How to Make a Pretty Decorative Element in Inkscape and Gimp

Elements are a great part of scrapbooking. It seems you can never have enough of them!
This is an easy and pretty one to make.
Open Inkscape.
On the sidebar click on the ellipse or circle tool.
While holding down the Ctrl key, draw a circle (that way the circle will be perfectly round) any size you want your heart to be.
On the bottom of the page, to the left, right-click on Stroke, then on Edit Stroke. When the Stroke menu appears, click on the
X to delete the stroke around the circle. Only so that you can see it well, fill with a color of your choice by clicking on
any color on the palette below.

Now, let's make the edging around the element.
Click on the Text tool and write the letter "O" in caps. Click on the color you have chosen on the palette, so that the letter will get that same
color. The font I chose is Roller World BTN Bold Out, 144 pixels, Bold, but you can choose any Inkscape font that you like. With the arrow tool, click on the letter to select it, now click on it
again to rotate it, and rotate it so that the "O" will be upside down. Click on the "O" again to select it. Now, take a look at the toolbar on top of your page. Counting from the left, the 11th tool will raise
your object to the top, click on it.This will make sure that your decorative edge will not sink to the bottom of your element.
Now, while your "O" is still selected, press the shift key down and click on the circle to select them both.
When they are both selected, go to Path, Object to Path. Then go to Extensions, Pattern Along a Path and once the menu opens, select Repeated, Snake, Space between copies: 0.4
Leave everything else as is and click Apply. Let it calculate and render.
Now, hold the shift key down and create a selection that covers the whole thing. Go to Object, Group. Now you can move your circle without it falling apart.

Because Inkscape has the tendency to tile patterns, and I want to fill this element with a pattern that is seamless, we will go to Gimp and fill it up there.
So Go to File, Export and export your element as a PNG image.

Close Inkscape and fire up Gimp. Open your element in Gimp.
Click on the Bucket Tool. Select Pattern fill, and then, click on the little menu to choose any pattern you like. There are many free patterns for Gimp on the Net that you can
download and use. Once you have filled your element with your pattern, go to Script-Fu, Drop Shadow. Raise the Opacity to 80.0 and leave the rest as is and click Okay.
Now to go Filters, Blur. Once the blur is applied, go to Layer, Merge Down.
Now go to File, Save As, Select File Type by Extension and pick PNG, and replace your previous file.

Done!
Heaven Hell