Digital Die Cutting With Sandy McCauley » Polyarc

Modified Fan

Sandy McCauley — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:27:47 +0000

Rachel in New Zealand contacted me yesterday with a design request. She wanted to recreate a slightly unusual welded word title she had found on a card. The above screen shot shows the image based on the design she sent to me. So, how do you create it easily? Well, maybe you would like to give it a shot yourself first in KNK Studio before watching the video. Hint… I started with the Fan Shape.

Modified Fan Video

If you are interested in learning more about welded lettering, be sure to check out two videos I sell in my store: Creating Welded Letter Titles and Creating Monograms. I now sell directly via Paypal and my videos can also be purchased at Scrapbook Die Cutter via credit card and Paypal.

Round Corner and Fillet Round Corner

Sandy McCauley — Thu, 14 May 2009 18:28:10 +0000

Today’s video is for Lisa S who was having some issues with the Round Corner and Fillet Round Corner functions in KNK Studio. Round corner can be a little finicky… the default setting of 0.2 for corner radius is way too high. I recommend immediately resetting that to 0.02. That will give you a lot more control over the look of your rounding. Also, you have to do the outer corners and inner corners separately. Fillet Round Corner is more straight-forward. It appears that it picks up the settings from Round Corner automatically. And you can individually click on inner and outer corners without leaving the window and re-entering.

Here’s the video: Round Corner and Fillet Round Corner

Also, I covered Fillet Round Corner in a previous post here for those who missed it. In this video I show how to design a file folder shape using this handy function: Designing a File Folder

As always, post if you have any questions!

More Designing Tips in Klic-N-Kut Studio

Sandy McCauley — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:21:13 +0000

The main purpose of this video is not so much about the Easter egg, but rather to illustrate a great assortment of tools and hot keys available in KNK Studio… functions you will be able to use elsewhere in your design work with this wonderful software. Some of these have been covered in other videos and the usage of them in this video will be a reminder. But there are also a couple of new things I show.

While watching the video, take note of the following functions:

Tranformations: used to distort images -I use it to convert an oval to an egg shape. As a reminder when using the functions in this window, you get different results if you also hold the Ctrl key versus the Shift key versus no key. Try it out!

In Polygon editing mode, select any two nodes and then press “I” on the keyboard to insert nodes

Similarly, in Polyarc editing mode, there is a Divide icon in the Smart Bar which allows you to insert a specific number of nodes along the path between any two existing nodes.

Use the Stroke and Fill tools to thicken any open path and then use the Basic Weld tool to convert to a closed path.

Select an image and place the cursor over the center. Hold down both Alt and Ctrl keys on your keyboard and drag the center. A copy of the image will be created and you can only drag the image horizontally or vertically to keep it aligned with the original.

When Object A is on top of and extends beyond Object B, use the AND Weld tool to trim the excess from Object A to fit Object B.

When moving an object on the screen, hold down the Shift key while using the arrow keys on the keyboard and the object will move much faster than if you only use the arrow keys alone.

If you have ANY questions about the use of these functions, be sure to post. And here’s the link to the Easter Egg Video!

Designing a Heart and a Shamrock

Sandy McCauley — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 09:42:37 +0000

After a very busy month, I’m back to this blog and have lots of new tidbits to share. Last month, I intended to show you an easy way to design a heart BEFORE Valentine’s Day but missed the date. Since the same design is used in a shamrock, I combined the two and that’s the topic of this post’s video. Have fun!

Heart and Shamrock Video

Hot Air Balloon for Lynn G

Sandy McCauley — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:20:58 +0000

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! )

Let’s Grow Some Grass!

Sandy McCauley — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:31:06 +0000

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

I Love Halloween! Do You?

Sandy McCauley — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 00:32:00 +0000

Today’s free video is a gift to all of you who enjoy decorating for Halloween. I show in this video how to design your own spider web. It’s amazingly easy to do and this method offers total freedom in how uniform or how crazy you want your web to look! I even have an “oops moment” in the video that I decided to just leave in, because it’s something that may happen to you during the design and I wanted you to see how to fix it.

Designing Your Own Spider Web

As always, let me know if you have any questions!

Erasing Line Segments

Sandy McCauley — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 21:00:00 +0000

Jo, a member of the Klic-N-Kut Yahoo group, needed assistance with erasing line segments in a bookplate file she was designing. Because she was trying to adjoin an open arc to a closed rectangle, it wasn’t possible to simply weld one to the other to remove the portion of the rectangle not needed.

But not to worry… there is a feature inside the polyarc editing mode which makes it simple to erase line segments that aren’t needed. This video shows you how:

Erasing Line Segments

If you like this feature, then you’ll equally enjoy the many others in that same editing mode. I sell a downloadable video called “The Power of Polyarc Editing” which details each of the functions in this mode and also comes with a pdf printout guide to help you remember how to use the tools AND sample files (in both .knk and .gra formats) that are used in the video to show how each tools works. Here is a link to that video:

The Power of Polyarc Editing

Decorative Edged Card

Sandy McCauley — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 23:27:00 +0000

Today’s post is for Lynn G who requested a method for making a deckle edge. Even though Lynn posted some samples, I’m not sure I created exactly what she wanted. At first I was trying a random, sort of torn edge look to a card. But after cutting it, I decided that tearing would look a hundred times better than what my free-hand squiggle line produced! lol So, I decided to take a more formal technical approach and use some curves to the pattern and upon cutting, I liked the results. Note that in the video, the final result would look like the card below. So I took the pattern, just dragged the corner to make it MUCH smaller and then created a vertical array with several more copies and created the second look… which is much nicer and more in line with what I think Lynn was looking for (which is the card above). So, while I noted that you could do it in the video, I didn’t show that part, but it’s really quite simple. I’m also uploading the final card in .knk format that I cut and the link to it is below, as well.

Five New Videos!

Sandy McCauley — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 21:07:00 +0000

At last, I have new videos released! Links to the store are in the left column here and I’ve added these five to the Suggest Video Viewing Order so that you can see where they fit in with the rest. The topics include:

36 Tidbits: These are 36 relatively recent discoveries and most of them will prove useful during designing and editing your images.
The Power of Polyarc Editing: Learn how to use the 9 tools in the Polyarc Editing Smart Bar.
Manipulating Images: A video for those who are new to graphical programs and need help learning to do the very basics. Experienced users may also learn a new trick or two!
Using the Clipart Viewer: The clipart viewer allows you to see and import graphical images into the software and the video shows you how to set up new locations and order them in a way that will be useful to you. Note that owners of Klic-N-Kut cutters receive this video on their Designs and Images Collections 1 CD.
Using The Font Thing: The Font Thing is a freeware program for organizing, managing, and installing fonts to use with your digitial cutter but most users don’t realize how to use ALL the functionality provided. Based on seeing SO many questions from users for the past 9 years, I decided a video might just be the “thing” to get users fully utilizing this terrific program. There’s a link in the product description to download the software and I recommend making sure it installs correctly on your computer before buying.

Thanks to ALL of my customers for their continued support of my videos! Because you continue to purchase these videos, it allows me to continue making the time to help at the Yahoo groups and create free videos to post here at my blog. You all are the best!