January 2013 Guest Tips and Tricks - Making A Handcrafted Valentine Card

Making A Handcrafted Valentine Card

February is the month of love and you can be ready with this Valentine's Day card. Frances Proctor (Angelize) shows you how in this month's Tips and Tricks tutorial.

Show Frances that you took her tutorial to heart, and post your handcrafted Valentines here.

Thanks Barbara and Gary!

Thank you, Angelize! That looks like an elaborate and well-crafted tutorial. Now I only have to give it a try....

You are quite welcome Boy, I look forward to seeing your effort :)

Frances, you win hands down in the "Intricate" category of tutorials, no less "Comprehensive"!

Question I'd like to throw out: does our community prefer short, specific tutorials, or more involved ones like this one? I realize it's a lot of work for Frances and anyone else who attempts a large tutorial, and I'd like to gather some opinions on preferences. There is no "correct" answer, and if people like a mix of long and short, that's good to know for future offerings, too.

My Best,
Gary

Thanks Gary. I too would be interested in the opinions about this.

I think a mix is good Gare. Just my opinion of course.
Good one Frances.

I have no problem with a mix, but not being a native english speaker, I do prefer a written text over a video tutorial.

Noted, and I'm making an effort right now to create a transcript of this month's video into a PDF text file.

We had no time for the past two months and we sort of forgot to do it.

Thanks!

:)

I have not found a bad tutorial yet. My card is going to get me in trouble when she sees it, I bet I am buying diner.Attachment 94173Attachment 94174

;)) That is definitely different! I can see you had fun with it. I hope it doesn't get you in too much trouble! Thanks for showing us all your Valentine.

Thanks for the tut. Francis, I've added a few flurry's and extras, hope you don't mind, just to impress the girl!:D and as always a great tut., although a transcript would be nice :D but I know it's a lot of time for you and Gary to spend writing these transcripts. As regards a mix, short or long tuts., I'm not bothered either way as you have lives to lead your selfs as well, so it's your time to consider when composing a tut. in my opinion.

Stygg

Angelize,

I do have a question. I was following your Valentine tutorial and everything was going good, but after I added the patternmap.png, and I click dragged the outer transparency handle to reduce the transparency (figure 8), it skewed the pattern. I kept trying to straighten it back but would not go, almost like it was snapping to the grid at an off angle. Any ideas how I can get around this? Thanks!

Hi bean pole first when you say skewed do you mean rotated? To skew the transparency (see my images below) you need to hold down the shift key while dragging. If as I suspect you just rotated the fill then a quick and easy way to return it to straight is to make sure the magnet icon on the info bar is still down to enable snap to objects (you should have done this in the beginning) and snap the horizontal transparency handle to the side of the rectangle. To reduce the pattern without rotating it hold down the ctrl key while dragging the transparency handles.

If you actually did skew the transparency the simplest way to return the transparency to normal is to remove the transparency (chose no transparency from the drop down list at the top left) and then apply the transparency again.

No, it was actually rotated. Can't seem to get the pattern to run up and down, it is either rotated to the left or right.

Perhaps my settings are wrong?
Attachment 94214

Hi BeanPole—

To rotate a pattern within a shape, you use the control handles, and if they're not visible, you click the Show Fill edit handles button on the Infobar when the shape is selected and the current tool is the Fill tool.

Simple, right? :)

Okay, there's no simple way to straighten out the orientation of a bitmap fill other than to re-apply the fill. but first, you want to press Ctrl+Shift+O to display Options. Under General, there's an item toward the bottom labeled "Angle Constraint". Now you say when you apply the pattern fill, it's oriented "to the left or right", which means it's 90 degrees out of whack (the technical term for this). So you can set the Angle Constraint to 30 or 45, and then close the Options box.

Then, with the Fill tool selected and this misbegotten shape filled, go up to the Infobar and you will see a Bitmap Name drop-down list with thumbnails of all the bitmaps saved within this Xara document.

1.) Choose the fill Frances provided for this tutorial and then click the Apply button on the info pop up to the right of the Bitmap Name preview.

2.) It's not oriented in the upward direction now, right? Okay, with your cursor, click either one of the ends of the control handles above the shape.

3. ) Hold Ctrl (constrain) and then drag counterclockwise or clockwise depending on the current orientation of the fill, and you should meet one or two "stops" as you drag. That visual feedback is the rotation hitting the constraint angle points you defined in the Options box. If the image is 90 degrees awry and you specified 45 as the angle (degree) constraint, two stop points while you Ctrl+drag should righten the fill.

Let me know if this works for you.

It should, or it's Thursday,

Gary

I had a great time creating my Valentine’s Day Card! Great tutorial!
Here it is!

Attachment 94220

Have a few questions though!
When I grouped the diamonds and copied them and flipped the copy, my shadow was on the wrong side, so I adjusted this.

When I moved the necklace over to the card, somehow the shadow looked white. So I ungrouped deleted the shadow and reapplied a shadow.

When I selected the red velvet bitmap and clicked the fill button all was good. But when I tried to adjust the fill handles to reduce and rotate the fill, it shrunk the pattern inside the rectangle, so I ended up with the 8 sided shape you see quite by accident. Not sure why I could not reduce the pattern inside the square.

Also, when I grouped the whole card together, the white in the red/white pattern effect went really dull, so I left the objects ungrouped to keep the white bright.

Any ideas why these things may have happened?


Thanks Again!

Gary, the answer is Yes and No!

I found the problem was that, because my Xara was default centimeters, when I went into options and changed the Major spacing to 1 inch, I needed to change the number of subdivisions from 2 to 16 (like a ruler). This stopped it from rotating the pattern when I tried to reduce it.

However, after I changed my subdivisions to 16, I was able to follow your instructions above and straighten up the rotated pattern.

So, I got it! Thank you!

@BeanPole—

Ta-dah!

Um, as far as the rotation thing is concerned.

The only thing I can think of that would cause the card to go dull when grouped, is if you had an odd shape somewhere sandwiched between other shapes, or in the act of grouping, one of the Live Effects was disabled and caused a change.

You have enough posts now that you can accept and send Private Messages. And of course you can post images and attachments. If Frances would be up to taking a look at your Xara file, you could post it. And if she's too busy (and who isn't?), I could take a look at it over the weekend for anything wonky in it.

It's her tutorial and I don't want to step on anyone's toes, not with my cleated Winter boots on, fer shure...

-g

Hi Bean pole, sorry I haven't been ignoring your questions sometimes real life concerns need my attention, and yesterday was a busy day for me :) I think that what may be happening with the red velvet is that the fill tiling needs to be set to repeating. I provided a screenshot of that if you take a look at figure 24 on the Xone tutorial page, but forgot to add it into the written copy.

I'm not sure why everything went dull , as Gary said if you can attach your .xar file here and I'll have a look at it and see where you went wrong.

@ Gary: My toes are fine, thanks for helping :)

Thks

How do I attach a Xara file?

It doesn't seem to work with the "Insert Image" button.


P.S.
I just went into the Card and it grouped without the white changing color. So that issue fixed itself.

Also, I went into the Valentine Starter file and re added the bitmap to a rectangle. It did what it did before, but when I chose to repeat tile, it works fine. That was it.

Thank you

With this vBulletin software, BeanPole, you can click Reply, click Go Advanced at bottom right of the composition window, and then scroll down a little and then click Manage Attachments (twice for me, and I don't know why). Once you're in the File Upload Manager, you click the Add Files button at very top, right, (then click Select Files) select your file from your hard drive, click Open which returns you to the File Upload Manager, click Upload files, and then you'll see a thumbnail with it checked at bottom left under the Attachments section.

If you want to embed a graphic on the forum, you leave the checkbox checked and then click Insert Inline at right.

But if you want your upload to be an attachment (which you do in this case because you can't display a Xara file on a forum page), you uncheck the checkbox for the file, and then (WHEW!) click Done.

This should be a FAQ, shouldn't it?

-g

Thanks Gare!

Actually I do it a little differently. Once I have the file(s) uploaded all you have to do is click done and all the files you have uploaded will be attached and image files (jpeg, png) will show at the bottom of the post. Other types of files .xar, .pdf, .zip etc will show as a download link If you want to embed your image inline then just click insert inline.

Gary, it's odd that you have to click manage attachments twice, I have to resize the add files box every time which is odd too (the darn box shows up tall and narrow with the done button hidden behind my taskbar)

Frances,

there were problems about half a year ago with the Upload Manager, as implemented in vBulletin, the forum software. I never had it resolved som that it worked like it used to after the upgrade. Evidently, you have a complaint or two about how it appears.

My only reason for bringing it up with BeanPole was that you don't always get what you expect onscreen, and to be a little patient, forgiving, and diligent in your approach to uploads.

My Best,

Gary

Had some help with this one from the grankids, they wanted something a little more cool :D Anyway it made them practice the shape tool until they got it right ;)) Anyone guess what the original song was and by whom?

Stygg

No idea about the lyrics, Stygg. But I like what you did with the Be-Bop guy!

My Best,

Gary

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gare

No idea about the lyrics, Stygg. But I like what you did with the Be-Bop guy!

My Best,

Gary

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Just testing you Gary :D
The song, way back but no Valentine included, Teddy Bear by Elvis :D

Stygg

You were too subtle, Stygg.

:)

You shouldn't have told us Stygg....I would have gotten it.....and off the top of my head....right now I'm doing Elvis songs on the ukulele and performing at our club, but that's another story.

Nice card!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Karateed

You shouldn't have told us Stygg....I would have gotten it.....and off the top of my head....right now I'm doing Elvis songs on the ukulele and performing at our club, but that's another story.

Nice card!

---

Elvis songs with the ukulele! What does Jail House Rock sound like with a ukulele? What ever tugs your strings Ed, you sound like you have fun and that's all that matters :D

Well, it helps to have about 70 to 80 other ukes in the audience....although often they are just singing....yes it's fun...did Blue Suede Shoes a few weeks ago and rocked the house down....

Anyway at risk of highjacking this thread we should probably just say, I thought your card was very appropriate......and well thought out, using a couple of recent tutorials.

Thanks for the kind comments Ed and I must say I was pleased the way the grankids used the shape tool for the T- shirt and pants, looks like a couple of future Xarists :D

Stygg

You taught them well Stygg. Nice card. The graphic and verse go together very well.

nicely done Stygg. I knew the song before I started reading the rest of the posts :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by angelize

nicely done Stygg. I knew the song before I started reading the rest of the posts :)

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Thank you Francis, looks like there's a few rockers on this thread :cool:

Stygg

My mom is a huge Elvis fan so I grew up hearing all of these songs :) She also taught my sisters and I how to dance to this type of music (and others of the same era)

Ahem now getting back on topic what techniques from the tutorial did you use in this card?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by angelize

My mom is a huge Elvis fan so I grew up hearing all of these songs :) She also taught my sisters and I how to dance to this type of music (and others of the same era)

Ahem now getting back on topic what techniques from the tutorial did you use in this card?

---

Francis I used the Be-bop tut. for the figure and applied a 3D Bump Map.
Unfortunately I did'nt keep the file for the Card but I had try'd the effect on another figure, which I kept. The only thing I added in this earlier file was to clone the figure>ungroup>group>fill black>put behind green figure and line up with a feathering, this was to give the figure a darker outline with the lighting, it depends on what background fill you use. I've uploaded the file so you can tinker with it your self instead of me rambling on :D

Stygg

Okay, so this example didn't follow Frances' excellent tutorial to the letter, but it was created with Xara.



Happy Valentine's Day, lovers everywhere!

-g

Nice annimation Gary, now if only it could be set to music in Xara :)