This tutorial assumes the following:
-That you have Inkscape and Gimp installed on your computer.
-That you have already gone through our previous tutorials to learn the basics.
Fire up inkscape.
- From the vertical toolbar at the left of your page, choose the Polygon tool. Once the Polygons appear at the top of your page, choose Star, for corners, pick 8, spoke ratio, select 0.500 leave the rest of the settings as is.
- Select the color pink from the palette at the bottom of your page, and draw your star by dragging your mouse. Now, to turn the star into a flower, go to Path, object to Path. Then Edit your paths by clicking on the tool right underneath the select tool arrow. After selecting the toll, click on the star and While you hold the shift key down, click on the node that is at the tip of every point of your star to select it. You will notice that they change color to signify that they are selected.At the top of your page, where the paths editing tools are click on the 9th button, counting from the left (make nodes symmetric) that will make the star look more like a flower. You will see some horizontal handles at the top of your flower "petal" pull on those handles gently to smooth out the petals and make them rounder. When you are happy with what you have, you will click on the selection tool (arrow) and then go to Edit, Duplicate.
- Move the duplicated flower to one side and make it a lighter pink, so you can see it better. Click on the arrow tool and then on the duplicated flower until the rotation arrows appear and rotate it a little bit so that the new petals will not cover the ones from the previous flower but be seen on top of them. Click on the arrow tool again and move the new rotated flower on top of the previous one. While holding the ctrl key down, push the new flower in with your mouse fo shrink it just a little bit. Go to Object, Align and Distribute, and choose Center on Vertical Axis, and Center on Horizontal Axis.
- Now create a new star of 9 spokes (keep the other settings intact) You will notice when you click on the paths tool (you don't have to go to Object, Object to Paths) that there are 2 nodes on the star. Ignore the node at the tip of the star and drag at the node that is near on the edge near the center of the star, while holding the ctrl key to keep things even. Keep this star smaller than the rest of the flower and make the color darker. Drag it to the center of your flower. Now choose the Ellipse or circle tool, choose a darker shade of pink and while holding the ctrl key down, make a circle to go in the center. (Make sure that none of your pieces has a visible stroke color!) Click on the select tool and drag your circle to the centerof your composite flower. Save the flower as a Bitmap. Close Inkscape and open Gimp.
- Open your flower as a PNG in Gimp.
- (This step assumes you have texture patterns installed in your Gimp Patterns folder, please refer to previous tutorials to find out how to do it!)
- Click on the Bucket Tool, then Pattern Fill and choosing at least 3 different pattern fills, click ont he different portions of your flower and fill them with patterns of your liking.
- I chose pink pastel fabric patterns. Then go to Filters, Blur. Then Script-Fu, Drop Shadow. Finally, save as a PNG bu clicking on Select File by Extention.
- Say yes to Merge Visible Layers to export it and save it.
That's it, now you have a pretty cottage flower element to use for scrapbooking!
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