Personalized Balloons

Just a little twist on the balloons I've posted earlier. I thought it would be fun to personalize them by using the Envelope Deformation in the Path Editor menu. I created a slightly curved band to give me a stopping point for my words. I used a font called Boulder because it's bold typeface and would conform to the shape easier. In order to use the Path Editor you will need to convert it to a path. Then in the Path Menu, as shown in the illustration, you will find the Path Effects Editor near the bottom. Click it open and the Effect menu will appear. There are a variety of options. Make sure you have your word selected and the click open the Envelope Deformation effect. I mainly use the Top Bend Path and Bottom Bend Path. The right and left manipulations can quickly distort the letters. After you are happy with the lettering, select object to path to save your changes before you close the path effects menu.

I do some additional editing and you can tweak some areas to suit. I prefer to edit the end letters with the node editor and shape them to the sides of the balloon. I've also used a variety of the patterns available as a fill for some of the backgrounds.

For some of you this could be a great Print and Cut project. I thought, for others, it could a fun project with kids, too, letting them cut out and paste together their own personalized balloon. I use rubber cement because it gives a little time to align the edges of the balloons.

Have fun!

2012 Calendar - January

I'm using Inkscape 0.48 feature in the Extensions drop-down menu for creating calendars. It gives you a simple basic start for creating your own custom calendar. You can create a one page calendar for the year or individual months. So, I thought I'd try to have fun and create a different look for each month and play with fonts, shapes and textures. The purple rectangle is created from the Filters drop-down menu under Materials - Enameled Jewelry. I added a variety of rectangles and circles until I was happy with it. So this is first installment for the new year, soon to be here!

Name Game - part 2

Just a quick visual with some simple options. I used the Boulder font for the background and the line spacing was adjusted to 50% in the top right sample. The next one below the line space is 80%. I think the first one gives a more abstract and less obvious use of the name. The next two samples are the same designs with the background shape of the letter added in black and the text changed to white.

Name Game

A little more designing using the Path/Intersection feature of Inkscape as described in the last post...here are some ideas to create a personalized look. While these are for towns you could easily do it with someone's name, too.

Subway Art

Well, I was inspired by some work I've seen for other cities so had to do my own take for our little town. Naturally I did my work in Inkscape. Most of it was just deciding placement and tones. I did decide to overlay a large "a" with the city, state and county names as the background.

In the sample here I've typed the background rotating the city and state. I also kept reducing the size and I adjusted the line spacing to 80% in the text editor. I duplicated about three times and then when I had enough copy for my "a" I selected Object to Path and Union to make them one unit. The "a" as you can see I set translucent enough to play with my placement then I, strangely enough had to Ungroup it in order to convert it with Object to Path. After both elements were path I selected both and using the Intersection feature in the Path menu.





Not sure why a couple of letters dropped out of the design...but not too hard to fill in...give it a try!

Whoo Loves Swirls?

I was at Inkscape Cutting Design and saw Carolyn's tutorial on making shapes with spiral so it inspired me to create some swirl patterns and make these owl designs I'm sure there will be more to come!