The Crafty Girls: Using the Subtract Tool

Hey there! Niki here with you today with a tutorial on how to use the substract tool to crop a background into a shape.

I started off by choosing a background I wanted to crop into a shape and also choose the shape I wanted to crop it into.  The background is on the cutting mat and the heart shape I have chosen, is to the right of the mat.

The heart shape is part of another shape, so I have released the compound path of that shape and am going to take the outline to use as my shape, and delete the other parts of that shattered heart design.

Now I have my heart shape but I want this plus an outline, so I have selected the shape and created an offset at 0.200 using the Offset window.

I have now selected both the heart and the offset, and gone up to the Object window and clicked Arrange, Send to Back. This ensures that the two heart shapes will be behind my background.

 I have now re-sized the two hearts and moved them over to my cutting mat. They are behind the background rather than on top. I made sure the hearts and the background were lined up and I was happy with where the pattern was.

Now I have selected the internal heart and the background.

With both the internal heart and the background selected, I then went to the Modify window and clicked Subtract. This then crops the background into the shape and leaves me with a totally perfect cut file, filled with the original background I chose.

The final step is to select the whole design and then either 'group' or 'Make Compound Path'. I usually make a compound path but it makes little difference here really.

I then cut my heart shape out of whit card and created this layout with it. I have used Paige Evans 'Turn the Page' collection to backfill the petals and embellish the layout.

Thank you so much for joining me today and I hope you will give that tutorial a go - the possibilities are endless! 

DESIGNS USED
Circles Petals Background by Paige Evans
Heart Geometric Lace by Jamie Koay. This design does not appear to be available any more so there is an alternative by Sarah Hurley here: Geometric Heart


PRODUCTS USED: