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Tuesday 1 January 2008

Welded Shadows

Here is a pictorial demonstration on creating welded shadows!

Be aware - this only works on cartridges that have a shadow feature.

Cartridge used:
George/Basic Shapes


1. Right click anywhere on the mat. You will see this box:2. Highlight the text “untitled page” and overtype it with a new name eg: Top layer

3. Press enter


4. Create your first layer. For this exercise I will be using the word “Welcome”.
Type this in starting on the left hand side of the mat and using a size of 1.5/8"

5. With Kerning set to 0.000 click the Apply button


6. Using the Nudge buttons, make sure all the letters are overlapping.


7. Click the Preview button. This is what you should see so far. (Yours may
be a different color). 8. With your word selected, click Weld. This should be your result.

9. Now would be a good time to SAVE!

10. Click the New Page button. Rename this page to: Shadow

11. Click the Shadow key on the DS keyboard


12. Click the Preview button


13. Open the View menu, and make sure “Keep preview as mat background” is
ticked. If not, click on it to put a tick near it.

14. Move the cursor to the left of the mat and below the word “Welcome”.


15. Type the shadowed word “Welcome”


16. Select your shadowed word and move it up so the W covers the W of the
unshadowed word.

17. Click Preview. The Shadowed “Welcome” will show up as a different color.

18. Click on the Shadowed E and nudge it to the left until it sits over the
unshadowed E.


19. Repeat this process with the remaining letters.

20. Click Preview in between nudging each letter so that you can better see where the letters need to go. Lighter preview colors are easier to see. To change the Preview color, right click on the mat, Select Set Preview Color and click on any light color from the palette. Here is the finished result.


21. Making sure that you are still on the Shadow mat, select the word Welcome and click Weld.

You may need to fiddle with the nudging slightly but this should be the result.


22. To cut your design you can either cut one layer at a time or you can copy the shadowed word to the top layer, (or vice versa) and move it to the bottom of the mat. (Turn off Keep preview as background). Then on your real mat you can position your 2 different papers and cut both titles at the same time.



14 comments:

Unknown said...

Could you email me how you saved the screenshots? Thanks!
brandigore@hotmail.com

Janis said...

Is there a way to do this with a design you have created using objects and letters.. from different cartridges you own?
Thanks for any help you can give! This is great!

Micki said...

What's the trick to welding with OA so that you don't have the tails when using the scripted font?

Narelle said...

Hi Micki

Other than using the Upright Feature key (the font is the same but no tails) with OA there's not much you can do about the tails unfortunately. Thet're are a bit long and there's no way to crop them. That would be a great feature for DS to have though. I have successfully welded OA by nudging the letters as close as possible without the tails poking out of the next letter, but the title is still pretty long.

Amanda T said...

Thank you so much for sharing your blog with us! I have learned so much. I have a really lame question, but when I do my welded letters on the "top layer" they appear in a bold outline, with no color. I try to do my shadow on the "shadow" mat and it does the same thing. What am I doing wrong? I keep having trouble matching up my welded words, since they only show in a thick outline. Thanks in advance! I love your blog.

Narelle said...

As soon as you click welding on an object the coloured background will disappear. If you are having trouble lining everything up, I would suggest not clicking Welding on the shadow until you have everything lined up how you want it. HTH

Narelle

Amanda T said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Amanda T said...

Thank you for your help! I'm now able to line everything up and then press weld and it works great!!

projectsgalor said...

I do not mean to sound stupid - but where is the Shadow Key. I am not finding it.

Thank You,
Cyndi

Narelle said...

Hi Cyndi

The shadow key is one of the feature keys of the carts keypad.

It is in a different place on some carts but always on the left of the letters on the keypad.

To find it another way, while you're in DS select the Features menu, then you should see one option for Shadow and usually another for shadow blackout. HTH

Becky said...

Thank you so much for the information. But I do have one issue. When I get all the letters on the "shadow" page nudged together the way I like, the option to weld is not available. When I click on the box nothing happens. What am I doing wrong?

deb h said...

I'm on Life's a Beach. It doesn't show a shadow feature. Does that mean I cannot create a shadow with it?

Narelle said...

That's right Deb. There is no shadow on Life is a Beach.

You could try using the next size up but I don't think it would be terribly successful. It's a shame that all carts don't have the shadow option.

Jana said...

I haven't done this in so long I had forgotten. Glad to see this is still here. Thanks, it's been a real time saver for me.

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