Make A Decorative Scrapbooking Ribbon Using Inkscape

Open Inkscape.
♦ Go to View, Grid.The grid will help you calculate things.
Click on the Rectangle tool and make a rectangle as long as you would like your ribbon to be and of a thickness that will cover 4 lines of grid squares.
♦Now, make a small circle using the ellipse tool. Change the color of your ribbon to whatever you want it to be and make the circle the same color. Make sure neither one has a stroke
by right-clicking the stroke at the bottom of the page and then choosing Edit Stroke and clicking on the X in the Fill and Stroke menu.
♦Now you will see how handy the grid is! Select the little circle you just made and copy it. Now, Go to Edit, paste and when the new circle appears, click on it and drag it to the edge of the ribbon you made.
Copy and paste again and, skipping 2 little squares of the grid, position your second circle, repeat along the line until you have formed a scallop edge.
♦Stroke with your mouse to select all your work and go to Object, Group. Now you can move around your ribbon and it won't fall apart. Now go to View and click on Grid again to deselect it.
Now you have your basic scallop, you can give it a gradient, you can give it a texture, you can do whatever you want with it to spice it up!

►One cute way in which you can spice it up is by choosing a color you like, then, before you start copying and pasting the little circles, click on the little circle to select it, make then, clicking on the 9th button at the top of the page, counting from the left, lower the object 1 step, so that the top of the circle will be beind the ribbon, then, withe the circle still selected,
right-click on the stroke at the bottom of the page, below the colors, when the first little menu appears, select the contrasting color you want for your stroke, right-click on stroke, then choose Edit stroke (with the circle still selected) click on stroke style and give your stroke a width of 10.000 and from the list of Dashes, choose one that suits your fancy, click on the little circle to make the dashes appear. Now add your scallops as before. they will have an edge of cute little dashes. Experiment all you want and have fun!

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How to Make Your Own Ric Rac in Gimp and Paint.Net

For a while, I have wanted to find a way to make my own ricrac for digital scrapbooking. None of the tutorials online (which are mainly for Photoshop,) worked, so providentially, I came upon a way of making my own ricrac.
If you want to use ricrac in your digital designs and have Gimp and Pint.Net installed on your computer, follow this simple tutorial and you can make your own.



First, fire up Gimp.
Open a new image (I chose 640 x 400 for my size because it is easy to open.) Choose a transparent background, so that your ricrac will be ready to use anywhere.
Now Choose a color you like. Click on the Paintbrush tool, and select the brush size Circle 19.
Click at the center top or your canvas and holding the shift button stroke downward with your mouse to crease a straight line. The release the shift key and mouse button to complete your line.
Now go to Filters, Distorts, Ripple.
Choose the following settings:
Options: Antialiasing
Orientation: Horizontal
Edges: Wrap
Wave Type: Sine
Period" 20
Amplitude: 5
Phase shift: 0
And click OK. You got your ricrac!
Save As, then Select File Type by Exension and pick PNG.

If you would like to have a bit more fun with your ricrac and you have Paint.Net installed on your computer and have downloaded their marvellous free Effects packages, open Paint.Net.
Now go to File, and open your saved image. Go to Effects, Ripple and play around with the ripples until you are happy.

For example, for the following ripple, I left the Amount at 1.00, but I chose 6.18 for my Ripple, a RipplePhase of 0.00 and an Angle of -45.00, a Highlight of 10, Edge Behaviour: Reflect, Quality: 2, and clicked OK.
It will give you a bit distorted but different ricrac. You can also fill your ricrac with a texture, as you saw on the first ricrac example, I filled the ricrac with a gingham check I have as a texture in Gimp, I also did one with a polka dot. You can play around with what you like or with what you think would best suit your project.

Experiment and have fun!

Bible Universe

Making Scrapbooking Elements With Letters

You can make amazingly beautiful and quite easy elements to embellish your scrapbooking using letters. Here's a quick tutorial to make one.


This tutorial assumes you have Inkscape and Gimp installed on your computer.
It also assumes that you have at least an elementary understanding of both programs.

♦ Choose the Text tool and Using the font called Euphemia, size 144, write the letter X in caps.
Repeat it 5 times on the same line. Then, on another part of the canvas, write a single capital X.
♦ Copy and paste it twice more, then drag and position it under the other 5, skipping the first and last Xs.
♦ On the following row, make only 1 X in the middle. Now select all the Xs by stroking with your mouse over all of them to create a selection. Then go to Object, Group.
♦Now that they are all in a block, copy and paste 5 more of them. Select the ellipse tool and draw a medium-sized circle. Fill it iwth the color of your choice, I've chosen a pallet named Ubuntu and I'm using the Accent Red Base color, but you can pick anything you like. Fill your circle with the chosen color, also, color your Xs with it as well.
♦ Now, you must position your X blocks around that circle. Drag your circle and place it right under the first block of Xs, then, click on the next block you want to drag, and click again, you'll notice that arrows form all around it, these arrows will allow you to turn the piece around, so, guiding yourself by the finished image, turn the block of Xs around a little bit to fit the space on the side of the circle, drag and fit into that space, letting the ends of the Xs interlock.
♦ Repeat this process all around. You will have a piece that looks like this:

► Note- Make sure that where your Xs meet, they interlock smoothly, it will take a little bit of tweaking, but you can do it easily by moving the ends and adjusting until you're happy with the result. Not all the Xs will match all the time, but your goal is to at least make the outer edges match smoothly for a more
pleasing look.
♦ You can stop there, but I wanted something a bit more festive. Select all your element, copy it. Close Inkscake and open Gimp.
♦ Paste it in Gimp. Choose the Ellipse tool and make a circle inside the red circle you brought from Inkscape. Choose the Blend Tool and fill with a linear blend, (I picked Golden), then go to Select, Shrink, and shrink by 30 pixels. Go to Layer, New Layer.
♦ Change your Foreground color to f60d0d, and make sure your Background color is White. Now change the Blend to FG to BG (RGB) and stroke downward, also using a linear blend. Now click on Select None.
This is what your element will look like at this point:

♦ You can leave it like that, or you can apply one more little touch.
♦ Go to Filters, Light and Shadow, Supernova, and make sure to click with your mouse where you want the flare to go on the top of your circle. Choose a pale yellow for the color, which will be like a reflection of the gold, I used color e2ff59.
♦ Leave all the regular settings intact. Click OK to create your supernova.
♦ Once the effect has been completed, save the finished element as a png to incorporate it into any scrapbooking project of your choice. It will look like this:

These blocks of Xs can be used in a variety of ways to create flowers, crosses, and other elements also. Just play around with this and see how many of your own elements you can create! Have fun!


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