis). I will be teaching 6 KNK classes with workshops and projects. This is for anyone who owns a Klic-N-Kut or uses KNK Studio GE to cut to a Silhouette/Craft Robo/Wishblade. Kelly will also have some make-and-takes and prizes for you and the workroom will be available until 1 am for crops or chatting with other attendees.

The retreat will be $350 based on 25 attendees maximum; this does not include your room, but there is a special of $89 per night per room and you can split the room cost with someone else, if you like!

Here’s the preliminary schedule:

Friday May 29th:
3 pm: Hotel check in
5 pm: Meet and Greet, followed by dinner at 6 pm
7 pm: Class and workshop
9 pm – 1 am: Open crop

Saturday May 30th:
8 am: Breakfast
9 am: Classes and workshops
Noon: Lunch
1 pm: Classes, workshops, make and takes, give aways!
6 pm: – Dinner
7 pm: – Class and workshop
9 pm – 1am: Open Crop

Sunday, May 31:
8 am: Breakfast
9 am: Class and workshop
Noon – 4 pm: Open Crop

If you would like to sign up, we are now accepting $100 deposits with the balance being due May 1st. This will be a non refundable deposit, unless the retreat has to be cancelled for some unforeseen reason. You must call the hotel yourself to book your room at the special rate of $89 per night (not per person) plus tax. Their number is 1.800.551.5133 and our event is the KlickNKut event with Kelly Daggett. These must be reserved by May 1st also. Your $100 deposit may be made by Paypal to ifyourwallscouldtalk@gmail.com or if you need Kelly to send you an invoice to pay (you do not have to have a paypal account to pay by invoice, you can use your CC), please let her know. Email her at ifyourwallscouldtalk@gmail.com and note if you would like to pay the full amount or just the deposit. Also, let her know if you want to send a money order or cashier’s check, and she will give you her address.

Here are the classes and description:

Classes Include:

  • Cutting Thicker Materials: learning to cut stiffened felt, chipboard, acrylic, and more
  • Text-ra Special: breaking from tradition to make your titles and greetings look fabulous
  • Tracing Your Way to Success: Achieving better results with auto and manual tracing
  • P&C Perfection: Mastering print and cuts and using it with text
  • Embossing / Engraving: Three KNK ways to add embossing and engraving to your crafts
  • Designing Dynamics: Ten designing tips to help YOU become a KNK Studio artist

    • Hope you can join us! I would love to meet all of my readers in person!

    Sandy

    Hot Air Balloon for Lynn G

    by | Feb 5, 2009 | Designing, Free Videos, Hot Air Balloons - Designing, Polyarc


    I have another GREAT designing challenge to show you today! Thanks to Lynn G who posted a request on the KNK Studio GE Yahoo Group for help with desiging a hot air balloon. Once again, I had to play around for a bit, walk outside and think about it for a bit, and then it hit me that the secret was, once again, in the power of polyarc editing.

    Here’s a link to the video:
    Designing a Hot Air Balloon

    A couple of things I discovered after making the video:

  • If you’d like to expand the balloon to include two more colors for the complete range of a rainbow, then just make your circle 3.5″ instead of 2.5″ and you can add two more circles/colors: see below.
  • When I tested 3.5″, it seemed that I needed to tweak the top node more, plus you’ll have two nodes on the left side to delete, rather than just one. But otherwise, it works the same.
  • You might want to flatten your balloon a bit after creating it. I just shortened the height without changing the width: again see below.
  • You might not want the circles spaced perfectly at 0.25″ each. To get a more realistic 3D look, try making the outer segments thinner and gradually increasing in size towards the middle. For the sake of time, I didn’t do this, but you can experiment with it yourself after you make your first one.

    • Once again, Klic-N-Kut Studio comes through for us with flying colors! (Pardon the pun! :P)


    Sherri’s Dinosaur

    by | Feb 3, 2009 | Editing, Free Files, Free Videos, Outlining Images, Tracing

    At the new KNK_Groove Yahoo group, Sherri P posted that she was having some problems following the user manual tutorial on tracing. I replied that the new Vectorize Wizard is so loaded with functionality that it can be overwhelming to follow the many steps I show in the manual. Because Sherri had scanned the image she wanted to trace and only needed a simple tracing, I suggested she send me the file so that I could show her a quick way to trace it.

    Well, the interesting thing about this particular image (and why my readers here ended up with a free video) is that this is a situation outside of what we normally see when tracing. First of all, one would think this would be ideal for using center line tracing because it’s basically an outlined image with a white filled center (refer to my Center Line Tracing video or any of the KNK Studio manuals). I tried Center Line Tracing, however instead of ending up with separate puzzle pieces (the goal of this project), I had an overall outline of the dinosaur with separate, disconnected lines for the middle of the dinosaur. Now this would be perfect if the user planned to just cut the outside of the dinosaur and then, perhaps, dash-line cut the intererior lines. But to achieve 3 separate puzzle pieces, Accuscan would be needed instead.

    Now tracing it was easy (as you’ll see in the video). The next issue was that the trace lines will be made on either side of the outlines of the image. In most cases, this is also never a problem. But with Sherri’s project, we needed to end up with three puzzle pieces that fit together. So, I came up with the idea of using Transform>Outline to make some of the pieces just a tiny bit bigger, resulting in a better puzzle fit.

    So, check out the video and I also am including a link to the original KNK file sent to me by Sherri in case you want to play along! Special note to non-Groove and non-Maxx owners: this same method should work for those of you with the original monochromatic vectorizing (just use the Scan and Trace Wizard) and those of you with color vectorization (same method I show in the video).

    Tracing and Editing Sherri’s Dinosaur

    And then here is the original file:
    Dino Puzzle To Trace

    I also sell a video on using the Auto Tracing for KNK, ACS, DM and plan to have a new one soon covering the details of the Vectorize Wizard available in the latest KNK Studio Maxx software.