Photo Corners on Inkscape and Gimp

Learning to make your own photo corners is a very practical yet creative thing that can enhance and embellish the look of your scraps. This is an easy tutorial to give you a start, after you have made it. Go ahead and make your own corners, your way and apply them to your projects! If you are not a digi scrapper, you can still use this project, if you can print it in card stock and use a cutter to shape it and add it to one of your projects, you will have a lot of fun making your own corners yourself instead of buying them in kits.

Fire up Inkscape.
►Choose the rectangles and Squares tool and make a narrow rectangle. Give it any color you like. I will make this one red.
►At the bottom of the page, and while the rectangle is selected, right-click on the Stroke and when the little menu appears, chose Edit Stroke and when the dialog box appears, click on the X, to take out the stroke.
►Now, go to Path, Object to Path. Click on the Nodes tool which is just below the Arrow or Select tool. When the nodes appear, click on one to select them, when you see that they turn blue, click on the center of the narrow rectangle and pull, while holding down the Shift key (that way the nodes will move symmetrically and your object will not be deformed.) Now you have a rounded corner.
►Duplicate what you have and drag the copy to one side. While it is selected, right-click on it so that the rotation arrows will appear and turn it around so that it will become the vertical portion of your photo corner.
Drag it to meet the other piece of the photo corner and join the so they match perfectly. Or, while it is selected, you can click on the 5th button from the left at the top of the page, to rotate selection 90 degrees. ►Then you need to join the two pieces, to avoid the appearance of a white line in between the two sections,
overlap the vertical portion of the photo corner over the horizontal just a bit. Adjust the size of your finished corner to your liking. I don't like my photo corners too long, but that is just a personal preference, you can make them anyway you like. When you like the way they look, elect everything with your mouse and go to Object, Group.
►To save, click on File, Export Bitmap to save as a PNG.
Because I want my corners for a wedding photo, I chose red (#ee0000) but you can choose any color you like or the one that goes best with your project.

Now let's decorate our corners using Gimp!

Fire up Gimp.
►Open your saved PNG in Gimp.
►Go to Filters, Noise, RGB Noise.
►Since my color is Red, I moved the Red lever to 0.70
While the Green and the Blue remained at 0.20
And the Alpha remained in 0.00
Then I clicked okay.
►Depending on your color, move the levers in the color you have chosen of the 3 Primary ones and allow a confetti or glitter effect to form. Click okay.
Let us make it a bit fancier. Choose the circle or ellipse tool. While holding down the Ctrl key, make a circle. Go to Layer, New Layer. Choose the Gradient tool
and from the Gradient tool menu choose the gradient Golden, leave it as a linear gradient. Make the gradient with your mouse vertically down the circle.
Go to Select, Shrink and shrink by 20 pixels. Go to Layer, Change the Foreground color to #fe0800 and the Background color to #a50000. Choose the Gradient tool and click on the color to change it to FG to BG (RGB) apply the Gradient.
►Go to Filters, Light and Shadow, Drop Shadow and apply a drop shadow of 15. Repeat the drop shadow as before, to give it more depth.
Chage the Foreground color to a yellow (I used #fefe00) choose the Brush tool and from the menu pick Circle Fuzzy (19), in the Toolbox menu, move the level of the Scale to 5.72 and the opacity to 30 percent. Click several times where you want the "shine" to be. After that, reapply a drop shadow with the same value as before to enhance the "shine."
►Go to Layer, Merge Down. Save as a PNG. If you want a drop shadow, (personally, I think it looks better with one) and you have downloaded the Free ScriptFu for your Gimp, go to ScriptFu and use their drop shadow, because for some reason, the Light and Shadow drop shadow from the Filters menu does not work after you have reached this point. If you don't have
the scriptfu downloaded get it and use it, if you prefer, take your corner back to Inkscape and duplicate it, make it black, give it a little blur and send it to the back of your corner. Select all and Group it and Export as a PNG. If you use scriptfu, give it a drop shadow or 12.
Then save as a PNG.
Now you can apply it to a photo like I did.

Done!

Bible Universe: Explore!

A Flower for Mom

This is a cute motif you can use for a digi card for mom or even for a birthday card.

►Fire up Inkscape.
►Select the Rectangle tool. Make a narrow rectangle, about the size you would like for the petal of a flower.
Click on it and while it is selected, give it the color you want from the palette below. Right click on the Stroke below the palette and when the
little menu appears, choose Edit Stroke and when the Fill and Stroke menu appears, click on the X to get rid of the Stroke.
►While the rectangle is still selected, go to Path. Object to Path. Now, click on the Nodes tool that is just below the Select tool's Arrow.
►Now, click on the image to bring out the nodes. Holding down the Shift key, pull gently on the center of the lower part of the rectangle to give it a rounded end.
While holding the CTRL key down, make a circle, give it any color you like and take out the Stroke as you did for the petals.
►Copy the circle and paste it to one side, and while holding down the CTRL key again, make it smaller than the first circle, duplicate it. Give the duplicate a dark gray color, like the color of a shadow.
Select the "shadow circle. Now go to Object, Align and Distribute and click on the 3rd button on the top and on the 3rd button on the row below to align the smaller circle perfectly int he center of the larger one. Now Select the other smaller circle. Give it a lighter color. And reduce it a little bir in size. Drag it to be at the center of the shadow. It will appear on the bottom, to bring it to the top, click at the top of the page on the button that says Raise to Top (the 11th button from counting from the left.) Click on the petal and while selected, duplicate it 5 times for a total of 6 petals.
►Click on the first petal to select it, and then click again so that the rotation arrows will appear, grab the petal by one of the arrows and rotate it in the way you want the petal to go.
►Click again and drag it to where the circle is that you made first. Now go to the top of the page and click on the button that says Lower Selection to Bottom (the 8th button at the top, counting from the left.)
Repeat this process, arranging the petals according to your personal taste. When you're done, make a small circle, give it the same color as the larger circle at the center of your flower.
But make it small enough that it could be a fun polka dot. Duplicate it, and drag the duplicates to the petals, distributing them as polka dots, in the way you find most pleasing to your personal taste, making sure
you do not distort nor enlarge the polka dots as you drag them.
►When you're happy with what you have, select everything with your mouse and go to Object, Group. Now it will not fall apart when you move it.
►Make another circle. Take out the Stroke as before. Drag it into the center of the flower. While selected, give it the color White. Go to Path, Object to Path. Click on the Nodes tool, and curve it in a way that pleases you, somewhat like a half moon.
►Duplicate it. Drag the duplicate a little below the first one. Flip it by clicking on the 7th button at the top of the page. While you have the first half moon selected, go to the Fill and Stroke little menu and move the lever of the Blur until you blur it to your liking, this will be the first "shine" spot. Drag the other half moon to where you would like to see it and do the same. (I blurred it to 36.3, but you can do whatever you like.)
Select everything again, and group it as before.
►Copy the whole thing, paste to the side, give it a dark gray color of your liking and blur it to 7.1. Drag it to be on top of your flower, and then click on the button to send it to the bottom, this will act as a drop shadow.
►Select all, and go to Object, Group.
►Go to File, Export Bitmap and save your flower.
Note- I used WebHex for my color palette, just inc ase you like the colors.

Done!

 Bible Universe, Come and See!