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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Faux Cross Stitch Heart Element in Inkscape and Gimp

This tutorial assumes you have Inkscape and Gimp installed on your computer and that you have at least a basic understanding of the two.
You will also need 3 patterns of your choice installed in Gimp (there are tons of them that are free on the internet)
Fire up Inkscape.
Go to File, Document Properties, Grid, and click to make a Grid of your working space. Leave the little menu open for later.
Click on the Text tool, choose the font Acknowledgement. Size doesn't really matter because you can enlarge your creation later on.
pressing the shift key, make an X. Click on the Arrow tool and select your x. Got to Edit, Copy.
Now, we're going to form a heart, using the grid so that our "Xs" which are the symbols of our cross stitches, will be level.
Paste 2 X letters one next to the other, skip 3 grid squares and paste 2 X letters, one next to the other.
Now let's do the next row, beginning with the space in front of the first X of the first row, lay your Xs across, 7 of them, ending with the space after the last X of the first row.
Select all of the Xs of the previous row and copy, now paste on the row below. Now Click on one of the Xs of the first row and copy it.
Paste 5 Xs across the row below, skipping one X at the beginning and one at the end.
Make 3 Xs across the next row, skipping one X at the beginning and one at the end. Make 1 last X at the middle of the next row.
We have our heart shape now! Now with the mouse, select all of your Xs, go to Object, Group. Now click on the little menu you left open and remove the grid. Close the little menu.
Export your heart to a folder of your choice as a bitmap (PNG) and close Inkscape.
Fire up Gimp.
Open your heart in Gimp.
Select the Bicket tool, choose Pattern Fill and fill each individual X in the way that your personal taste tells you to. When you're happy with the results, go to Filters, Light and Shadow, Drop Shadow and apply it.
Then go to Layer, Merge Down. Save again by choosing Save As and choose File by Extension, so that you can make it a PNG.

That's all!

Here's a pretty inspirational scrapbook image using our heart:

Bible Universe

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.



Bible Universe

Making Elements with Inkscape and Gimp Using Letters

Fun Oval Element Based on Letters

A digital scrapbooker never has too much elements to use (at least, that is my experience,) and learning to make new ones is always fun and comes in handy!

What you will need before you start:
Inkscape and Gimp installed on your computer
Two textures of your choice for Gimp (there are hundreds of free textures available)
Script-Fu installed and part of your Gimp (you can easily find it online)

• Fire up Inkscape
• Choose the text tool.
• Pick the font Aharoni, size 144. Write the letter U (in caps)
• Then go to Edit, Duplicate. Move the duplicated U to the top of the first one. Then, select the second U with the select tool or arrow, and, while the U is selected, from the top of the page, Click on the 7th tool from the left, to flip the U around. Now, drag it down to sit on top of the previous V. Click on the Select tool again, and drag your mouse over the two Us, now go to Object, Group. Now they are joined together. Click on one of the arrows and drag the Vs to make them larger.
• When you have the size you want, go to File, Export Bitmap. Save it in the folder you want and close Inkscape.

• Fire up Gimp.
• Open your File from Inkscape. 
• Change the Foreground color to a color that matches the patterns you will be using. Pick the bucket took. Click on the center of the joined letter Us, which are now an oval and fill the center hole with the chosen color. Select the Ellipse tool and draw an oval in the center of the colored spot.
• If it does not come out of the size you want, click on it, arrows will appear and you can pull it into the shape and size you want. 
• Go to Layer, New Layer and then choose the blend or gradient tool. Get the Golden gradient and choose a linear gradient, stroking with your mouse downward, fill the oval with the golden color. Go to Select, shrink and shrink the selection by 25 pixels, then go to Layer, New Layer.  Click on the bucket tool, change it to Pattern Fill and fill the oval is still selected, fill it with the first pattern of your choice. Then go to Select None.
• Finally, choose the bucket fill again, and fill the rest of your element (the outside of the joined letter Us) with the second pattern.
• Go to Filters, Blur.
• You could stop right there and you would have a lovely element to use. But let us go a bit further.
• Go to Script-fu, Bevel and Emboss. Choose for Style: Outer Bevel
• For Depth: 5, Direction: Up, Shadow Color: Black. Leave the rest as is. Click OK.
• It will raise the center oval, giving it an almost 3D look. If you want to add a little bit of gloss to it, click on brush. Change the brush to Cirlce Fuzzy (19),
• change the color of the Foreground color to the color you want for the glow, move the scale size to 10.00 and click on the image where you want the glow to go.
• I did my gloss in yellow because I have too much white in my patterns and because it looks like a sparkle in the gold, but you can try any color you want.
• Save your image as a PNG and that's it!

Bible Universe

Creating Elements with Letters in Inkscape and Gimp

This is a super easy photo corner you can make in a jiffy and change in many ways to your heart's content.

• Fire up Inkscape.
• From the side toolbar, choose the text tool.
• Select the Font Garamond, size 144, for the color, choose Black.
• Click on the canvas and make the capital letter O.
• Choose the Select or Arrow tool and select your O, drag one corner of the letter to make it even bigger. Now go to Edit, copy and paste 5 more copies of your original O.
• Click on each O and drag it to position it overlapping the original O, right next to it but forming a chain, repeat with another O to form the bottom of your corner and then, drag the other two Os to overlap the top of the original, to form the rest of the corner chain.
• Now, click on the Arrow tool again to choose it and drag a selection over all of your chain photo corner. You will see all of your Os selected. Now go to Object Group. This will join the links of your chain so that they will not come undone. Now go to File, Export Bitmap and choose PNG. Save your work.

• Fire up Gimp.
• Open your PNG file. 
• Now choose the bucket fill and fill the chain corner with a pattern of your choice that you have preciously uploaded to be used in Gimp. Fill the chain photo corner element with the chosen pattern.
• Now Choose Script-Fu, Bevel and Emboss.
• Choose the following settings: Style: Outer Bevel; Depth: 5; Direction: Up; Gloss Contour: Linear; Highlight Color White; Shadow Color Black, and leave the rest as is.
• Click OK. Let it apply.
• Now go to Filters, Blur. 
• Once the simple blur is applied, go to Layer, Merge Down.
• Now, go to File, Save as, Save File Tpe (By Extension) and choose PNG, then say yes to merging layers and exporting, and you're set.

Bible Universe

Very Easy Fun Text in Gimp

This is a very simple tutorial which you can play around with until you can get the look you want for very fun and attractive text for your scrapbooking pages.
This tutorial assumes you have Gimp installed on your computer and that you have also downloaded some of the free patterns that are readily available online.

• Open up Gimp.
• Choose any size image you like.
• Now look for a thick font that will show off the pattern that you will use.
• I picked Accord Heavy SF Bold, size 76. Make sure your foreground color is Black (you can choose a background color of your choice, a gradient, or nothing. I chose to leave it blank.)
• Click on the bucket tool and choose a pattern that you like (previously downloaded into your computer and placed in Gimp’s patterns folder.) Try not to choose a pattern that has White in it, because that will be mostly our Gloss color.
• Now, right-click on the text layer that has your text in the layers menu, and choose Alpha to Selection. Now pick the Ellipse tool and draw an oval over top section of the text, leaving the bottom untouched.
• Now choose White as your Foreground and a very light version of one of the colors of your pattern (in my case it was a light green.) Choose the blend or gradient tool and stroke from the bottom of your oval upward, filling the area with your gradient. Give it an opacity of 50% by moving the lever down in the toolbox. Go to Filters, Blur and then
• Save. Got to File, Save as and then choose Select File Type by Extension and choose to save your text as a PNG.

That’s It! Experiment with different fonts and different patterns for different looks and add fun text to your pages, Enjoy!

Bible Universe