SCAL – Sure Cuts A Lot project putting pictures in to words.

Welcome to my Photo Cube project.

This post is a design team post. The author has been supplied with a copy of the design and files from Plannercraft. Thoughts, techniques and methods are the author’s own opinion based upon using the files and their own supplies.

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First open SCAL and start a new project.

Write the text that you want to put on your shirt, don’t worry about the font yet,

Open a new page down the bottom called add a page and gather all the photos you wish to use for this project,

Start looking at fonts for your project 

I have used anthology regular; I love glitter for the love hearts and mustique.

Type your words out as you want them, get the sizing and spacing the way you want them.

https://www.1001fonts.com/anthology-font.html free for personal use only 

https://www.dafont.com/mf-i-love-glitter.font  free for personal use only 

https://www.creativefabrica.com/product/mustique/ $14 USD Lifetime licence for personal and commercial use

You can use any font you want just be aware of copyright 

Then go to your pictures and put them altogether so there are no gaps in them, 

Now open the library and you will see a tab called fonts and then you will see a big screen with lots of little squares in this is called your character map, this is how you can change and add different characters to your text.

I will start with the I love Glitter font and in the character map, on the top row you will see a little love heart, click on it after you click the text button, and it will appear then you add whatever you want, for the text or you can copy what I do in the video.

Go back to your bigger words and highlight and copy, then go to your pictures page and paste the word.

Then put your word over your pictures make sure the word is in the front. And try to line up so you have good coverage of pictures where the letters are at the moment.

Then when you are happy with the placement, you highlight the word and all the pictures then you go up to object and go down to clip path then across to set clip path and you will see everything will disappear and in its place will be the word you had cut out of the pictures you had there, if you aren’t happy with the placement repeat the process by selecting it all then going back to object back to clip path, then this time you press release clip path and that will bring back the word and pictures, then you can adjust accordingly, then to put it back again, just repeat select all then go to clip path then set clip path again. You do this for each word or even letter or numbers or shapes whatever you want, until your happy,

Now this part is optional if you want to add a htv border around your words

 you can add a shadow layer around the outside, so it stands out a bit better,

To do a shadow layer you highlight the word that you are putting the shadow layer around

Then go to effects on the top bar and move down to shadow layer contour cut.

The only things that you need to change is the colour and the size. 

I click once on the arrow for the size and it changes from .50 to .150 inches. I change the colour to a light colour so you can see it better. Complete this process for the rest of the words

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You have now finished your design and need to break it apart to send to different machines to cut or print

Remove the shadow layer as it will be a cut file leave all the cut files on the one page and export them as a FCM for a brother scan and cut machine that way the sizes won’t change on anything.

To export them you go to file on the top bar down to export and a pop-up window will appear where you can name your cut file and place it in a folder where you know it will be easy to find. Then in the drop-down menu where it says FORMAT it automatically says SVG’s click on that and go down to scan cut fcm. 

Then go down to your layers panel in the sure cuts a lot program and hide all layers by clicking on the little eye on each layer, except your print layer, that we send to the printer, go to file on the top bar, down to page setup where you pick which printer to print on and your page size of the material you’re printing on and the orientation of the page.

The Printed htv does not have to be mirrored

After you have printed your words with the pictures in put the print on the scan and cut mat, now load the mat into the scan and cut machine.

Then go into canvas workspace and import the fcm cut layers you exported from scal 

Hide the layers that you aren’t cutting yet, and then send the shadow layers to cut out your print on the machine. Retrieve the data on your scan and cut and then scan in your print, they should line up perfectly then cut, do a test cut if needed. After the print has cut take it off the mat, and load your htv you plan on cutting, go back to canvas and do a small offset, I did .16 outward around your shadow layered words then fill with colour so you can make sure this next step works highlight the shadow layer and its offset and then go to the edit tab in canvas workspace and then go down to divide.

And you will see you will have another border which is what you cut your htv from that goes around your words.

Send to the machine to cut, don’t forget this htv you will need to mirror the offsets because you are cutting htv.

After that has cut then turn on your other layers that need cutting and turn off the shadow layered words and their offsets, send the final cut to be cut also mirror this as well because it’s also htv,

Then put it all together on your shirt or substrate that you are using for this project.

This is one finished previously. 

Now when you make this shirt there is so many ways you can make it, I make mine using sublimation for the pictures on to white htv glitter which is what I cut the shadow layer from, but you guys can use printable htv for your pictures in the words then you can add another colour htv for it to stand out better, then I use a plain htv for the thinner writing with the love hearts,

I hope you have enjoyed this SCAL project. For more projects by our design team click here.

Thank you 

Tracy Stephens-Wood

Plannercraft Design Team Member.