A Pre-Holiday Xara Gift
Xaraists don’t buy retail Christmas cards: we make our own!
Here’s a little starter kit I’d like to offer our community: there are 5 or 6 custom strokes in this Christmas ornaments.xar file, all based on the holiday in theme, as you’ll see below.
If you’re new to Xara Xtreme, I do cover how to build and use Custom Brush Strokes in Chapter 3 in The Official Guide, but here’s a recap anyhow:
Custom Strokes are local to a file, so you can only use these strokes if you work in this file, or copy, then save a stroke you’ve used to a new document.
1. You open the Line Gallery (or use the Infobar’s drop-down list when the Freehand & Brush tool is active)
2. Choose the stroke you want from the New Brush Strokes folder. Try double-clicking a thumbnail in the Line Gallery folder.
3. Set a width for the stroke from the Line Gallery or the Standard Bar.
4. And then stroke away.
You can also apply a custom stroke to an existing open or closed path by selecting the path, and then double-clicking on the desired stroke in the folder.
The Xara file is 5MB (sorry) because I used mostly bitmaps instead of pure vector shapes to make the tiny French horns and gingerbread men. However, the source files (you can find them in the Bitmap Gallery) were designed to 300 pixels/inch resolution, which means they can be used—almost every element—at a full inch in height for printing out a Christmas card with these as borders or incidental ornaments.
And they’ll print just fine to your home inkjet, and even to a commercial press.
Xara Christmas Brushes
Enjoy!
My Best,
Gary
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