Tips & Tricks Webinar

Hi I'm Josh Ellsworth, General Manager of Stahls' Cad-Cut direct and thanks for joining
this video on demand Great Garment Graphics presentation. Tips and Tricks for Creating
Apparel with Stahls' CutUps, Clip Art and Corel DRAW. Before we get into the actual
tip segment of the presentation with showing you how to manipulate graphics in the CutUps
clip art I need to show you how to access the CD. The first thing you want to do is
insert the CD into your drive on your computer. Opening your version of Corel DRAW, simply
go to file open then you are going to navigate on your computer to that particular drive,
open the CutUps folder and you can see the files on the disc are broken down into the
same categories that are outlined in the book which comes with the package. A counter book
that you can show customers or take on sales calls. So if a customer wants a design for
instance out of the basketball section of the book, simply open the basketball folder.
You have 2 file formats for all the designs you have CDR which is Corel DRAW that's what
we'll be using today. And you also have EPS. So if you have just a design and you wanted
it as is, you can usually import an EPS file straight into your cut driver software to
cut, or you can use the EPS format to import things into Adobe Illustrator if that's your
design program choice. But today we'll be opening all C D R files
since this tutorial is about manipulating the CutUps clip art in Corel DRAW. Something
important to reference, I'll go to a different view here so you can actually see the designs.
Something important to reference is the code of each particular clip art file. You can
see everything starts with C U and then a number directly after that. CU3 stands for
CutUps 3 inch. Every single clip art file in the package has a CU3 or a three inch version
and if you scroll down further you'll also see a ten inch version. The reason we've done
this, it really makes the clip art ideal and perfect for heat transfer materials. If you
were to just open a ten inch design, often there is a lot of detail in the design because
you're able to cut that detail in the design at a ten inch size. But if you take a ten
inch design and you size it down to say three inch for a pocket size or for a hat or for
a sleeve, then it becomes fairly difficult. The line thicknesses go way small and there's
a lot of detail. Probably detail that you're not wanting to weed. So basically, the ten
inch design is your most complex version of the graphic and then the three inch design
is a simplified version of the graphic without all of the detail.
So for this particular tip which is going to be how to trim a design for placement coming
from the bottom seam up of the shirt, I'm going to open a ten inch design. So let's
start by simply picking a clip art, and it sizes automatically onto the page. Now once
you have your clip art on the page, it's time to manipulate it. The simple trim function
that I'll show you here is going to be perfect. Basically what I'm trying to do is I'm trying
to create this graphic in a way so that I'm going to cut off the legs. Because I want
it to look like he's actually coming out from the bottom of the shirt that we're going to
decorate. In order to execute the trim function, you
need to identify the area that you want to trim. I'm going to simply click on my rectangle
tool on the left hand tool bar; I'm going to left click and drag that rectangle around
the design and let the line fall exactly where I want the design to be trimmed from. So let's
trim it somewhere around the knee to waist area. And I'm just going to right click so
I can see the box outline I want it to view as a hairline. I right clicked on the black
color. Now the box is selected and what I need to do is with my pick tool need to also
select the basketball player. So I'll hold the shift key click on the basketball player
and now both objects are selected. That's just a simple selection thing in Corel DRAW,
you can hold shift to select multiple objects, or control and click on all the objects you
want selected. Once both objects are selected, it pops up a menu in the top screen. It allows
me to do a number of quick functions on the graphic. The particular function I'm looking
for in this case is the trim function. So I'll simply click on the trim and you'll see
what happens. Notice how everything that was within the box disappeared. At this point
I have exactly what I want, which is half of the graphic. It wouldn't make sense to
cut the whole thing if I'm only going to utilize half of it. I'll delete the box; I don't need
that any longer it was just to complete the trim function. And now I have the bottom of
my design that's going to come up from the bottom of the shirt. You can size that by
clicking and dragging or by typing in the actual dimensions here. But I want this to
come up from the bottom of the shirt and extend out towards the center chest. Obviously you
can put this on a shirt and it can be complete, but if you wanted to leverage this piece of
clip art, most people would do a text drop or something with it. So I simply clicked
on the font tool, the text tool on the left hand tool bar, selected the font that I wanted
to utilize and I can type in, if it's for an event called The Hoops Classic I can type
in Hoops Classic. Click back on my selection tool and I can size that to whatever I want.
Another tip just in general, it's not necessarily clip art related but it's important to understand
about Corel DRAW and cutting, anytime you're working with text once you've selected the
actual font that you wanted the text to be, it's really tough to determine a size unless
you convert it to curves. Right now it's still reading in a point size because its not reading
as an object, it's reading as a font. So with the text selected, you want to go to arrange
and click on convert to curves. And that's going to have it start reading as an object
where I'll actually be able to see the dimensions. So I can see it's 8.2 by 1.1. As long as the
nonproportional scaling is checked off, I can just type in if I want it to be 2 inches
high and it will size the width proportionally. If I want that to go across the center chest
and have the basketball player coming up from the bottom of the garment. This is a design
that's ready to cut and apply down. With the heat transfer film workflow, everything will
stay prespaced here so this will cut and just be easy to place. Alternatively, if I was
doing a whole run of these let's say for 24 shirts, I may want to separate these 2 pieces
to gang them up a little better and place them manually. So I could separate them make
multiple copies, that way I don't have all this wasted space in heat transfer film. Cause
every square into drop customization.
We have a new page open for our next tip. And this tip is actually going to be how to
bring in a clip art design and place a customization component within it. For this one I'm going
to go ahead and import a different design. Sorry actually I'll open it since they are
already in the Corel DRAW format. Going to navigate backwards to a different folder.
Let's go to police and fire. I'm going to click medium icons so I can actually see the
designs without having to reference the book right now. So I'm just scrolling through,
let's open this fireman's helmet with kind of a flame graphic going around it. So let's
just say I wanted to do this leverage this clip art for a particular fire department.
Maybe I want to put the name of the fire department and also a number in here within the design.
So I'll once again select the text tool. I'm going to select the font that I want just
going to stick with Impact font cause that's something simple. And let's say its department
number 7; size it up so that I can see it. And then of course I'm going to go to arrange
as we learned on the last tip and convert it to curves. And let's make that roughly
4 inches. Going to size the actual helmet up as well. If I want it to be proportional
I can click and drag to make it proportional to my design, which is what I want to do.
I'm going to want to actually drop it in there. Now one tip in Corel DRAW if I go to view
wireframe, it's going to show me the actual cut lines, which is important. You'll see
what the cutter is reading. And if I zoom in here you can see you know you have the
number 7, but you have all these cut lines within it. So if you try to cut that as a
single color design it's going to look really nasty because it's going to cut up through
the number 7. It's just not something you want. You could weld that together, but I'm
going to show you another function which is a trim function. Let me drop some additional
text on here to complete my design first. Let's say it's Connellsville Volunteer Fire
Department. So I'm going to do C V F D. Once again convert that portion of it to curves.
Let's say I want to drop that underneath. Something I should show you before I drop
that underneath. If you want to center make sure the number 7 I'm going to go back to
normal view so that you can see it better. If you want to back sure the CVFD is centered
underneath the number 7 I'm going to once again hold the shift key to select them both.
And you can go up to arrange align and distribute and you can align the centers vertically.
Which means basically create a center line between the 2. And you can see it adjusted
over slightly. That way you're not manually trying to scroll it and center it by eye.
So once again if I go back to the wireframe view you'll see all these cut lines within
the CVFD and that's something that I don't want. So now in order to do a trim, If I want
to make this a single color design were I'm not going to overlay it I'm going to need
to trim this up. But before I trim I need to create a contour outline because I want
there to be a gap space, a little bit of a gap space in this area that way everything’s
not butt registered on the trim which still wasn't going to give me a desired result.
So I'll go to arrange and group them first so I can do a contour on everything at once.
And then I go to effects contour. This is a really easy way to do a two color which
is going to be the next tip were I’ll show you on an actual piece of clip art. But I
want to put a little contour to the outside just enough to give me a gap space. So let's
just keep it simple and go point 1 and click apply. If I change the color here you'll see
how it put that black outline around the whole thing. What I want to do then, is its reading
as 1 object the foreground and the background in this design I want to break that apart.
And then click off of the design. Because all I want to do is I want to select the clip
art and if I zoom in I'm going to hold shift and select the outline. Once I do those, it's
going to give me my trim command and watch what happens when I click trim. It broke apart
all the components. I'll go to the wireframe view so that you can see. I'm hitting control
Z so I can take a step back here. Once I click that and drag that away, let me hold shift
again select both elements and try the trim function once more. Great, there it worked
a little better. I had to get that out of my way. I actually had that selected by accident;
you want to make sure that you're only selecting the objects that you want to trim. So now
that it’s trimmed this design I'm going to bring this part back in and if I go to
the normal view we'll see here. Now I'm going to simply delete the outline contour by selecting
it and clicking delete. And you can see it basically customized the clip art now so I
can make it a one color and when I do my placement, I don't have
all those overlapping cut lines. Go to the wireframe view and you see now it looks like
its all one integrated design. And this is the design and how it will look on the actual
garment.
The next tip that I want to show you is how to make a simple 2 color piece of clip art
with the contour feature. Now we highlighted this a little bit in the last step with that
text and that special trim function. But I'm going to go ahead and open another piece of
clip art just to show you if you just want to take a piece of clip art and make it 2
color it's very easy. Let's pick any category here, how about mascots would be a good one.
Go to a view that I can see the actual clip art pieces. And then pick a 10 inch design
so it's large on the screen. Let's just select this mascot I believe it's a hawk. To create
a 2 color design all you need to do is select the item. Make sure the contour function is
open under the effects menu. And simply apply an outline. What I'm going to do is apply
it to the outside. Let's just do a 1/4 inch outline. Click apply. Click just any color
on the side screen so I can see it. I'm actually going to hit control Z. It looks like that
was too much of a contour because I'm losing some of the definition in the eye. So control
Z to undo or I can just go to edit undo. And now I'm going to change the offset maybe to
point 125. Something that's a little smaller for the size of this design. Apply it and
change the color. And now it's looking a lot better. But it's really simple. Obviously
you wouldn’t be able to send this just to the cutter as is. Because it would cut all
these cut lines. If I go to the wireframe view. So when you're doing 2 colors, it's
very important to break the layers apart. So with the object selected go to arrange
break contour group apart. Click off of your design onto your screen. And come back and
just click on the foreground color and you can actually drag it away. Now I have a layer
that I'm going to send to the black material and I have a layer that I'm going to send
to the yellow, orange, pink, whatever color of material your doing the combination. In
the heat application step with Stahls heat application films 2 colors are very easy.
You just tack the background color for a few seconds and remove the backing and you align
the foreground color and you place it directly over top.
Okay, so I've went ahead and opened up a new page for my next tip. Which will be using
CutUps as a background design and showing you how to mirror it to create a complete
background image and do a text drop over top. So I'm going to go ahead and go to file and
click open. Navigate to a new folder. Maybe we'll do soccer. Find a design that I want
to use. Size it to the size I want it to be. So if I'm going to do this along with a copy
of it across the front chest of a shirt let's make it 6 inches wide. Copying is very easy
all you have to do is hit...you can right click on it actually and click copy. Or you
can hit control C on your keyboard which is the shortcut. And to paste you can right click
on the page and click paste. And it drops another copy directly over top. So you actually
just need to click and drag that away. That way you have both copies. Now to put this
on the front of a shirt it probably wouldn't look too good but if you used the mirror function
which is just a quick selection on your top menu bar I can mirror this design and start
to use it. If you can visualize it as a background element. Once again I'm going to draw a box
around everything or select the multiple objects and I'm going to go up to arrange, align and
distribute and I'm going to align the centers horizontally to make sure they are evenly
spaced. And I'll just make sure everything is spaced. And at that point if I want to
make this a Hempfield Soccer shirt or something like that I can do it. Just let me find a
font. Hempfield Boys Soccer. Convert it to curves. And I can click and drag to size it.
I can do it proportionally by grabbing the corner. Let's change the color that way it's
a foreground. It’s really easy way to just create the garment. So if you think these
are kind of conflicting with each other, you can obviously pick your color combination
based on the garment and the look you want. Once again I can use that trim function I
showed you earlier that way we create a little bit of spacing around the design so it's a
little more legible and easier to read. So I'll select Hempfield Boys Soccer. I'm going
to do a contour around the outside of it. I'm going to break it apart. That way they
are individual layers. And then I have options. And then I have options, I'll zoom in again
so that you can see this. Let me drag away the foreground first that way it's easier
to see. I can select the outline hold shift and select the other objects. And I can do
a trim function. Excuse me I had to group the back objects first so I hit control Z
to back out of that. I want to trim it to both of the back objects. So I'm going to
select both of the back objects first. Go to arrange and group them together. Now I'll
be able to select that text element. The background objects which I just grouped and do a trim
on the whole thing. Now if I delete this you can see there’s that open space were I can
just drag this back to its proper placement. And it's a lot more legible now. Now I'm going
to hit control Z and go back a couple steps because the other option you have, let's say
you want to keep that whole black outline but have it to the shape of the text is you
can do the weld feature. So I'm just going to go back a couple steps. Now instead of
trimming this, I'll select this foreground and my background images and I'll click on
the quick weld up here in the top navigation bar. And if I go to the wireframe view before
I click weld, you'll see how it will all become one piece. And it gets rid of all the extra
cut lines that were in the center here. At this point if you want to get rid of all this
little stuff so you don't have to weed it, you just have to break apart that design.
Draw a box and drag it around those center components. Click the delete button and that
gets rid of all that junk. And then you can highlight that and go to arrange and group
that back together. Let me go back to the normal view. And at this point, I'm going
to cut these components separately but if you wanted to just get a visual of it, that's
how it would drop in. I'm actually going to select this and combine it. Ungroup it and
then combine it, that way those holes open back up so you can see it visually. So once
again just 2 unique ways that you can manipulate that artwork using the trim feature, we used
the mirror feature there, we duplicated the background text and we also showed you how
to leverage the weld feature if you wanted to do layer on layer. It's all about whatever
look you want to create. The next tip I want to show you is how to just to take a piece
of clip art and completely simplify it creating a silhouette of the image. Now a silhouette
of the image can be beneficial for a number of things. One it can be beneficial as a complete
full background design in a complimenting color or sometimes you just may want a silhouette
of the image to put on the garment. So you don't have to weed all the details. Whether
it's a baseball player or a basketball player. So let's bring a piece of clip art back in
from the Stahls' CutUps program and show you both. Pick another category; let's go with
football this time. Let me find one that we can use as a good example here. This one might
be good, let me open this up. I'll make it a little larger for us to see. Okay. So here's
a good example were we would have to take a weeder and weed out each of these individual
components if we cut it as is. An easy way to make just a silhouette of the image is
basically go up to arrange with the clip art selected and you break it apart. This is about
as simple as it gets. Then if you go to the wireframe view so you can see all the interior
components, you just need to draw a box around the whole design and just stop a little bit
short of that outline layer. Making sure you've encompassed every other interior component
that you want to delete. Once I let go it selects all the interior pieces that the box
was drawn completely around, hit delete and I have a simple silhouette of a football player
ready to cut. Likewise another area where you many want to do the silhouette feature,
if I go back a couple steps here. Is if I want to do a contour function. So if I want
to create an outline to the outside of this design but I don't want all of these interior
pieces, I applied the contour. Let's break this apart and change this color so you can
see it a little better. If I don't want this 2 color, this is pretty complicated, I can
drag this away. That's my foreground. And I'm going to go ahead and create a silhouette
of just the background. Once again I want to break that particular piece apart. Go to
the wireframe view; draw a box around all this stuff. Click delete. Now if I go back
to the normal view I have a full background. So I can simply, from the application step
drop the player and I can have a full bleed on the background. So it's just another unique
way to manipulate graphics and really make something different out of the clip art that
you're seeing in the book.
This concludes out video on demand presentation. Hopefully at this point you have some ideas
on how to put the Stahls' CutUps cutable clip art book to work in your business. The next
step is to log onto Stahls' dot com and go ahead and purchase the clip art package. Once
again in the package you'll get hundreds of pieces of clip art all in a 3 inch and also
a 10 inch sizing which makes them very usable for your vinyl cutter. Thanks for attending
and please be sure to visit Great Garment Graphics dot com to see what's coming next
in our webinars.