Kitty Cat Journaling Block

I love cats and thought a cat head would make a cute journaling block and I had to try to make one! I did not have anything to go on, so I winged it.
Here is the way I was able to make it.
Start up Inkscape.
Choose the Ellipse tool. Make a circle, any size you like.
Now, choose the star tool, reduce the number of corners to 3 to really make a triangle.
Make a triangle.
Now choose any color you like and fill both the circle and the triangle with that color by clicking on them.
Duplicate your triangle or copy and paste it on the side of the circle.
Now, click on the triangle twice, when you see little arrows all around it, that is the rotate tool, turn the triangle sideways
until it is in a position that would make it look like a cat's ear on the side of your circle. Move the triangle so that it is
right next to your circle, no white line in between. Now click on the other triangle, click again so that the rotate arrows will
appear, rotate it in the opposite direction so that it will form the other cat ear. Place it on the other side of the circle, which
is your Journaling Block and the cat's head. Now Select the arrow tool at the top of your sidebar tools and stroke with your mouse
to select all the objects. Go Object to Path, now go Object Group.
All the pieces will be united into one.
Click to select and copy.









Now open Gimp.
Once Gimp is open, paste your cat head there. Go to Blur, Gaussian Blur and blur by 1 or 2 px.
Now go to Script-Fu and select Drop Shadow. Apply it.
Now change your Foreground color to #7b173f, which is a rich mauve and will show clearly with any pink. (By the way, the color that I chose for
my cat head is #ff2ad4. You can use that or change it to any color you like, before you add your journaling lines.
Select the pencil tool and choose the size Circle 11. Now, while holding down the shift key, click on the cat head where you want your first line
to be, draw the line and click on the end to finish it. Repeat as you wish.



You can leave it as is, or you can make it fancier.

Download from the internet any free texture you like for the theme you're using your cat journaling block for. I chose a pretty white and pink check
I have in Gimp. Once you download it, you must save your work up to this point as a PNG. Close Gimp. Go to your Computer, Program Files, then find
Gimp, and look in its files, depending upon your version of the software, until your find Patterns. Copy and paste the file into that folder or drag it into it.
Open up Gimp again and open up your work. Now, choose the Paint Bucket, then on the tools menu, pick Pattern Fill and choose the one you want.
Apply the Bucket tool to it.


Now you can make the Mauve lines again if you want to and it will be pretty enough.
But I want it cuter. So I went back to Inkscape, because this type of thing I find it easier to make over there.
I opened up the program, chose File, then found my kitty cat head and chose Embed.
It came right up. Then I made a circle in a hot pink. Right clicked on Stroke, once the stroke menu opened, I chose Edit Stroke, changed the stroke color to white, then I picked some dashes that I thought would look nice, and raised the width to 6.000
and my circle had pretty white dashes all around and it looked as if it had been stitched. I dragged into the kitty cat head and centered it. Exported it as a PNG.
You can write on it as it is, but I wanted some lines, so I opened up Gimp again and wrote my journaling lines there as we did with the first example.

Hope you liked this tut!


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Everlasting Happiness

Caterpillar Decorative Journaling Tag

I just came up with this tag today. Never have seen a caterpillar tag, but this looks like a caterpillar to me, so the name stuck. Scrapbooking is a creative activity so something as fun as a caterpillar journaling tag or label is a natural!
Open Inkscape.
Choose the Ellipse or Circle tool, make a circle any size you want.
Select a color you like and fill it with it. Right click on stroke (below the palette at the bottom of your screen), when the menu opens,
choose Edit Stroke. Then when the new menu opens, click on the little "X", so that your circle will have no stroke. Close the menu.
Now duplicate your circle twice. Move the second circle to be just below the first circle, and a little bit into it, then repeat with the thrid circle.
Click on the first circle to select it, go to Path, Object to Path. Select the second circle, and go to Path, Object to Path, repeat with the Third Circle.
Now click on the select tool (the black arrow at the top of your vertical toolbox) and select all three objects. Now, with the tree circles selected, go to Object, Group.
Now, we have our caterpillar.
Go to File, Export Bitmap and give it the name Caterpillar Journaling Tag. It will export as a PNG file.

We can do a lot more things on Inkscape, but I want to do some things in Gimp.

Now open up Gimp.
Open the caterpillar image.
For your Foreground color, choose #e7b0b0
Choose the pencil tool and the size Circle 07
Now, holding the shift key down, click where you want the first line for the journaling to appear, stretch your line across the ball
that forms the head of the caterpillar and click to finish the line. Repeat as many times as you like.
Click on the Pencil tool again and choose a pencil size, then click on the eraser tool and make a hole at the top of the caterpillar
head. Now to to Script-Fu and choose Drop Shadow, apply it leaving the settings as is.

If you want to, go to Bevel and Emboss, and choose Inner Bevel, give it a Depth of 10, Direction Up, Size 10, then leave the rest as is. Click okay.
Export as a PNG again.
That is it!

Variation: You can use the bucket tool and fill your caterpillar with any texture that you like. There are thousands of free textures for Gimp online!

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Everlasting Happiness

How to make a scrapbooking tag in Inkscape

This tutorial assumes that you have at least a little bit of knowledge of this software and that you already have it installed in your computer. Inkscape is a free, readily available software that you can download from the internet.
Please, check out our previous tutorials to get some understanding of how the software works.

Fire up Inkscape.
Choose a color, I picked a peachy beige from the palette at the bottom of the page. Turn off stroke.
Click on the rectangle tool. And while holding down the shift key, draw a rectangle with rounded corners.
Make it with the following dimensions:
W: 1291.42
H: 708.571

Now click on the Ellipse or Circle tool. While holding the shift key down so that your circle will be even, draw a small circle.
Fill it with the same color as you picked for the rectangle and turn the stroke color off. Click on the arrow select tool and then on the circle
and move it so that it will be in the middle of the top of the label. Center it well.

Now click on the circle to select it, now holding the shift key down, click also on the label to select both objects, go to Object, Group, to turn them
into a single object. You can stop right there if you want and you will have a simple label that you can use.
You can leave it like that, or you can a apply any SVG texture you like. There are many free SVG textures online which you can download. Or you can open Gimp,
copy the tag that you have made in Inkscape, and paste it in Gimp and fill the tag with any pattern of your liking using the Bucket Tool in Gimp.
You can also apply some of the powerful Inkscape filters to your image. I will show you only two. Oilslick and Tartan. Only to give you an idea of what you can do. This will give you a glimpse of the possibilities.
Experiment until you get a label that you like!








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Bible Universe

How to Make a Badge For Your Blog or Store

This is a very simple project that will add a little bit of interest to your blog or website. You can use it in your store to call attention to certain things you want your visitors or customers to notice. We will start with the simplest of badges. It is a combo badge created in Inkscape and Gimp.

Go to Inkscape
Click on the color of your choice. Then choose the Star shape. At the top of your page you will see a list of options.
Write the following:

Corners: 52

Spoke ratio: 0.884

Rounded: 0.050

Leave randomized alone.

Select and copy, then close Inkscape.
Open Gimp.
Paste your Inkscape image.

Make sure your Foreground Color is Black. Choose the Text tool and find the font you like most. I chose Rockwell, a font that
comes with Gimp, and I gave it a size 30. Now, click in the center of the badge and write whatever you want to say.
Once you are done, go to Script-Fu and choose Drop shadow and add a drop shadow to your text. Save as a PNG image.
That is all that is to it!


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A Courageous Attitude. . .

Inter-Connected Button or Scrapbooking Brad Fun

I like to make things my own way. And since I have Paint.Net, Gimp and also Inkscape, why not combine them?
My forte is not drawing with a mouse, so I when I realized that I could make shapes in Inkscape, cut and paste them in Paint. Net or Gimp
(or in one after the other) to embellish them, I thought that soved a great problem for me!

Let me share with you this simple tutorial,it might solve a problem or two for you and you might find it fun also.

First of all, download the three softwares to your computer, they are all FREE.
Once you have them, open up Inkscape and Paint.Net.

Now go to Inkscape. Choose the Polygon drawing tool (it's the one that is seen together with a star shape), and at the top of the page, go to Corners, and write the number 12,
spoke ratio: 0.638, leave the rest as is and leave stroke unset. Choose a color you like. Stroke with your mouse to create the polygon, the size you
want. Once made, click it to select it and go to Edit, copy or cut.

Move to Paint.Net. Click on Edit, Paste in to New Image.
Once the Polygon appears in your working space. Make sure the colors chosen on your toolbox are Foreground Teal, which is Hex #008080, Backgroung White.
Click on the Paint Bucket, then at the top of the page, click where it says Fill, scroll down to Wide Downward Diagonal pattern, and fill the polygon with teal and White diagonal lines.

Go back to Inkscape and make another polygon, smaller than the first. Copy.
Return to Paint.Net, Click on Layers, Add New Layer, then paste your new Polygon, making sure you center it well. Make the color for this one Hex #008080, a nice teal.
Click on Layers, Merge Layers down.

Now to to Effects and blur. I have downloaded many effects for my Paint.Net (there are tons of free ones!) you can use Average Blur, but do not set it to more than 2 (Gaussian Blur would "delete" your stripes by blurring them too much).
Save as an Optimized PNG. If it tells you that the image will be flattened, click OK.


For the rest of the button, you will need a texture. there are hundreds you can get online that can be used both by Gimp and Photoshop. Download a texture package that you like.
Save it to your desktop. Then go to My Computer, Program Files, and look for Gimp, open folders until you find Textures, open your download and simply copy and paste the texture (or textures) you want into that
folder. This hast to be done with Gimp closed. Now that you have your texture in place. Close Program Files, My computer and go to Gimp.

For my texture I chose my own thing, a polka dot pattern photographed from a fabric. You can do that too. You can buy swatches (they call them Fat Quarters) used for quilting, and you can use them as backgrounds.

Go to Gimp, open your PNG image in Gimp.

Once the image opens, click on the Ellipse Selection tool and draw a selection. The Position should be 158 x 158, the Size: 449 x 444, Fixed Aspect Ration should be selected, also Antialiasing
should be selected.
Now, in the Toolbox, click ont he Foreground color, (it is usually Black) Change your Foreground color to Hex # 00f9f9, which is a light aqua. Leave your Background color white.
Go to Layer, New Layer. Choose the Bucket Fill tool and go to Pattern Fill and click it, scroll down to the pattern you want and Fill the selection with your image. Mine was pink and white so I clicked on it
with the Bucket Fill tool and made it that light aqua. If you need to do that, do it. It's okay if the color contrasts, also. Yellow would look lovely.
Now go to Select, Border, and make it a bit wide, and select feather border. Click OK. Then go to Select, None.

I went back to Paint.Net and Added a Drop Shadow. To be able to do that, you need to download the Effects package and install it as you did for your Gimp textures, in Paint.Net's Effects folder.
Then you will find it under Effects, Object, Drop Shadow. To finish, go to Effects, Blur, Gaussian Blur and choose only 2. Click Ok. Save and your done!

Warning: Color bleeds a little bit from the stripes, but this is only to show you how you can make up for any clumsiness in mouse drawing by going back and forth between software programs.

Inter-connecting software packages to get the most out of them as you learn to use them is fun. Try to see what you can come up with!

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Do You Feel Mistreated?

Easy Inskcape Ribbon:

There are different ways of making a ribbon in Inkscape, but for a beginner, I found an easy one that will give you satisfying results. you must tinker with it till you get it to work the way you want it to, to suit your particular taste and creativity.

The steps are pretty simple and you can learn them very quickly. To make this ribbon, choose the pen drawing tool. Choose a color you like, I decided to pick a pretty aqua in the basic palette.
At the top of the page, choose the following settings: Width: 38; Thinning: 100; Angle: 30; Fixation: 90; Caps:0.00

Then draw a ribbon. With Selecting tool, select your ribbon. Then go to Filters, Blus, Cross-Smooth. Then Filters, Color, Fluorescence.
Then Go to Filters, Materials, Metallized Paint. That's it, you've got a very easy ribbon for any digi scrapbooking project you might have.

FREE online, the beautiful book on the life of Christ, The Desire of Ages see the comforting love of God like never before in these tough times!

Inskcape tutorial: Basic

If you would still like to practice more with the potential that this free software has for your digi scrapbooking projects but don't want to jump into the deep waters of a very invloved and difficult tutorial, here is a basic one for beginners to get your feet wet in this vector software's potential.

By the way, the star in my illustration was a made with the star polygon tool (choose the number of points or spokes you want for yours), I colored it
a bright medium pink. Then I selected it and went Filters, Shadows and Glows, then Glow.
Then, to give it an interesting texture, go to Filters, Materials, Enamel Jewelry and then you just save it.

Enjoy!

Inkscape Basic tutorial for Beginners

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FREE online, the beautiful book on the life of Christ, The Desire of Ages see the comforting love of God like never before in these tough times!

How to Make Your Own clipart with Inkscape!

When you start using this powerful open source software one of the things you will eventually wnat to learn how to do is to make your own clipart for scrapbooking themes and special digi scraps. This informative video tutorial will get you started in that direction!



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Need encouragement? Visit this beautiful blog!

Better Than Rubies. . .

How to Use Inkscape Filters

Inkscape comes with many filters and there are many other plugins that you can get to add power and versatility to your software. This video tutorial will show you how to use some of those filters in a creative way.



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The Wonderful Love of God

Another Simple Flower Embellishment for a Beginner

When you are starting to use a software that has as much potential as inkscape, you feel elated when you can create something, let alone a nice looking embellishment! So, to keep your creative juices flowing, here is a very simple to make embellishment you can try on your own and transform into many other pretty flowers! Open Inkscape. Select Star. Make sure the following are selected at the top of the page: Corners (that will determine how many petals your flower will have), for this tutorial we will select 8. Spoke ratio: 0.500 Rounded: 0.000 Randomized:0.000 Choose the color Yellow. Now, go Path, and Choose Dynamic Offset. A little node will appear on one of the star's spokes. Pull on that node to make the star fatter and more into the shape of a flower. Now go to Path, then object to Path. Now go to circles, ellipses, and draw a circle while you hold the Ctrl button down. Give it a red color (it will look orangey over the yellow flower.) Drag it to the center of your flower. Go to Object, then choose Align and Distribute, and look for the position that will align your circles vertically and horizontally in the center of the flower. Click and close the dialog box. Make a second, smaller circle while dragging the Ctrl key down so that it willnot be an oval. Make a little draker than the first one. Click on the slect arrow and drag it to the center of the flower. Go to Object, then choose Align and Distribute and look again for the position that will align your circle vertically and horizontally in the center of the flower. Close the dialog box. Click on the smaller circle at the center of the flower and choose Filters, Ridges, Metallized Ridge. Now with the ink pen tool make a swirly line in red. Copy it. Now click on it to select it, and click again to move it and to position it on the first petal of the flower. Now click outside the flower and paste, to produce the worly line again, click twice on it to bring up the rotating handles and turn it to the position it should go for the second petal of the flower. Choose the select tool and move it to where it goes, repeat this process for every petal. Now choose the first line, and with it selected, go to Filters, Shadows and Glows, then Cutout Glow, repeat with all the lines. Now Select the whole flower. Go to Path, then Union. Then save. 

The Wonderful Love of God

When you do digital scrapbooking, if you like to embellish your pages genereously, you will never have too many elemnts to use! Flowers are one of the most useful when you want your pages to have that dainty, lovely, faminine look of bygone years or when you just want to add a pretty look to a page that just needs "something". Learning to make your own flowers is pretty useful, expecially if it costs you nothing.
This tutorial will show you how to make your own basic flower using inkscape. It is very easy and simple!





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Alone in the Crowd

One of the things we use most in scrapbooking, is embellishments. Inkscape is a software that can unlock your creativity and allow you to create your own clip art and embellishments for your digi pages. In the following video you will learn how to make swirls and flourishes that you could use to decorate your pages.





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Read FREE online:
Alone in the Crowd

Wonderful FREE Software for Scrapbooking Images: Inkscape

Inkscape is a vector graphics editor that is distributed freely under a free software license. It is quite powerful and if you learn it well, you can make amazing images in it to enhance your digital scrapbooking. Since Inkscape is an open source software with capabilities similar to those of Illustrator and Corel Draw, you can create an endless amount of images with it, and because it is open source, it will always be free!

You can download it for FREE from this safe site:

Inkscape Draw Freely





We will be learning some nifty things using this software so, why don't you download it now?


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Heaven, Is It For Real?