Back to basics: Welding fonts & Glyphs

Hello, it's Verity here from Pretty Little Button. Its another episode in my mini back to basics series and this time I am focusing on welding fonts and how to use the glyphs/flourishes that they come with. If you plan of cutting out your text, then knowing how to weld your font is very important so it doesn't cut out all the pieces individually and mess up your text. Also, many fonts come with glyphs and flourishes that can really change up your text and possibilities can be endless, so it is a great tool to have in your belt if you know how to access them and use them. I used all this information to create some cute modern labels for some of my craft tubs just to spruce up my craft room a little. So have a look around you and see what you can spruce up with some vinyl and text!

Back to basics: Welding fonts & Glyphs process: 

Use the text tool add your text to your design space. 

Using the text style box and all your titles selected to change the font to your chosen style. The font used here is Antelope. 

To add flourishes/glyphs to the front and end sections of your words, you need to use the 'Glyphs' tab in the text style window.

In this tab, you will find a scrollable window contains a variety of characters. The characters at the top will contain plain alphabet and number options, but once you scroll past this you will find additional letters with flourishes to them. For 'Paintbrushes' I selected this p below, adding a flourishing to the beginning of the letter. 

Then I altered the remaining letters including the s with a flourish lopping back over the s character. Make sure you think about the position of the flourish and the position on the character within the word.

Once I was happy with all the flourishes, the next stop was to weld the font. As you can see above, there are many areas where the letters overlap and we don't have a continuous cut line. If you were to cut the font out like this, the vinyl would be in bits and you would struggle to adhere it correctly and without any of those cut lines showing. 

  Now it is important to note, that when you weld font you can no longer edit the text. So if you know you may wish to change the text later before you cut it out, leave the welding until the end. 

Select the modify panel in the right-hand toolbar to open the modify window. 

With your title selected, click the 'weld' button in the window. 

When the items welds' anywhere the to items overlap join together to create one continuous cut line. As you can see above, all the letters in 'paintbrush' are now joined, whereas the letters in 'mixed media' are still overlapping as they are not welded together. 

These titles were cut out of self-adhesive vinyl in a lovely teal colour. Once the titles were weeding, transfer tape was used to position the titles on the tubs and adhered down with a burnishing tool.

Back to basics: Welding fonts & Glyphs photos:

If this has inspired you to try this out, please post below. I would love to see it!

Until next time,

Verity




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FONTS USED:

ANTELOPE by Polem, design ID# 251515

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Design Your Own Vinyl Decals - Stay Home Wooden Sign

Hello, Janet here with a quick gift idea. I've designed my own vinyl decal to decorate a plain wooden blank, with some fonts and a bird file from the Silhouette Design Store, using the Silhouette Matte Removable Vinyl.  I prefer the matte finish over glossy for more rustic-looking projects. In this post I'll show you how to put your own design together.

What You'll Need 

Silhouette Cameo©, Portrait or Curio
Silhouette Matte Removable Vinyl
Silhouette Transfer Tape
Silhouette Studio© Designer Edition
Small Wooden Blank
Chalk Paint



How to design a Decal

1. Firstly bring the shape of your blank into the Silhouette software. You could scan your blank, or use a PixScan™mat with scanner or camera, but I took the low-tech route and just drew it on the screen using the drawing tools in the Silhouette software. It doesn't need to be a perfect replica as long as the size and shape are roughly similar to the blank.

2. Next type in the first piece of text. Click on the Text tool and type  "LET'S" and "HOME" in the LW Sketchy font.  Select your text and open the Text Style Panel. Adjust the Text Size, Alignment (to Centred), and Line Spacing (to allow roughly enough space for "stay", it can be fine-tuned later).

3. Refine the text. First ungroup the words (right mouse click, select Ungroup). Refine the letters by fine-tuning the spacing and make an external offset if you'd prefer the letters to be a little thicker.
Then regroup the letters, one word at a time.  Adjust the spacing between the words if you need more space for "stay".

4. Type the final piece of text. Click on the Text tool and type "stay" in the lovely Willow Bloom font by Skyla Design. This font comes with the swashes, and it is easy to select them using the Glyphs tab in the Text Style panel (available only in Designer Edition and higher versions of the Silhouette Design software). You can either select alternative characters with the swashes attached (as shown), or type the swashes separately and weld them on to the letters (this font comes with both options).

When you are happy with the sizing and letter placement, weld the each entire word together. This gets rid of unnecessary cut lines.

5. Adding the bird design.  The bird design is too complex to be cut at this size. Release the compound path and/or ungroup the design until all the elements are separate.  Delete the writing and eye from the bird. Adjust the legs and claws if you wish (I removed the legs with the knife tool and added two new legs (just by drawing two thin rectangles and rotating them a little).  Overlap the bird's legs with the swash on the letter 'y', select word and bird and weld them together (right mouse click, select Weld).

Prepare the Decal for Cutting

EITHER (1) If you want to save vinyl, and are confident with centring decals, then move the decal to the corner of the mat and draw a small cutting box around it, discarding the house outline.
OR (2) For easy placement, leave the house outline in place and draw a box around it, then locate all the pieces to a corner keeping all the pieces in the same relative positions (as shown below).

Cutting and Applying the Vinyl

Cut the vinyl with or without a cutting mat (using a mat is easier if your vinyl is less than 12" wide) using the 'Vinyl, Matte' default cut setting as a guide. After carrying out a test cut, reducing the force to the point at which it will just cut through the top layer of vinyl will reduce wear and tear on your mat. I usually use Blade 1, Force 9, as shown below. Your ideal setting may differ depending on the state of your blade and mat.

Weed the unwanted pieces of vinyl away. If you cut out the house shape, just remove that and the inside of the letters.  Lift the vinyl from it's backing sheet using transfer tape and align it onto your painted blank. Burnish it well with a flat edge and then carefully peel the transfer tape away. 

There you have it, just add a hanging loop and your gift is complete.

This is a great first project if you haven't tried vinyl before. 


Bye for now,

  Crafting Quine Blog | Instagram @CraftingQuine

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Using the Pen Holder to draw Dingbats - Eclipse Card

Hello again.  Janet here with a cardmaking project using the Silhouette Pen Holder and the Cute Bunny Dingbats Font (#247342) from the Silhouette Design Store.  The dingbat font has lots of cute bunnies (unsurprisingly), and some additional decorative elements, totalling 26 images in all.

Once you have installed the font, it is easy to select the individual images using the Glyphs panel (available in the Designer Edition of the software in v4.1 and later). Read about this in more detail in my earlier post, Using the New Glyphs Panel. If you don't have access to the glyphs panel, type out the alphabet on your virtual mat, select it, and display it in the dingbat font. Then you can then simply copy and paste the images that you want to use, or delete the ones that you don't want.

I selected the images associated with the letters "vjhlce" to use on my card (N.B. Some of the bunnies have been flipped horizontally to face the desired direction).

I made the card using the lettering technique known as 'Eclipse', where letters are cut from the background and then raised above the background on several cardstock layers. Originally this technique was used with traditional metal alphabet dies, but by using the fonts on your Silhouette there is much more flexibility in terms of font, sizing, style etc.

Once I'd arranged the bunnies I added a font over the top spelling out the word 'party'.  As I later planned to cut these letters from the bunny piece, I chose a bold block font, LW Super Font (#80746) that would cut well.  The image below shows multiple copies of the card front. It was possible to fit three copies of my card front on one piece of A4 cardstock. This demonstrates one the major advantages of using pens over Print & Cut; less wasted space and cardstock.

Using the Silhouette® Pen Holder allows you to use your favourite pens too.  The holder comes with three sizes of insert, and the picture below shows some of the pens that I tested with this design.

Here are the results (note that the top two drawings are in reverse order compared with the pens above).  

Instructions for loading a pen into the holder are included with the packaging. Ensure that the pen tip does not protrude too far through the end of the holder or unwanted stray lines will result. I'd also advise using the Force as low as it will go and still draw a continuous line. The image below shows the settings that I used to produce these drawings.

I chose to use the pen from the top drawing, a hybrid gel pen and the medium (white) insert. The letters were cut from pink cardstock and the pictures below show how the layers were built up.

1. Adhere the drawn background to the card base.

2. Adhere one layer of coloured cardstock letters into the letter-shaped holes and locate the original small letter inner pieces in their original positions.

3. Layer up the remaining letter layers with the original drawn layer on top.

I made a couple of variations, and you'll notice that my final design also includes some text using the Sisters Sketch Font (#76091).

I loved using drawn versions of these bunny images, and I hope you'll try out a dingbat font with your pens. You'll find that the Silhouette Pen Holder gives so much flexibility and variation.


Bye for now,

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