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A PDF Heart Box
 February 18th, 2011 by Sandy McCauley

Okay, so this is a little late for Valentine’s Day, but I didn’t receive the question from Clare until Tuesday morning! : )

Clare is a new KNK Maxx owner and was having some problems with a free PDF file she had downloaded from a great web site that I’m sure you ALL are going to be checking out:

PaperCraft Art Creative Downloads

This file is a perfect example to show how to import vector PDF pattern files into KNK Studio and prepare them for cutting. So, I made a series of videos to show the four major steps in getting the file ready to cut:

The first step is to import the vector file (after it is downloaded and saved to your computer). For many PDF files, you use the same steps as when importing AI files. You need to assign a color for the Fill, if it imports with invisible Fill and you need to turn off Thick Line Attribute. Now that won’t be necessary with ALL PDF files, but just in case, watch this video:

Importing Vector PDF with Invisible Fill and Thick Line Attribute

Once those steps are completed, the lines need to be recolored. This is normally just a matter of selecting one or more paths at a time and then picking colors from the Shop Palette to distinguish fold lines from cut lines. In this particular example, there are a few spots that needed correcting and, thus again, this particular file is a great example to show what you might need to do with an imported pattern file. Make sure to test cut first from scraps just to make sure you understand how the pattern will fold and if there are any problem areas needing alteration:

Recoloring Lines in Fold Up Patterns

Then, you’ll need to decide if you want to score those fold line or convert them for dashed/perforated cutting. I’ve covered both options in the next video:

Scoring and Pouncing

Finally, before cutting the pattern, I will check to see if the various lines and curves making up the design are many individual segments or connected into one or only several paths. While it’s not essential to make them one continuous path, you will probably get a better cut if they are. It can take a lot longer to cut if the machine is lifting and dropping the blade for individual line segments, especially if you haven’t set the cut order. Also, it may lead to more spots where the cutting isn’t smooth. So, in this final video I show how to use the Connect Path function in the software to join up all of those lines. Now, one could also just manually join the adjacent nodes on any two paths, but in this case there are a LOT of individual segments. So, when the nodes are close together, this one step function will join all of them. Nice! Oh… and I also show how to create the separate heart halves to cut from a second color, as shown in the box I cut above. : )

Connecting Paths

Finally, I have an older video on resizing boxes. Note that you can normally just drag the corner on a selected pattern and resize proportionately and you should be fine. However, when you want to stretch the pattern in one direction, more than in the other, then watch out! Your fold-up pattern may no longer work! So, a revisit of this blog post and video will help you in such situations.

Post about Resizing Boxes

Resizing Boxes

Thanks, Clare for providing the topic for this post! Good luck with learning your new Maxx! Let me know if you have more questions.


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Simplifying a Paper Piecing Design
 January 14th, 2011 by Sandy McCauley

My friend, Susan Mast, sent me an image she was tracing to create the card above. She was stuck on the raccoon’s tail. She had it designed so that there were 5 individual pieces, but what she wanted was just two pieces… a solid gray piece and then a black overlay piece with sections cut out. This makes a lot of sense, especially when designs have many smaller interior paths that would require an insane amount of arranging and gluing.

So, as usual, a picture is worth a thousand words and a video is worth ten thousand! lol So, here’s the video to show you how I took Susan’s tracing of the tail and then turned it into the paper piecing she wanted. Note that this example is a little more complicated than most because we needed to do what I call a die cut weld, in order to get the individual pieces first. Thus, in many situations, you would be starting with just an image with lots of little parts and then creating the cut-out overlay and the slightly shrunken background piece.

Simplifying a Paper Piecing

A big thanks to Susan for allowing me to use her question for today’s post! If you happen to live in Arizona, note that Susan teaches card and mini-album classes at Scrapbooks, Etc in Mesa. Her classes are always so much fun with adorable projects to make! You can also visit her web site and blog to see more of her adorable work.


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Reducing Nodes AND Lori’s Internet Store
 October 25th, 2010 by Sandy McCauley


Congratulations to Lori G on the launch of her web site, www.studioalohadesigns.com, selling her beautiful cutting files in .knk, .svg, and .gsd formats!

Lori contacted me a few weeks ago about the best way to reduce nodes in the file shown above. As all of the file designers know, it’s not critical having a lot of nodes in a KNK file as it will cut quickly and smoothly to digital die cutters. However, a file with hundreds of nodes is NOT handled nearly as well when cutting to a Cricut, Silhouette, Wishblade, or Craft Robo. So, I showed Lori, in a video, how I would handle reducing the nodes in this file and then decided the video I made should be posted to my blog and shared with all of you! Even if you’re not a file designer, you could be creating files that you’d like to share with your friends or family members who own the other cutters mentioned above. So, take note of how nodes can be eliminated without compromising the file itself.

Here’s a link to the video: Reducing Nodes

I wish Lori the very best with her new Internet store!


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Finding Greek Alphabet Characters
 September 24th, 2010 by Sandy McCauley


Today’s post is in response to a question at the Klic-N-Kut Yahoo group. Karen C asked about a source for Greek letters. Piece of cake! All you need to do is select Times New Roman as your font and use the Character Picker function to locate the Greek alphabet that’s available within this font. Here’s a quickie video to show you the steps:

Finding Greek Alphabet Characters in KNK and ACS Studio


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Rhinestone Resizing and Re-spacing Calculators
 September 3rd, 2010 by Sandy McCauley

Rhinestone pattern resizing is a relatively easy process and most everyone already doing rhinestone designing probably has their own method, depending on which software they use. My new customers often contact me for guidance so I decided to make a video for them, as well as create a simple Excel calculator to make the process simpler.

But re-spacing the circles in a pattern is a different matter. This has come up dozens of times and, until a few weeks ago, I typically said that you are stuck with what you get in the original design. However, that’s not true. I pondered it for a while and then spent an entire weekend “doing the math” and came up with a method whereby an existing pattern can have the circles moved closer together or farther apart, while maintaining the exact same pattern design and circle size. The most obvious application for this would be when a pattern is resized for a different size stone and the spacing between the circles subsequently becomes too large or too small. But it can also be used when designing with rhinestone fonts in which the spacing is already determined based on the font design. If you do not like the spacing, then CHANGE IT using my method and the rhinestone spacing calculator (anther Excel spreadsheet I’ve created).

So, the links to the tutorial videos are below. If you cannot open an Excel 2007 spreadsheet, no problem. Accugraphic is working on making these two calculators available on the Internet. Or you can download the free OpenOffice program and use that. Note that while the videos were made using functions in ACS and KNK Studio, I’m fairly certain these same functions I’m using can be found in the other major designing programs, such as Corel Draw, Funtime, and WinPC Sign.

Resizing Rhinestone Designs Video

Re-spacing Rhinestone Designs Video


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