Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Die cuts and glitz...

How do you decide which die cuts or embellishments you want to add to your layouts? Sometimes I feel so over whelmed trying to decide. Glitz, fibers, chipboard, textures, etc. which do I want to add? I have so many drawers/binders full of pre-made ones and tools to make them with that it’s hard to remember what I have. I feel a lot of times I could have picked something that would have been more complementary had I just opened the right drawer or looked through my paper just one more time. I have to be careful not to spend so much time putting combinations together so that I never get the layout done. I make many of my page elements with my Cricut Expression cutter using DS (Design Studio) and the forty plus cartridges I have acquired over the past couple years. Although I can most always find what I need on the cartridges and DS I love to use SCAL (Sure Cuts A Lot) and Inkscape. You can take an image break down the layers then save as an SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) file. I am still slow at manipulating Inscape and tend to get frustrated with not being more proficient at it. With practice and tutorials I hope to someday breeze through it. With SCAL I find the ability to use computer fonts a big plus and you can always find a font that matches a cartridge font if you look. Currently I have 2683 fonts & dingbats on my computer. I love the ability to cut available silhouettes and doodlebats/dingbats. Some of the intricate silhouette overlays available are simply beautiful. With SCAL shadowing is so much easier as well. The layouts below are all layouts I used SCAL to add elements to.






















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