Silhouette UK: Hello Spring Decor - Sketch Pens and Editing points

Monday, 16 April 2018

Hello Spring Decor - Sketch Pens and Editing points

Hi everyone. It's Verity here from Pretty Little Button bringing you another project. For this weeks project, I decided I wanted to create a bright floral piece of decor as we are all needing a little colour at the moment with the weather. I also thought this design might help spring on its way as we are all missing it. This design came as one design cut, however, I had plans to sketch it with my sketch pens in multiple colours. In order to do that, a little point editing was needed to separate different areas, and I am showing you today for those who don't know how to do this.

Hello Spring Decor - Sketch Pens and Editing points details:

To begin with, load your design into the design space. Right-click on the design and select the 'edit points' option in the menu that appears.

This will bring up and show all the 'points' of the design - little noddles at different points of the design where a change in direction, even if it is small, is seen. In order to separate pieces of the design, you need to create a break in the design path. To do this, select and right-click a point in at the place you want to separate the design. Form the menu, select 'break path'.

This will turn the noddle into a red round circle. You need to right-click on this red circle and select 'delete point'. This will cause a gap to appear in the design, like below.

You will want to repeat the same steps at the other end where you wish for the design to separate. once you have two clear gaps at each end in the design, you need to select the design and right-click 'release compound path'. This will allow you to now group the two areas of the design separately so you can draw or cut these two areas out independently of one another.

As you can see below, I also extended the points to reconnect two ends to follow the shape of the banner outline so this would still draw when I sent it to sketch. I had grouped the leave/floral design and use the arrow keys, moved the area so it was almost touching the banner line, to give the illusion there is no break in design.

Once I had separated out all the areas, as I was able to assign the different areas with different line colours. This makes it much easier when it came to sending it to sketch - I would make sure only one line colour was selected and sketch in the colour of my choosing. Afterwards, I switched out the sketch pen for another colour, and cut a different line colour. In the send window, you need to make sure your action is set to 'sketch' and the tool is set to 'sketch pens'.

To finish this decor off, I coloured in the outline sketch with some colour pencils. I have to say I found it very relaxing to do and didn't take long at all. The machine does most of the hard work for you!