Sketch Pens & Water colours

Hey there, Niki here today with a tutorial about sketching and offsetting. I chose a heart background that I already had in my library and opened it up on my mat. What I wanted to acheive was for a design to be sketched with sketch pens and for the shape as a whole to be cut out around the outside edge so that I could then place that onto my layout.

So I probably shouldn't have chosen such a complicated design but I liked the file as a whole so decided to roll with it - I'm a big believer in using the files that I already have to their full advantage so figured I would find a way to make this work. So I began by ungrouping / releasing the compound path of the whole design but that meant that every little tiny stitch line was then an individual file - goodness, what a lot of pieces! 

Rather than attempting to delete all the stitch lines, I clicked on the outside edge, held down my shift key and then clicked on all the bits in-between the hearts. Once I was sure I'd got all the bits I needed selected, I simply dragged the selection over to the right of my mat. I then grouped them all together and deleted all the stitched bits that were still on the mat. I then put my outline design back on the mat.

The heart design on the mat is going to be sketched in sketch pens. But I also want to cut te design out, just around the edge, ie I didn't want any of the sections in-between the hearts to be cut out. I selected the design and then went to the Offset menu.

I applied an offset at 0.125 but this gave me an offset for all the in-between pieces too which I didn't want.

I simply picked up the offset and moved it off the mat. I then released the compound path and deleted all the middle bits so I was just left with the outside edge.

 I was then able to put the outline back over the hearts still on the mat.

So finally ready to draw and cut. I set Tool 1 to cut the outside edge and set Tool 2 to draw the middle design with a sketch pen.

Once drawn and cut, I coloured in the hearts with watercolour paints, chopped off the left edge of the design and added it to my layout.

 Which files do you have in your library that you might be able to use in a different way?
Thanks for joining me today, happy scrapping xx

  

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DESIGNS USED:
Stitched Heart Page Mat / Background by Sarah Hurley


PRODUCTS USED: