by Sandy McCauley | 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
by Sandy McCauley | 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.
by Sandy McCauley | Dec 17, 2008 | Free Videos, Grass - Designing, Polyarc
Carol B contacted me last night and was interested in designing her own grass. I just LOVE these designing requests, although I’m still muddling over how to create a simply mud puddle for CeCe! lol But I’ll figure it out one of these days.
The video shows how to design the type of grass I show above. If anyone has an example of a different look, then send it to me and I’ll possibly come up with an alternate method. Definitely play with this one, though, as it’s simple, quick, and may just provide some ideas for other designs. Let me know!
Designing Grass Video
by Sandy McCauley | Dec 8, 2008 | Breaking Path, Free Files, Free Videos, Making Path, Welding
I heard from my VERY first Klic-N-Kut customer yesterday, Kristi H. She posted about needing to modify a very ornate font. So, I had a look at it and decided that this would make a great tutorial in basic welding. I’m not sure I actually fully understand what Kristi needs, but that’s okay. After watching this, I know she’ll let me know if I went down the wrong path. lol In the meantime, this is what I would want to do with these letters to make them more usable for my own cutting.
I have both the video and the letter “H” that I used for the video, in case you want to play with this same font yourself for practice. Note that I kept it rather simple, but you could include a lot more of the flourishes, if you so desire.
Video on Modifying an Ornate Font
File Used in the Video
by Sandy McCauley | Dec 2, 2008 | Free Videos, Group Viewer, PDF
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In the final part of this three part series in which I’ve been contacted by “guys out there”, I now thank Paul C for notifying me that you CAN edit vector images from within the Group Viewer. I had specifically said that in order to view the nodes of any particular vector image, you must first ungroup the object from other objects. Uh… wrong! I messed up! 😛
So, I admitted to Paul that he was DEFINITELY correct and I went further and checked out some of the other things you can do when your objects are grouped. Watch this video and note that this may help those of you who import a lot of pdf catalogs from Internet. We often find the images in those pdf files to be grouped and not able to be ungrouped (for whatever reason). But we can use the Group Viewer to identify what’s a vector and what’s a raster, as well as locate raster images to auto-trace from within the viewer. This will all make more sense after you see the video:
Group Viewer Video
by Sandy McCauley | Nov 19, 2008 | Free Videos, Line Style, Round Corner, Spider Web - Designing a, Welding
The next few posts here will all be updates to previous posts based on receiving new information from different guys reading my blog. Thus, this is called my Thanks, Guys Series.
On October 2, I presented a video on converting a single line stick figure into a cuttable object and on October 14, I presented a video on how to design your own spider web. In both of these videos I used Transform>Round Corner to convert single lines in a drawing to 2D images that can be welded and cut.
A guy at CADLink contacted Chad at Accugraphic to let him know that there was a faster way to achieve the same results I was showing in those two videos. You use the Line Style window to create a Thick Style attribute, apply a Make Path and then a Basic Weld.
Spider Web Part 2
Two things I forgot to include in the video: Go to View and make sure Show Line Style is checked. Now this isn’t critical to the success of the method but without Show Line Style turned on, when you leave the Line Style window, your images will appear as thin lines again and you will think you did something wrong. Of course, it’s kind of fun to actually leave Show Line Style turned off and then go ahead and perform the Make Path and Basic Weld and watch your single line image turn into a thick welded object right before your eyes!
The other thing I forgot to mention in the video is that you have a choice in how your lines appear. There won’t be a big difference in the appearance but definitely try clicking on the End Cap choices and also the Sharp vs Rounded vs Mitered choices to view the effects on your image. The following screen shot shows the location of these settings in the Line Style window:
So, this is definitely an excellent alternative to using Round Corner, especially when you have closed paths in your images. Check in soon for the next post in the “Thanks, Guys! Series. ”
