Monday, June 2, 2014

Creating "Flairs" with Silhouette Studio V2 and V3(Designer)

Hello fellow crafters! Two blog posts in such a short while...i seem to be on a roll :). Today I am going to show you how easy it is to create your own "flairs" or epoxy dots for Project Life, Scrapbooks and Cards. These are so simple to create to match your papers in both the designer version and studio version (although Designer version is much quicker :)). I will show you both ways as I know many may not have the designer version. Luckily for me I have a Mac and can have 2 different versions, so Designer Edition is in Version 3 and the studio one in Version 2.

Let's begin with Designer Edition...(the steps here also need to be followed if using the studio edition)

Open up your software and set the page to printer settings
Page settings > Printer Settings (this will change to the default page setting on your printer which in my case is A4 size)

Click on Registration Marks and turn them on...



Next set up your template...

Use the Ellipse  symbol on left side bar to create your " circles
* Hold down your shift key, left click and scroll to create a perfect circle
* then go to Object > Scale > Specify dimensions to be 1" x 1"

You now should have a 1" circle on your mat. Go to replicate and with your circle highlighted > Fill Page (bottom option). You should then have a page looking something like this...


You can see that there is space on the left and right side, so copy and paste a circle on both sides and using replicate > Column of 3 and 4 to create more circles, you will need to space them out a bit and line them up with existing circles. At this point you can save your template for future use.

Next find where you keep your digital files that you wish to work with on your computer and open them up....make your box smaller so you can see what you are working with on both screens, something like this...


The steps from now on with only work in the Designer Edition and we will be using the Advanced section in Fill Pattern.

Grab the image you wish to work with ( I'm going to use the Becky Higgins Rain edition) click on a journal card you wish to use and drag to a circle. You should find the image automatically fills the circle. Scroll in to see what you are doing...


Go to Fill Pattern section and click on Advanced Settings


Advanced Settings:

Mirror Vertically/Horizontally:- you will notice when you click on this function it will move your image around the " corners" of your circle, so you can change it's position where you want it on the circle

Aspect Ratio :- Fixed or stretch :- in most cases you will want the image on fixed as the stretch function, does exactly what it says and stretches the look of the image

Rotate Pattern :- move the image in your circle around by either using the degrees or click on the red line and move that if you want to move to a particular degree

Scale Pattern :- make the image bigger or smaller, you will notice that when you play with this you will get lots of the same image as the software is treating it as a pattern...so movement is very small and unlikely when using this. 

Pan Pattern :- you can move your image around until you get exactly what you want in your circle

Transparency: makes your image lighter so you can add other elements on top or not make the "flair" as obvious.

Have a play, and remember you can always undo if you don't like the look!

The two photos below show you the original fill and the final look after playing with the above features..

THE ORIGINAL DRAG AND FILL CIRCLES BEFORE ANY EDITING...



AFTER PLAYING WITH THE ADVANCED SETTINGS IN FILL PATTERN SECTION
(I used the scale and pan pattern features only here, as i felt that was all that was needed)


From the above photos you can see how easy it is to edit the images to make some interesting epoxy's for your projects... now just simply send to your silhouette and follow the prompts for Print and Cut. I will add some pictures of completed epoxy's in next couple of days so please come back if you want to see the final product :)

You can also play further with these images using images from the cards, tracing, filling with a new pattern and placing on a pattern or plain background...see example below..

Start a new page and cut and paste a completed flair with an element....

Trace and detach the image and pull to side. Drag a patterned paper or card into the image..in this case you can see i'm working with the heart.

Cut the image, then go back to the original page and paste into a circle...either plain or in this case i have already dragged a grid card into the circle...another epoxy dot to use to match your project!

NO DESIGNER SOFTWARE NO PROBLEMS! 

(even if you have the designer issue you may like to try it this way as well as you can get different results, although it is a little more time consuming :))

Follow the above instructions right up to where it states that it will only work in designer edition...

You will then need to work one by one with each circle and each paper/journal card/ image:-

First Drag a image from your computer folder onto the grey area (this will be your working area). I'm using Becky Higgins Midnight digital kit..



Next Drag one of the circles over to the image you dragged in. I want the word perfection in the middle for this epoxy/flair so i need to resize the image so the word fits in the middle of the circle.

Bring your circle to the front of the image...
Highlight circle > right click > bring to front (at bottom of list). 
Make sure your circle is all inside the image otherwise it won't work.

Go to Modify window and with the image and circle highlighted, click Crop. This will leave you with  a perfect circle ready to turn into a flair...


Sometimes with some words/images this does not always work, like this one...


So place the feature (in this case it's the words) in the position you want, highlight both and crop....You will be left with something looking like this on the left..




Grab another circle and fill by cropping with the same colour as the left over background in the image that you want in the circle, then drag the main image over the coloured circle, group to get your final image to cut and print...


You can also play around with shapes, trace and crop to get similar features as the designer version, it just requires a bit more work :)

 I hope you enjoyed this tutorial...

If you are looking for epoxy dots to finish off your handmade flairs, you can find them HERE in my store!

Happy Creating

Kerry 













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