How to Make a Decorative Banner in Inkscape and Gimp

Open Inkscape.
►With the rectangle tool, make a rectangle of your own choosing (think about your project before choosing the size,) with th regular square edges.
Fill it with a color similar to the one of the texture you will be using later. Pull the rectangle to one side.
Make a narrow rectangle, fill it with a contrasting color or with the color of the first texture you will be using. Now elect the Star tool and make a star. Drag the star so that 1 of the points of the star is positioned right in the middle of your new narrow rectangle.
►While the star is still selected, hold down the shift key and choose both the narrow triangle and the star, now with both objects selected, go to Path, Difference, to cut a point in the center of your narrow banner.
There is only one problem, the edges are square. To solve that problem, go to Edit Paths by Nodes, (the tool right underneath the Arrow or Select tool) click on it, and then click on your narrow banner. You will notice that nodes appear. Pull carefully on the nodes until your have pointed ends and push in the side nodes
to balance the shape of your banner's ends until they look as if they had been snipped with scissors. Duplicate your narrow banner twice more. Make each small banner of a different color, just so that you are able to see each one when working with it.
►Drag each one and place it where you want it on top of the previous square banner. Because the narrow banners will be below the main banner, you must click on the 11th button on top of the page (counting from the left,) the Raise Selection to Top or Home tool.
►Once your banners are at the top, select all the objects with your mouse and go to object, Group.
Now you have a couple of choices. You can leave your banner as is, you can use SVG textures for each of your banners, or you can select your object, copy it, open gimp and apply textures there (I prefer to to that,) there are many, many free textures online to choose from and you can make your banners quite lovely with them.
►To fill your banners with different patterns, open Gimp and open your image there. Choose the Bucket tool, and the each texture you want to use,m filling each area with it. Then go to Layer, Merge Down, then save image as a PNG.
Done!

You can add other embellishments to your banners such as buttons, brads, staples, text, etc.

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Looking Forward to Spring Flower Embellishment

This is an easy tutorial for a quick flower embellishment which you can tailor to your own taste for that early Spring project you have in mind!

This tutorial assumes that you have Inkscape installed in your computer. It also assumes that you understand at least the basics of the software (take a look at previous tutorials to get more familiar with Inskcape!)

Let's start!

Fire up Inkscape.
Choose the Create cirlces, ellipses and arcs tool (or hit F5)
While holding down the shift key, make a circle in whatever color you like best. At the bottom of the page, I
clicked on the palette arrow at the right hand side and chose Windows XP Icons palette and picked the nice warm orange
this palette has. At the left hand side below that palette, right click on Stroke. When the little menu appears, choose Edit Stroke.
Then just click on the X, to remove the stroke.

Duplicate your circle 3 more times. Click on each individually to place them around an imaginary circle, forming the petals of a flower.
Click on the star tool and choosing a very light color make a small star. Push it to the bottom of your round of circles by clicking on the 8th button at the top of the page. Make another star,
and give it yellow color, this one bring it to the top by clicking on the 11th button (counting from the left,) at the top of the page.
Make a circle. Color it green and leave the stroke black, but right click on the Stroke to choose the Edit stroke menu, and when the menu appears,
choose Stroke Style, pick the third style of the list. Now with the select tool, click on the circle to add the stroke style. Make another circle.
Fill it iwth yellow, right click on the stroke and then on Edit Stroke, then click on the X to delete the stroke.
Choose Gradient, and fill your circle with a linear gradient. Now, Inkscape will give you a gradient that is yellow and then transparent. We dont want that. We want a linear gradient that goes from yellow to orange.
To get that, we will right click on the fill then Edit Fill, now under the color wheel, you will see the Alpha channel, click on it to add a color that will substitute the transparent (in this case, it will be orange),
now your gradient is supposed to go from yellow to orange. Click on the circle and drag it into the center of your flower. Now for the last touch, make a small line with the Draw Freehand tool using black as your color.
Duplicate it. Drag the line to place it in the center of the first star corner. Now duplicate your duplicate and drag it into the next corner. Double click on it so that little arrow handles will appear for you to turn it into the
direction it is supposed to go according to the direction of the petal. Continue this way until you have made that small black stroke on each star corner.
Now stroke with the mouse to select all your work. Go to Object, Group. Now Go to File, Export Bitmap and save your flower as a PNG file.

If you have Gimp, you can open your flower in Gimp and using the bucket tool, add pretty textures to it as you see below. You can also do the same in Inkscape using SVG files. (There are lots of free textures online that you can use.)

Experiment, and have fun!

Real Hope. . .

Make a Scrapbooking Christmas Tree

Fire up Inskcape.

From the bottom of the page, choose the Palette Tango Icons.

Click on the Stars and Polygons tool. A tool bar will appear at the top of the page. Choose 3 Corners, and a Spoke ratio of 0.500, leave the rest as is.

While holding down the shift key, draw a triangle and click on the darkest green of the Tango Icons Pelette to fill the triangle.

Now, click on the Create rectangles and Squares tool and make a vertical rectangle, fill it with the darkest hue of the orange colors (something of a rust), for now, put the rectangle to the side.

Click on the first triangle and duplicate it, place the second triangle on the side. Repeat that twice more, for a total of 4 triangles.

Drag the little square and place it under the first triangle. Click on the triangle to select it, then click again to show the rotating handles, rotate the triangle a little bit to the side as seen in the photos. Now drag another triangle under the previous triangle and click twice on it to reveal the rotating handles and rotate it a little in the opposite direction to the previous triangle. Repeat these two steps again. Now you have the “tree” shape. For the trunk, drag the little rectangle you already made to be covered by the edge of the triangle. To push it to the back, behind the edge of the triangle, click on the 9th tool at the top of the page to lower selection one step.

Now you have your tree. Let’s decorate it. Choose the Stars and Polygons tool again and make a star. Double click on it to rotate it to make it fit the top of the first triangle. Make it any color you like. Now, using the Ellipse tool, draw a small circle, with the circle selected, right-click on the stroke tool at the bottom of the page, below the palette, and by clicking the X button, turn off the stroke. Duplicate the circle and set the copy aside. Now, change the color to whatever you like and continue duplicating the circle and changing the color to make the ornaments to your liking. Now drag your ornaments to the tree and place them on the tree according to your taste. Now stroke with the mouse all over your work to select it all, go to object, Group, to join everything. Export as a Bitmap and save it to any folder you want your work in.

Done!

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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!

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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:

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