First of all, it’s ALWAYS important to give credit where credit is due. The ideas and methods shown in the video I created today came from a video class taught by Klo Oxford. While she didn’t invent this concept, she did take the time to figure out how to design them in her cutting program and I found her method of creating these spirals to be both brilliant and fun! And it’s relatively easy, too… just make sure you take note of each step and you should be able to create spirals from a wide range of shapes, such as circles, flowers, stars, apples, teddy bears, shamrocks, angels, wedding bells, grad caps, and more!

The video to learn how to do this in KNK and ACS Studio is here:

Creating a Spiral Card

If you want to watch Klo’s video class where she creates a really crazy fun card using stars and circles, then go here:

Klo’s Spiral Card Class

Finally, a big thanks to Lynn Keniston who emailed me about Klo’s video and, thus, prompted me to figure it out for KNK/ACS owners. Thanks, Lynn!!!

The video will show you how to design your spirals. Now for attaching to the inside of your card, here’s a quick method that worked great for me:

1. Decide where you want the spirals in your card. Note that they do not have to be centered. I do like the start of the spiral cut to be positioned towards the center fold:

2. Next, select either side (I chose the left side) and flip it over and apply glue around the outside edge only:

3. Adhere the spiral to the card and clean off any glue that might seep out along the sides.

4. Apply glue to the very center of the spiral, in the place where you want it to attach to the other spiral cut:

5. Place the front of your other spiral face down and centered on top of the first spiral cut. Then apply glue around the outside edge of that spiral:

6. Close the card and then press firmly or use a brayer to make sure the newly glued piece will be adhered to the other side:

7. Open your card! You’re done!

Since I had to re-upload all of these videos, I took the time to accomplish a second item on the To Do list, which was to reorganize the videos. I guess I’ve always had a bit of a hang-up about folders with too many files. When collecting anything in large numbers, I find a need to arrange them in some sort of orderly way to make finding what I need quicker and easier. I think they call it being “anal?” lol

So, all of the blog videos and miscellaneous other free videos have been arranged into a series of categories: Features, Designing, Editing, Text, Support, Import Export, and Rhinestones. And you’ll find links to these under the Support tab here (and then click on Videos). OR, you can just click on this link:

Free Videos

Note that the Support section will continue to grow as I remember specific tutorials I need to share, as well as new videos that need to be made. If you find anything you’d like to see added, be sure to let me know and I’ll do my best to make it available.

A for Array
D for Cutting Defaults
E for Export
F for Fit Object to Path
G for Delete all Guides
I for Install Fonts
N for Notes
O for Outline
etc etc

So, to encourage all of you to do the same, I created a short video showing how to do this:

Setting Up Hot Keys

I also created a list of suggestions. Note that in same cases I’ve listed several options, so that you can decide which assignment would make the most sense. For example, where I used “F” for Fit Object to Path, you might prefer to use “F” for Flip or Install Fonts. The idea is for you to pick what is most useful for your work AND will be easy for you to remember.

Suggestions for Single Letter Hot Keys

And then, so that you can have your own cheat sheet to use until you have your new hot keys memorized, I created a form with the 26 letters of the alphabet listed, along with the other available keys you can use to set up additional shortcuts. Note that Ctrl 0 – 9 are available, along with the keys: Home, End, Page Up and Page Down. However, in some releases of the software, Ctrl 4 and Ctrl 5 have already been assigned to Layout>Arrange and Distribute>Align to Selected>Equal Vertical Spacing and Equal Horizontal Spacing, respectively. I have decided to release those two and assign V and H to those functions instead, because they are SO very useful in rhinestone pattern tweaking. : )

Custom Hot Key Cheat Sheet Form

Next, if you also want the complete list of ALL shortcuts in the software, then here’s the latest list that I have and use in the releases of the user manuals. If you know of any others not on my list, then please let me know. I like to keep the list current:

All Software Shortcuts

Finally, here’s a list of my all-time favorites:

Favorite Short Cut Keys in KNK Studio

Whew… enough on the hot keys? If not, then let me know what I missed!

I did figure out that if I performed a marquee-select of a group of objects, that the last object was always the last one in the group either to the left or to the bottom of the selection. But that really didn’t make the function all that useful since the last one in the marquee-select could very well NOT be the one I wanted as the alignment point. So, I posted over on CADLink’s Forum, received a response, and now understand how to preset which object to use as the reference object for alignment. This makes the function a LOT more usable. Have a look at the video:

Align to Last Object

This function will obviously be very handy for those tweaking rhinestone patterns, especially when using the hot keys of: L, R, T, B, or even the C and E. But others who are doing design work in KNK, ACS, or DM will probably also occasionally find the need to align objects specifically to another.

Before I close, there have been a few changes made to this site in the past fews. First off, Chad added a Testimonials section to the lower left hand column. He also added a new Gallery plug-in and I’ve converted over one of the photo albums: 20 Plus Materials Cut on a Klic-N-Kut. See if you like the new format. I’ll gradually get the other albums converted. Finally, the video capturing software used for today’s video is Camtasia Studio 7 and does it ever ROCK! It allows me to add features such as showing which keys I’m pressing on the keyboard, larger cursors, zooming, titling, and more. Thanks to Melinda Stolarek for convincing me I HAD to have it! I’m still using the one month free trial, but will bite the bullet and order it when the trial period runs out.

Not to worry! This is a perfect application for the Ginsu Knife tool. Once I stretched the image, I cut off the two flaps and resized their width to match base of the box. Then I welded them back into place. The key was to just know which dimensions needed to still match so that the box pattern would work. The only thing is that you may need to do a test cut after stretching any given fold-up pattern to see for yourself which parts still work and which parts will need adjusting. If you have a pattern yourself that you cannot figure out, then please send it to me! This is a terrific new subject to explore.

Here’s the video to watch: Heather’s Gable Box Resizing

In today’s video,

Flower Pot Design

I show another way to connect the two ends of a gap. Just select the end nodes and use the middle top icon to connect the ends with a straight line. Then you can proceed with the rest of the weld.

For those interested in designing shaped greeting cards, watch the entire video to see how easy it is to use the Flip and Weld technique to create perfect symmetry and even a dashed fold line, if desired.

Thanks to Sharon M for today’s topic about converting a paper piecing project into a coloring book image. It’s very simple to do and it only took a few steps to show the basic procedure:

However, there were a few things that were a little different about Sharon’s project so it provided an opportunity to cover a few more features in the software, specifically how to weld some of the individual pieces before using the Thick Line Attribute. And also how to die cut one image from another. Both of these have been covered in previous posts, however this project gave new applications.

As usual, as I’m typing this now, I realize that I forgot one of the important tips when recording today’s video. UGH!!! When you have completed your coloring book image, you may wish to save it as a PDF file OR even convert it to a JPG or BMP. For PDF, just go to File>Publish to PDF. Remember to uncheck the box which forbids printing:

Whether or not you choose to forbid editing is entirely up to you.  : ) You will need to select a password if you do choose that option.
If you wish to export as a JPG or BMP, select the image first, then go to File>Export image and you can select Monochrome since it will be a black and white image. Normally, 300 is the standard resolution used in digital images, so I would recommend leaving that at 300.

Of course, if you are doing this with a colored image, then leave the Full Color option checked.
The last step will be to name your exported image, select a location on your computer to save it, and then you have your choice of five raster formats:  .bmp, jpg, .pcx, .png, or.tif.

So,  have fun converting images to coloring book pages for the children in your life!  Or even for YOU!  Happy Coloring!  :)

Need a quick balanced rhinestone fill option? Check out the newest method I found for filling images in KNK Studio with circles. It involves using the Array function to create a pattern of horizontal lines through your image:

Move the image to the top of the lines. Select both the image and the line array and apply the AND Weld function:

Then another Make Path is applied, a circle added and the usual Transform>Fit Object to Path, results in the pink pattern shown at the top right of this post.

Other options are available. For example, I could have angled the lines or even made them vertical versus horizontal:

And this would have resulted in a different overall look as shown in the image in the middle. At this point, I could even borrow one part from image and combined it with another part from the other image, producing the fill pattern shown at the far right. As always… many options!

As usual, I have a video for those who want detail! Enjoy! Note that this method also works well filling letters.

Filling Rhinestone Patterns Using the AND Weld

Color Matching Video Part 2

But the question reminded me that I had never posted here about a similar built-in feature in KNK Studio (and ACS, GE, DM) where you can not only click on a color to obtain the RGB color values, but also click on a button to automatically add that color to the Shop Palette in the software. This can be very useful when adding lettering or other vector images to a file for printing. Or, as I will show in a video tomorrow, for adding original colors back to vectorized images.

For today, watch this particular video and learn how to use the feature. It could come in handy sometime!

Using the Color Picker

One thing I failed to mention in the video: don’t be worried about adding new colors to your Shop Palette. These are only in affect for that particular file. When you launch a new blank file or open an existing file, you’ll be back to your default palette. Tomorrow I’ll also show you how to save a modified palette in case that situation ever arises.