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)


    Mud Puddles for CeCe!

    by | Dec 28, 2008 | Designing, Free Videos, Mud Puddles - Designing, Transformation


    A while back, CeCe asked me if I knew how to design a mud puddle in KNK Studio. Now, I knew that I could just show how to use the freehand tool and simply draw one. But most users, including me, aren’t that crazy about freehand drawing unless we are tracing an existing image. So, off and on, I had been thinking about how to design one easily in KNK Studio. Finally, this morning, it hit me. While I knew the key was using Transform>Transformation, I wasn’t getting the look I wanted from any of the shapes I chose at the start: circle, oval, star, rounded rectangle, etc. Then it just suddenly came to me that I hadn’t tried modifying a star before applying the transformation. Bingo! It resulted in exactly the look I had in my mind… which is somewhat similar to the Sizzix Splats die. Anyhow, here’s a quick video to show you how I created the ones you see above. Note that the possibilities are endless in terms of all of the possible looks. Just try using more or less points on your star.
    Making a Mud Puddle Video

    Roy G Biv

    by | Dec 18, 2008 | AI Files, Designing, Fan Shape Tool, Free Files, Free Videos, Rainbows - Designing

    Once again, Carol has come up with a FUN KNK Studio request! What’s the easiest way to make a rainbow? Well, there are probably three or four different ways to achieve this… thus this could be Part 1 in several posts about rainbows. We’ll have to see. But the method that came to my mind is not bad and creates the rainbow in a fairly easy, methodical, manner using the Fan shape. Basically you just create one fan, and then start duplicating it and modifying two settings up in the Smart Bar, along with recoloring each fan, as you go.

    Making a Rainbow

    For those who would rather just have the file, here’s a link to download it. Also note that I will be converting all of my files to both .ai and .svg for those who own other cutters and would like to have some of the files I make:

    Rainbow File in KNK Format
    Rainbow File in AI Format

    Now, regarding Roy G Biv… I hadn’t heard that acronym in 20 years! But I found it this morning when I was searching the Internet for the order of the colors in a rainbow: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet.

    Free Files! Cupcake Wrappers!

    by | Dec 15, 2008 | Cupcake Wrapper, Designing, Welding

    I was contacted by a bakery owner in Florida interested in a Klic-N-Kut if she could design and cut her own cupcake wrappers. She sent me to a web site selling some very elaborate designs and I instantly became obsessed with creating a basic file that could then be modified to fit any celebration or any holiday. Once we had a basic scan of a pattern, it was easy to recreate the shape and then simply create words and images to weld to the top, such as this simple Happy Birthday prototype I created:

    Then I decided to try a few Christmas designs and they were fun to make as well. Obviously, the possiblities are limitless! Note that you don’t bake the cupcakes with these cutouts… they are meant to be applied after the cupcake is complete with icing and decorations… simply wrap around a cupcake, fold up a tab, insert tab into a cut slit, and reopen the tab.

    Here are two links to help you in your own designing. And I promise to not to tell anyone if you prefer to buy the cupcakes from your local grocery store and just cut out your own wrappers to make them look like YOUR OWN CREATIONS! 😛

    Link to free zip with KNK files for simple Happy Birthday, Noel, and Basic Pattern for Cupcake Wrapper

    *** New *** Cupcake Wrapper Templates for Designing in KNK, MTC, SVG, EPS, PDF, and Studio formats

    (Big thanks to Judy Keating for sharing her designs and to Gayle Galura-Scott for converting to .Studio for the Silhouette owners!)

    Link to web site selling cupcake wrappers – get some GREAT ideas here!