Monday, May 11, 2015

My new font love... Sabella

If you've been reading my blog, you know about my font love. Well, today, I have a new love. Sabella.


I bought this font in a bundle from thehungryjpeg.com (it was a great deal, btw, and I have big plans for some of the brush fonts). I couldn't wait to start using it. Because it's an OpenType font, there are lots of contextual alternates and ligatures to make for BEAUTIFUL titles on the Cameo.

Here's the one I made for my most recent post over at shopevalicious.com:


The c and the s are both alternate characters, so have that extra swoosh to make it look really cool. I'm also addicted to three layer titles. :)

And here is how it looks on the layout:


Props go to scrapbookgeneration.com for having awesome sketches, from which this layout was inspired.


Evalicious Supplies:  puffy letters and puffy stickers, wood veneers, snipsnip labels and tags

Other Supplies:  Sketch - Scrapbook Generation, patterned paper - WRMK Notable / Noteworthy, cardstock - Bazzill Basics, font - Sabella from http://www.thehungryjpeg.com/the-fontastic-font-bundle

Saturday, May 2, 2015

Marquis de Larios

So, here's the REST of the story... (aka: what I did with the title file I made on my last post)...


 I'm working with some of the new Evalicious "This Way" travel themed goodies this week for a contest being held on Instagram (go check it out NOW, if you haven't already... you could win a $30 eGC... @ronascraps).


I used the one page sketch from the March 2015 edition of Create Magazine (published by Scrapbook Generations as my jumping off point. A new sheet of Echo Park paper (Jack and Jill) matches the Evalicious line so perfectly.  Another of life's little joys--when I find a new line of paper that matches my goodies).

The flourish was super skinny, so I ran the Cameo on the slowest setting and was veeeerrrry careful pulling it off the cutting mat.


The sketch called for a row of tickets, but I'm more of a cluster girl myself, so I grabbed a ticket die, and cut a few dies out of cardstock and faux-cork paper.  I did cut thin strips of actual cork to create a border for the white interior.



This was a fun layout to make, and came together super quickly (...uh... once the title was done).

Rona

Other Supplies:  Sketch - Scrapbook Generation, patterned paper - Echo Park Jack and Jill - Jack, Fancy Pants (The Good Life-Labeled), Washi tape - Little B, cork - Quickutz, tickets - Tim Holtz die and stamps, ink - Ranger, cardstock - Bazzill Basics

Thursday, April 30, 2015

Making Titles on the Silhouette: aka using glyphs from OTF Fonts

One of my very favourite things to do is to play with fonts. I spend more time than I care to mention looking at pretty fonts on the internet.  One of my recent fascinations has been the glyphs and alternate letters that come with the OTF fonts.

It all kind of started with Scriptina, and seeing that there's a second ttf file that comes with it with the alternates in it kind of made me swoon.

I'm no graphic artist, so it was news to me when I found out about OTF fonts that, instead of having a second file of alternates, have the glyphs built in. 

Unfortunately, Silhouette Studio does not accommodate the extra feature of OTF fonts. (Update Jan 2019: It has it now in Designer Edition!!!) Sure, I can use the font, but it's just kind of "meh."



The trick is having the right software to access them.  I really wanted to be able to cut out these fonts in Studio without getting new software or doing anything crazy. 

Many times, I tried to do this through Word. I found some pretty good tutorials on the net.  One of my favourites here:  http://www.magpiepaperworks.com/blog/using-opentype-fonts-in-microsoft-word/ . So, I'd end up with something like this...


Pretty cool, right? So, how do I cut this?  First, I tried the easiest thing, which was cutting and pasting to the Studio application. Well, fail. It just came across in Arial Unicode. And if I tried changing the font, I was back to the "meh" version I started with.  Another option was to export a jpg file and trace it in Studio. Ok, that works, but the edges aren't super smooth, and there's a lot of work to clean it up. Plus, you lose the whole advantage of it being vector graphics, and resizable.

I tried Inkscape. Great news... it's free! Bad news... it doesn't have OTF as a feature.

So, I then found my solution with Adobe Illustrator. Bad news.... it's not free. Good news, it works GREAT!

Here are the steps from creating a custom title in Illustrator, though to getting it ready to cut in Silhouette Studio DE:


1. create image in AI

  • file / new / new document / ok (I just want to get to a blank sheet to work on)
  • Click on the Text tool on the left, and start typing. Be sure to change to the correct font, and probably increase the size to 72 or something big so you can see it (right click, or use the "Type" menu item)
  • Now, select Type/Glyphs from the menu. You'll see a ton of characters pop up on the right. 
  • you can narrow it down if you want by highlighting a letter and then clicking the pop down arrow next to "Entire Font" and choosing "Alternates for Current Selection."
  • The only downfall with doing this is that you miss some of the cool characters. For example, there's a character for "LA" and "RI" that I used in this title that I don't see there.
  • Start switching out characters for the glyphs until you end up with something that you love.
  • Now, time to get it ready to export.

2. Outline the text in AI. (Choose the arrow selector tool to select the text first and get the blue box outline, right click, create outlines)


3. Select the text again, then hit D to make it a black outline with white fill


4. Right click and ungroup (this doesn't really make any visible change).

5. File / export / Save as type: dxf. Ok. Save it whereever, just remember where it is. :) It's really easy if you just put it on your desktop because then you can...

6. ... drag the file onto the cutting page in Studio (or Open, but be sure to picke the Files of type DXF).


7. Some welding might be required if there is overlap of the letters. For this file, I had to first be sure that each letter was on the same compound path. For example, I'd select the inside and outside of the "O" and then "make compound path." Likewise with the inside and outside of the "R" flourish. Then I could weld the two together (see the highlighted pic below. See that the "S" isn't welded yet. That won't cut properly.). After all the welding, I'd select the whole thing and "make compound path."



I have the Designer Edition, so I'm not sure whether the importing of DXF files is something you can do with the regular version. 

Check back on Saturday to see this title in action!


Monday, April 27, 2015

New Goodies! And a discount code!


I'm so excited about the new goodies that arrived from shopevalicious.com . Check out these stunning wood veneers! Part of the "This Way" line, just released. Just in time for me to scrapbook my Spain trip. How convenient. :)

There's something special coming up on Instagram May 1-6, so if you haven't checked it out already, go and follow @shop.evalicious . You'll be glad you did.

Also, use RONA15 to get 15% off your purchase at shopevalicious.com ... these goodies can be at your house before you know it!!

Monday, February 2, 2015

Hello!


Happy February! I can't believe we're already one full month into 2015. Just sharing a layout I recently created for the Evalicious design team. Check out the site for all the details of the Evalicious goodness.

A few extra points about the layout... I really love the "story" gold glitter phrase thickers. I mean, Hello? (get what I did there? ;)  The layout itself was roughly based on a Scrapbook Generations sketch, with a lot of changes.


The Viewmaster shape I actually made myself, tracing an original one in the Cameo software. It's such a versatile shape, and with the selfie craze these days, I could use it on almost every layout!

Oh, and I almost forgot! I used some plain tags that were shared online. They are seriously awesome... a whole page of tags that you print and cut. For free. Yeah. Check out Kaitlin Sheaffer's blog for the deets. http://www.kaitlinsheaffer.com/downloads/

Thanks for looking,
Rona

Supplies:  Evalicious (wood veneers, shaped paperclips, puffy stickers, flair), AC Thickers (Story Glitter foam phrase stickers), patterned paper (Elle's Studio Good Cheer, Chickaniddy Jolly Good)