Fun Letters Journaling Pad

You can make journaling pads using Inkscape and Gimp. They are a lot of fun and no two will turn out alike!
This tutorial assumes that you have Inkscape installed on your computer.
It also assumes that you have a basic knowledge of how to use the software.

Fire up Inkscape.
Choose a font you like. The best ones are the ones that are in cursive style.
Write as many letters as you want your journaling pad to have (the desired width)
Change the color if you like. Then select the row of letters and copy.
Now click on the 4th tool at the top of the page, right under the Layers menu, to rotate the copied letters.
With your mouse, drag them to meet the first set of letters, paste your copy again and do the same, inverting the direction, continue this until you have formed a square with letters.Join the corners closely to form a box.
Now, drag your mouse over them all, choose object, group.
If you want to, use the pencil tool and draw freehand lines for your journaling.
Export as a Bitmap.

Now open Gimp.
Because Inkscape makes all the Bitmap background transparent, we're going to have to "fill" out the center with color in Gimp. Open your file. Choose the rectangle tool and draw a square selection that reaches only just below, above and inside the sides of your pad, but does not reach all the way to the letters.
Fill with the color of your choice. you can also fill it with a paper texture if you like.
Save again as a PNG.
Experiment with different letters which you think would make fun journaling blocks.
Here is another idea.
Choose the font AR Julian and type 1 capital O, 1 lower case o, and repeat this for as long as you want for the width of your journaling pad. Then follow the steps as for the previous journaling pad.
You can also do this to make fun frames for your scrapbooking photos.
In Gimp, you can fill the os with textures using the Bucket fill tool, or if you have SVG photos, you can do that in Inskcape as well.
Here is how a journaling block made with this technique would look like.

And this is an embellished version of it.

That's all there is to it! Have fun making your own.



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