SNC Basics - Exploring using the Machine as an X-Acto Knife or Guillotine Part One

As you may be aware I have severe ME/CFS which leaves me pretty much housebound and mostly bedbound. What this illness does, is stops my body providing me with the energy and strength that normal healthy people have, as well as giving me a lot of pain and nausea and other symptoms that are exacerbated when I do too much. And for me, doing too much is basically anything over and above eating, going to the loo and telling my carers what to do every day. And that's why I bought this Scan and Cut Machine, because I wanted to try and get back to doing some crafting using modern technology to reduce the amount of energy and movement needed.

This Month's CnC Member Gift (In the Garden Kit by HunkyDory Crafts)  HERE

All well and good. But it does take a lot of thinking on how I used to do things by hand, and now how the machine might be able to. One example is stamping and then fussy cutting images by hand. I'm sure most SNC owners are aware you can use your printer to print out digi stamps, colour them in with the printer or by hand, and then scan the sheet of images into the machine, which then fussy cuts them out for us.

That's great. I do that a lot. But, I'm a member of the Create and Craft TV Member's Club (I'm in the UK, it costs £20 a year and gives you permanent 10% discount) and they have member gifts where you only have to pay for Postage & Packing and not the actual crafting kit, and also Hunkydory Crafts (which is free to join) and they have member's gifts too, on the same deal of only paying for Postage and Packing. This month the Create n Craft Member's Club gift, is a Kit of really decent quality backing card sheets and toppers by HunkyDory Crafts, called In The Garden in the picture above.

This month HunkyDory Crafts themselves on their own website have a lovely Peacock Kit HERE, which I've also ordered for only £2.99 and as I work my way through both kits, creating cutting files for the cards, I'll blog about the different types of files and lines I create and the actual card that results. This is me doing the basics of working out how to do this...

This month's HunkyDory (free) member's club gift - costing only P&P £2.99 - In Full Plume

 Anyway right now, only the Create and Craft In the Garden kit has so far arrived, so I'm starting with that one.

However much as I love these member gifts - I struggle to use them! Usually they consist of about 8 sheets of thick cardstock printed with images and borders and foiled a bit, plus 4 sheets of pop out toppers. I can pop the toppers out easily, but I need the carers to be handy with a scalpel or X-Acto knife, cutting mat and ruler (or guillotine type blade cutter), to cut up the thick cardstock. Which isn't ideal as they don't really have time and then something else doesn't get done (like cleaning the bathroom or something). And really I want to be independent and do it for myself! Which means exploring whether I can use the ScanNCut fairly easily to cut out the various shapes I want to make cards with from those thick printed cardstock sheets that come with the Kit. The toppers just pop out so those aren't an issue and I can use scissors to cut the ends of the thin border pieces on the topper sheets.

This is a picture of what the Kit comprises. I'm using just ONE backing sheet and one little popped out topper for my card.

The full kit contents of this month's CnC Member Gift, worth £9.99 plus P&P of £2.99. Members only pay the P&P.

So I've been giving it a lot of thought and I think I have worked out how to use the Path Tool and also the basic shapes with Weld, Subtract and Divide, to make my own cutting and scoring lines that the machine can do instead of a healthy person with a knife. This blogpost is being written as I try and do this.

Below is a scan of the actual piece of printed cardstock I want to cut out. Normally people would use a knife or guillotine to cut the border and motif away from the main sheet. I can't, I want to use the SNC to do this, so I need to work out where my cut lines are needed, and how to create a cut file from scratch in Canvas Workspace.

Scanned on SNC using Scanning Mat and Scan to USB, it produces a JPEG file. This can't be used in Canvas

And I'm going to follow the Video below (once my pieces are cut out) to try and make a fairly simple card like this peacock one that a HunkyDory Demonstrator has made below. Obviously it's not going to be the same, I don't have the same kit, but I am going to put the border on each side and a sentiment in the top left like they did, so I'm using it as a recipe:

Screenshot of the Hunkydory You Tube video of peacock card 

The link to the video is HERE.

So, let's look at the source material I'm using to design this card - HunkyDory Craft's Anne-Marie's video on making the Pretty Peacock Card:

Anne Marie has taken a single sheet of the thicker cardstock that has a border and a peacock, and cut the border off and cut it in half and trimmed the peacock image down to her card size. Presumably by hand. And then added a few toppers from the Kit she's using. I want to create these elements, the two border pieces and the peacock (or deckchair for me) motif, using the ScanNCut instead of a Guillotine/ Cutter or mat & scalpel. Let's see how it goes!

Screenshot of Hunkydory Video of Peacock Card - elements she uses to make the card

In summary this blogpost Part One explains HOW to instead of using a knife or guillotine to do those manual cutting parts, I shall use the Downloaded Canvas Workspace to create the cutting files, and then transfer them to the machine for Background Scan and Cutting of my sheet of card so that I end up with the same ingredients as Anne-Marie as shown in the picture above.

Yes! It really is as simple as I want to create the equivalent of the peacock part and the two border parts using the SNC not a knife/guillotine.

Once I have my bits cut out by machine, I can then make a card like hers. Basically I'm using the SNC instead of a knife (ie as a glorified pair of scissors).

Part Two is how that works in the machine and whether it assembles a reasonable looking card or not!

Let's go!

CHOOSING MY CARD SIZE BASED ON THE SIZE OF THE ELEMENTS TO BE CUT OUT

STEP 1 - Measure the HunkyDory card sheet and work out how big my card is going to be - the maximum and minimum it can be for total height and width. This card is going to have a central motif and a matching border on each side, so 3 elements.

The cardstock is A4 (standard UK measurements for such kits) - which is 8.3" wide by 11.7" high in imperial and 210mm x 297mm in metric. I am going to be awkward and use both imperial and metric as it suits me...

So here is a VERY rough drawing I have done using my mouse and Windows Ink (free programme) of the dimensions of this sheet. Can I just say it's really hard to write using a mouse on a laptop giggle, but my graphics tablet isn't set up today... Anyway, moving on...

Scan of the actual printed sheet to be cut

Dimensions of my HunkyDory Deckchair card sheet

 So, I know that the whole cardsheet to be cut, is 11.7" long, and 8.3" deep (I use inches for this because that's what the Canvas mat is marked out in, inch squares).

And I know that the border, which has gingham then a foiled pattern then a bit of a darker shading, is 32mm deep (and 11.7" long), and that the motif of the deckchair in the bottom right corner is about 100mm wide and 95mm high.

So. I know that the card I choose to make needs to have minimum dimensions of the WIDTH of the motif and the depth of the border twice - that's 95mm plus 32mm plus 32mm =159mm.  If I want to see the whole deckchair and use the full depth of the borders on each side, my card has to be that wide. Like this:

Minimum width my card can be if I want to use all the border width and the smallest the motif can be

 Ok cool. Now I also know I only have 11.7" length of the border, and I need to split that in two, so my card can't be higher than half that, ie 5.85".

At which point I need to stop confusing myself and convert the width of 159mm into inches so I'm matching apples to apples and not apples to oranges!

so I googled and 159mm equals 6.25 inches.

So basically, my final card size can't be any taller than 5.85 (about 5 and 3/4 I think) inches (because that's the max height of my borders) and it can't be a width of less than 6.25 (6 and a 1/4) if I want to use the full extent of the width of the border available. Well it can be taller than 5.85 inches if I decided to add a border at the bottom say with a sentiment on, but I don't want to, I want to follow the style of Anne-Marie's card in the You Tube Video.

Also, that minimum width of 6.25", I want the card to look 'gracious' with some white space around the motif so it doesn't feel all squished, so it's probably better at 6.5" plus some.

Landscape 7x5" card blank should fit full width of borders (trimmed in height) on each side of a central panel, with a nice amount of white space around my motif in the centre panel. Sorted!

So basically a card that's around 5" high and maybe 7" wide, in landscape orientation (landscape is a rectangle lying on it's side - portrait is a rectangle standing up)? yeah that's a standard card size here in the UK, that would work.... wonder if I have any....


STEP 2 - look in my stash to see what size cardstock I have that's already made up - or more accurately, what size envelopes I own! There's no point in making a card I don't have or can't make an envelope for.

Aha! Yes I have LOTS of 5x7" cards, this is effectively A4 folded in half, and takes a C4 envelope. I got mine from a bricks and mortar shop, but Create and Craft have them by Craft UK Limited (same brand as I'm using) HERE, (obviously other retailers exist, like Hobbycraft etc as well as local card shops, and Amazon UK and Ebay also sell card blank and envelope sets. I get no benefit from any of these links, I'm just saying where I get my stuff )in case anyone's wondering what I use.

Craft UK Limited 5x7" cardblanks and envelopes. Available from them or lots of other retailers

To be fair, I only use these cos they were available to buy, I have no special attachment to them. They are 250gsm cardstock with 100gsm envelope.  The HunkyDory card sheet is 350gsm and the toppers are 300gsm so considerably thicker. However, I know from experience that as long as I don't layer on too much, it does hold together! They're just white with no special finish etc as far as I'm aware, quite smooth and identical on both sides.

Which reminds me, when I bought some other blank cards from the actual manufacturer called Craftsite in Cramlington Northumberland (before I got this ill and could do such things as travel half an hour away from where I then lived for craft supplies) they told me that when you look at a card blank that's not been folded, the scoreline is indented on one side and embossed on the other.  That is, the embossed side, the score line sticks up and on the indented side, the score line is like a little valley.

I had always (through ignorance) folded cardstock like that with the valley on the inside, reasoning that the embossed/raised score line was ready stretched by scoring to easily 'travel' around the outside of the fold.

But no! apparently I had it ALL WRONG, the indented valley goes on the outside and the embossed raised goes on the inside. Who knew! apparently it gives a better finish on the outside with less likelihood of cracking.

So, make sure you fold your card the right way if it's prescored or you score it yourself on a board folks!

Also, they said don't use a bone folder to squish a really strong crease into my blank cardstock, instead, just press with my fingers. Mind you these days my fingers are so weak, a bone folder in my hands probably has the same effect as healthy people's fingers... but anyway.

Do with that information what you will! Ignore or follow. Up to you! Personally I think doing it their way leaves a crumpled bit inside but I didn't say that to them, which of course would be covered up if I could be bothered to use full inserts, which I can't frankly life is too short! So for me, maybe the other way is better for an unlined card. Anyway I just said oh thankyou I never knew, and went away and randomly do it one way or the other by accident... giggle.

Whilst I'm digressing, experienced card makers may be wondering why I've bothered with Steps 1 toand 2, because hey all cardmakers work that out through experience don't they? they size stuff up by eye. Yes we do! however, the SNC needs precision for cut marks! and also there's an awful lot of people using SNC who don't know HOW to do cardmaking or measure up designs for what they want to do, say apply vinyl to a cup or whatever. So, I wrote it out. Because it's JUST as applicable for any big pristine sheet of decorated card you paid for that you are planning to cut up but don't want to waste! It takes the fear of getting it wrong out of it! and I hate wasting materials.

Remember the adage - measure twice, cut once!

LEARN HOW TO NAVIGATE AROUND CANVAS WORKSPACE SO I KNOW WHERE TO FIND THE ICONS I NEED

Step 3 - Open Downloaded Canvas Workspace

Some thoughts on the Downloaded Canvas Workspace

In recent weeks, Brother has released a Canvas Workspace that you can download and use from your computer or laptop (not sure about tablets) where you don't need to be online to use.  Depending on the speed of your computer, it's probably a lot faster than the Canvas Online that's browser based. It also can do the same things, but has a slightly different layout. I use both the older online browser based and the newer downloaded one depending on what task I am doing. For this card though, it's all the Downloaded Canvas. Obviously you can do what I'm doing using the Browser based Canvas, but you're on your own with where to find the various functions (there's a help file in Canvas Help area called help.pdf top right of browser based Canvas that will help you). I'll use the same terms that Brother use to make it easier for you to navigate your way around if you aren't using the Downloaded one.

So. If you've NEVER used the Downloaded Canvas before, I seriously recommend you go to the HELP in the Menu along the top and read the Quick Start Guide and watch the Online Video Tutorials - there's no sound on the videos but they really do help you work out how Downloaded Canvas is set out, because whilst it pretty much does the same things, it does it in different ways! I shall be doing blog posts specifically on that, with comparisons, but for now, I want to make a card, so I'm assuming some knowledge.

In Downloaded Canvas - Help on top Menu Line

then choose Quick Start Guide and then Online Video Tutorials. It'll really help!!!!

If you've not downloaded Canvas Workspace onto your computer yet, you can do it either from the entry screen that pops up in online Canvas when you log in OR you can download it from the Brother Support Site - there's instructions you can follow, you need to make sure YOUR machine model and country is the one you are downloading, this link is for my machine, just under the picture of  the machine is where you can change models - HERE.

I think you need to set up a free login and password on Canvas online first, which you then also use for Canvas downloaded.

One tip - if you want to use Downloaded Canvas offline, MAKE SURE you have logged in on Online and ticked the box to stay logged in for 7 days and don't log out of Online Canvas but just close it down, then log into Downloaded Canvas whilst you are online and again tick the box to stay logged in. Then, so long as you don't log out using the Help Menu, Account Settings, Log Out screen, you should be able to open and close Downloaded Canvas without having to be online, even if you use the File Menu, Quit option to close it. No I don't know why sometimes if you don't do that, it won't open for you, I just know it works. :)

Finally! We get to actually use Canvas to make cut lines so I don't have to use a scalpel!

Step 4 - Bring up a NEW MAT on Downloaded Canvas 
This screen shows up

File,New brings up a new Mat all clean and tidy working space!

Let's have a quick overview of the basic areas/controls, because these are different to Online Canvas in terms of where familiar functions and tasks are placed, but also, there's new bits too! (and some missing from here that you can find in Online Canvas also).

Different Areas marked 1 to 5 in this Downloaded Canvas

Ok so I labelled them 1 to 5

1. This is the Menu - it is a row of words - each of which when you click them brings up a submenu. Many things that you can do elsewhere in this software, you can also do here.
2. This is the Toolbar - this is a row of icons - the icons showing now are the basic ones, additional icons show up on this Toolbar depending on what tasks you are doing.
3. This is what I call the SideBar (as soon as I remember what Brother call it, I'll amend this), it's a list of icons - that include tracing, importing svg, path and freehand tools (in online canvas they are on the Toolbar) as well as what we are used to seeing there, the Pattern shapes which opens a submenu as well as a new element for Fonts/Text which brings together the fonts that are preinstalled in online Canvas/your machine (to the extent they are in online Canvas) together with all the true type fonts that are actually already installed in your computer. So, with Downloaded Canvas you don't need the bridging Text Conversion software anymore. But also with Downloaded Canvas you can't do Enhanced Tracing. (One of the reasons I still use the Online Canvas is Enhanced Tracing, which is a Premium Function you pay for).
4. These are a brand new area - the Panels, there are 4 of them, this is where you play with resizing, flipping, rotating, layers and grouping, and that sort of thing. Online Canvas doesn't have these.
5. This is a replica of your mat. With the ability, as with Online Canvas to move shapes around outside the mat to give you more space.

I'm not going into any more detail here about those, but you really do need to download the Online Canvas Help PDF mentioned above from Online Canvas, as well as watch the Online Videos via the Help in the Menu in Downloaded Canvas, to give you some written/watchable instructions on how Canvas works. For some reason, they've not actually written a proper Help.pdf for Downloaded Canvas, and I've found that using BOTH sets of help really does make a difference!

WORK OUT WHERE MY CUT LINES WILL NEED TO BE AND MAKE A PLAN TO FOLLOW (a blueprint, albeit a very scrappy one)

STEP 5 - Decide what sort of cuts you want to make and where on your pattern cardstock

So, as above, I know I want to cut two pieces of border and one piece of motif from the A4 sheet of card I have. In reality I probably wouldn't bother mapping it out in Canvas, but to make it easier for you to see what I'm doing, I will.

This is a scan of the Actual patterned cardstock I'm going to be cutting up with my SNC. I used the Scanning Mat in my SNC, and chose Scan to USB, left it at 300dpi, changed the size to A4 and then you CAN'T see this in the machine afterwards, it doesn't even show you the file exists, you have to go and take the file to your computer to look at it.

It looks like this! Not bad huh!

Scanned Actual Sheet SNC will be cutting into bits.

Now, this scan saves as a JPEG file, that's a bitmap file, and Canvas doesn't handle bitmaps, it uses Vector files, so I'm NEVER going to be able to do what I want by tracing this scan into Canvas for example.  That's because I'm not doing a straight fussy cutting of a motif, I'm cutting lines in places the machine won't expect. I appreciate this makes no sense at this stage, but bear with me and hopefully it will when you see what the cuts are doing. As far as Canvas and the SNC machine is concerned, this sheet of paper might as well be blank, there's very little useful information it can use to turn into Vector data. If you don't understand about bitmap and vector here's a blogpost on what file types Canvas and the SNC machine uses HERE, or you can just say ok, actual printed cardstock I scan into the machine in this instance isn't any use to me, and move on.

So why did you bother scanning it in? Well because I want to work out where I want my cuts to be, and I CAN use this file with my Windows Ink app. (yes I know I could just have used Inkscape for the whole thing or SCAL4, but this blog series is all about using things that are freely available from Brother). Normally I wouldn't bother actually mapping it out, but I think it'll help you follow my design process if I do.

Ok so, I know I need 2 borders of 32mm wide and 5" long (because I am using a 5x7" card and the border width is 32mm (don't worry about me mixing imperial and metric, it'll all come together I promise). And I need a central panel that will cover the space between the 2 borders, with a bit of overlap so you can't see the edges of the panel, that will contain the motif.

So my cardstock is 5" high and 7" long, the border will be 5" high at the sides vertically, so I also need a 5" high motif. For the 7" edge, it's going to be 2x 32mm borders (that's approx 1.5" each) minus the 7" edge, gives me 4" for the width of the motif (7 minus 3 = 4).


These cut lines (red) will be like this so that I keep as much unused cardstock as intact as possible:

Cut Lines Plan. Normally I'd just write these down on a piece of paper.

So in effect you can see that I need two different cutting areas, one for the border and one for the motif.

Killer question is, how to translate that into cut lines in Canvas Downloaded! I have found a way...

STEP 6 - Understand what you are going to ask the machine to do

Ok so, I know I need to make a series of cut lines to detach the pieces I want from the pieces I don't want.

Back before Christmas I wanted to make myself some paperchains. And I started off making an actual rectangle shape the same size as my paper and trying to weld the cut lines to it, to make a cut file. Which wasn't very easy at all!

So I thought about what I do if I'm using a mat and scalpel or guillotine. With those you make a series of straight cuts that overlap a little bit. Like this:

Individual cut lines I'd make by hand

So the first set of cuts is the border
cut 1 - red all the way along the top, 32mm from the top edge (see now why I mix imperial and metric?)
cut 2 -orange, cut away the one inch I don't want of the border (I want 2x 5") leaving a 10" strip
cut 3 - yellow, cut the border in half, so they are 5" each.

the second set of cuts is the motif
cut 4 - green - 5" in length, 4" away from the side of the card
cut 5 - blue - 4" in length, 5" away from the bottom.

To translate that into a cut file, those are the individual lines I need to create, in proportion to each other, and grouped, so that I have two sets of grouped lines that I can do a background scan of the sheet, adjust the placing in the machine and boom, cut out.

CREATE THE CUT LINES IN CANVAS WORKSPACE, ALIGN AND GROUP THEM SO THEY CAN BE MOVED AROUND ONCE IN THE MACHINE FOR PRECISION CUTTING

STEP 6 - Create the Cut Lines

This is actually the easiest bit! It's the working out what cut lines you need and the size of them that takes all the work!

So let's go to Downloaded Canvas.  If you've never used the Path Tool before, here's a blog post I did for Online Canvas about using the Path Tool to make lines and shapes, it's pretty much the same in Downloaded Canvas HERE.   And here's an overview of the Path and Freehand Tools HERE, for if you have never used such software and it's totally alien to you. Read the Overview first, then the How to use the Path Tool afterwards. Then, come back here to see how it works in Downloaded Canvas.

One thing that is going to make life far easier in Downloaded Canvas is that they've added a 'snap to grid' tool. This means that your lines are ALWAYS going to be properly straight now! Which makes it a LOT easier!

A. Switch on the Snap to Grid Tool
Go to the far right and the 4 Panel Icons (that's No4 in my basics outline above), and (1) pick the bottom icon, the ArtBoard, and (2) tick the box for Snap to Grid.

If the box is ticked, it snaps and when you place a shape on the mat, it'll automatically move itself to one of the grid lines. If it's not ticked, you can put your shape anywhere.

How to toggle Snap to Grid on and off using ArtBoard Pane.

B. Use the Path Tool to make the cut lines for the Border Pieces - Create the first cut line
Click the Path Tool (not the Freehand Tool) on the Sidebar on the Left of the Mat, it's the second icon from the bottom.

Select Path Tool

When any icon is 'live' and operational, that icon has a blue background. If it's not active, then it has no background. A useful way to know quite where you are and what you are doing because it can get confusing swopping between different funtions and tools!

So once you've clicked it, both the Path tool on the SideBar and also the Select Tool on the ToolBar (above the mat) will have a blue background (Select is the default setting for that group of icons).

Good to start creating lines as Path Tool and Select are in Blue

C. Create the first cut line - 10" long - Let's create our first cut line - the red one from the plan above. We know it needs to be 10" long and horizontal. So, single click with your mouse on a horizontal line on the mat at the edge, and use the mat gridlines to show you where the 10" ends and double click there. The line will snap onto the grid, so you know it's straight.

Single Start Click gives you a light blue dot with a darker blue outline.

then, move your cursor to approx the 10" mark, doesn't have to be exact, we can resize afterwards and double click to finish the line.

this is what it looks like as you move your cursor along 10 inches, your starting point becomes just light blue, and the point you are working with has a dark blue outline. This helps you know where you are and what you are working with. cool huh!
and when you are in the right place, or thereabouts, double click. If you mess up, delete it using the delete key on your computer once you've highlighted it and try again.

If you do this without Snap to Grid you can do different lengths that aren't full inches.

Remember that my actual piece of card I am cutting is just over 11 inches long, BUT what I want to cut out is 2x5" long borders, that's my 10" total. The Machine has NO IDEA how big my piece of paper is, EVER! It only knows what size mat, the x and y coordinates of each 'node' in the cut file. And in creating a beginning and end of a line, we have created two nodes. So the information the machine needs is about WHAT IS BEING CUT and NOT what is left behind!

D. Duplicate the first line to make the next line needed - next we need to make sure we have two vertical lines. Why only two? well, the edge of the cardstock will be at one end of the 10" line, so no cut line is needed there, it's already an edge. So we need a cut line at the 5" mark and at the other end of the line.  Question is, how long does that line need to be? Well it needs to be 32mm or 1.5", to make it simpler, we'll go for 1.5". (as I know most people don't mix imperial and metric with such gay abandon as I do).

And the easiest way to do this, is to duplicate the 10" line and rotate it 90 degrees and resize it to 1.5" then duplicate it again then I'll have two of them.

So, let's do that.

Select the 10" line. Now selecting a line can be a right pest! I find it easier to put my mouse button down and hold it whilst sweeping over the line and then Online Canvas locates it more easily as a selection.  However, in Downloaded Canvas (and I adore this about it) in the Layers Panel on the right hand side, EVERY SHAPE YOU HAVE ON THE MAT shows up as an individual thing, and you can select it that way. With great ease! And by holding down the shift key at the same time, you can select more than one. This to me is a brilliant new function for Canvas, it makes it so easy to select pieces if you are layering vinyl etc to get the right ones, especially as you can group them from that Panel.

So click on the Layers Icon to bring up the Layers Panel.

Currently Panel is Arboard, third icon down is Layers, choose this

And then you will see there's only 1 shape on the Mat, which is your line. If it was a circle or an oddshape, it would show that instead. It really is so smart!

Layers Panel shows the shapes you have in the working area

Then all you need to do to select the line, is to click on the grey box in the Layers Panel that has the line in it. And ta da! your line on the mat is selected, with a blue box around it. No fiddling around trying to capture it by mouse sweeps like with Online Canvas.

Select the Line shape in the Layers Panel and it lights up blue background and on the mat, the shape is selected

(I've just worked out a new way of writing on the screenshots, hence the change in colour and line thickness, but I don't feel like going back and redoing the other pics, that's why it's different).

Ok then all you need to do, is to right click on the selected line IN THE LAYERS PANEL (not in the Mat, though you can do it that way, with lines it's easier to do it in the Panel) - and a picklist submenu comes up. Select Duplicate.

RightClick Line in Layers Panel and Select Duplicate

This gives you two lines 10" long.

Now you have two lines, New is on top layer, Old is on bottom layer

It's quite a logical piece of software, when you add a new shape, that one is on top of the older ones automatically. The Videos in the Help Menu explain how you can rename the shapes and also move them up and down in order, but we don't need to do that for this card, so I'm not going to go into that here.

E. Resize the duplicated line and make it vertical -  Now this second line, we need to make it only 32mm or 1.5" long. If I was doing this myself, I'd go to Artboard Panel (bottom Icon under Layers) and change it to metric, do resizing, then change it back to inches. But as this is supposed to make sense to people that aren't me, we'll stay in Inches.

So next Panel we want to use is the Edit Panel (second one down, above Layers).

Edit Panel

You can see it's got lots of different functions in it, for now, we're only interested in two of them, the width and the angle.

Width and Angle Functions

We need to change the Width to 1.5" and the angle to 90 degrees so that the line is short and vertical.
Like this:

Untick Aspect Ratio box as it's a line, then type 1.5" into the width box and 90 into the Angle box.

Because it's a line, you have to untick the Aspect Ratio Box just under the Width box and THEN either type in 1.5" or use the little arrows, and then type 90 into the Angle box or use the little arrows.

F. Duplicate the second line so we have two the same - Next we need another of these. So we click into the Layers Panel again, and making sure we are picking the right shape (it's the newest so it'll be the top one), we right click and choose duplicate exactly as we did the first time.

Duplicating the short vertical line - we need two

It's not hard to tell if you only have 2 lines and one is vertical and one is horizontal, but if you have lots of shapes, it's worth being in the habit of knowing how to tell which shape you are altering, of course the one you are working with is the one that's highlighted on the mat area.

This is what it looks like when you have all 3 lines.

3 lines at the right length and orientation

G. Align the three lines so they are where we need them per our cutting line plan - Now we need to align the short vertical lines along the 10" line. For that we use the Layers Panel to choose which lines we are working with, and then the Edit Panel to use the Align Functions.

Remember we are aiming for our  one long and two short lines to look like this below (red orange and yellow ones) when in the machine and there's a background scan of the paper on the mat.

Border lines are the red orange and yellow at the top

First we align the vertical lines so their bottom ends touch the horizontal line. So in the Layer Panel, select all 3 lines - by clicking the top one and holding the shift key and clicking the bottom one.

Select all 3 lines in the Layer Panel

One thing to remember with Aligning is, DON'T physically move the lines around. Otherwise you'll have to redo it. That's where the Layer Panel comes into it's own, you don't have to select anything on the mat, it's all in the Panel!

Next, click on the Edit Panel, and in the Align section choose the Bottom alignment (bottom right icon).

Click Edit Panel icon, then the bottom right Bottom Align icon in Align Section.

This makes the vertical lines sit perfectly on the horizontal line, like this

Aligned to bottom

If you click elsewhere in the mat, it deselects all lines and you can see it's worked.

short vertical lines now sit perfectly on the horizontal line hurrah!

Next we need to move one vertical line to the far end of the horizontal line, as that's where we want our cut mark (orange sitting on the end of red in my plan above). To do that we choose the Layer Panel, select ONLY TWO LINES in the Layer Panel. We need the horizontal line and ONE of the vertical lines. You can do this by using the CONTROL key instead of the SHIFT key. The shift key selects everything in a list from the item you click first, to the item you click last, it picks up all the ones inbetween. However the Control Key selects only the individual items you click. So if you have a list of 4, clicking 1 and 4 whilst holding down the shift key will select all 4, but clicking 1 & 4 holding down the control key will select only 1 & 4 and leave the others out. This is a standard Windows thing, so hopefully is familiar to people? (probably originally was an Apple Mac feature I imagine so should be familiar to you guys too?)

In Layer panel choose one horizontal and one vertical line.

 This is what it looks like when nothing is selected

Then go to Edit Panel, and choose Align Left side, this is the top left button in align section

aligning one vertical to the left end of the horizontal line

this is what it looks like when done, and only the line that has moved is selected, you can see one vertical line is now at the far end of the horizontal line.

vertical line moved left to end of horizontal line

Next (our final alignment) we need to move the other vertical line to the middle of the horizontal line, because we want to have this border divided in two. Again, click off all selected in the mat. Go back to Layer Panel, use control key and left click to pick up the vertical line we want to move and the horizontal line (pick the vertical ones first then you can tell which one is the right one. At this point, I realised I'd have been better off renaming them end, middle and bottom, but too late now!)

Other vertical plus horizontal line selected.

Then go to Edit tab and pick Centre Align like this

Centre align in Edit Tab

It's the middle icon on the first line of the Align section. So it looks like this

all lines aligned

Hurrah! all the lines are aligned.

H. Group the aligned lines so they make a single set of cut lines that can be moved around in the machine for precision cutting - However, we need to be able to keep these 3 lines all in proportion to each other for accurate placing and cutting in the machine. So, we need to group them. Back to the Layer Panel once more!

And select ALL three lines. And look down at the very bottom of the Layer Panel, there's a Group Icon. Click that and these three lines are grouped and maintain their relationship to each other.

select them all and click the group icon at the bottom

Once grouped, an extra row shows up in the Layers Panel, and the lines are indented. This shows they move around together as a single unit.

No you can't weld them, because they are open lines that intersect. And once you send the file to the machine, you can't ungroup in the machine. This means you can just pick up the whole grouped shape and move it around to the exact place you want the cut lines from the machine screen without worrying they are going to move away from each other. It gives you PRECISION CUTTING!!!!

starting point loses the dark outline, the next point (working point) has the dark outline.

Ok. so that's the first set of lines done. All written out it takes forever. But once you know how to do it, it's a 5 minute job max to do all that!

I. Move the group to the approximate position they need to be in for the machine - Final tidying up, select the group (click on the Group row)  and move it to where it is probably going to need to be on the mat, I will put the A4 sheet onto the mat in landscape, and I'm cutting from right to left, so I need it to be in the top right hand corner. I untick Snap to Grid for this, as I am matching it to the red dashed line not the grey mat lines by eye.

Moved group to approx the right place in top right hand corner.

I've worked out that the red dashed line on the Canvas screen roughly approximates to the first dot on the actual mat, so I can line up my A4 sheet on the real mat against the real dots, do a background scan and use Zoom in the machine to place it.

If I wanted to be even more exact, I could create a dashed line for the open end and the top of these shapes, turn them into dashed lines in the Properties Panel (top icon) in the Line, Dash Panel pick list, and then align them as we did with the other lines into the right place in the Edit Panel and then in the Layer Panel, change the individual lines to draw. Why? well because the draw lines show up as blue in the machine, and won't cut at all if I've told the machine to cut. so it's extra guidelines for me that I won't need to delete before cutting. cool huh!

J. Set up the cutting lines for the Motif - Anyway. We're on the final stretch. We still need to set up the cutting lines for the motif itself. These are the green and blue lines in my plan.

We've done the border ones at the top, now for the deckchair!

Ok so, same principle. We know the vertical green line needs to be 5" because that's the length of the borders, and I need about 4" width (the blue line). Just to be sure, because if I cut too much off I can't add it, but we can overlap card, I'm going to do a 4.5" line.

K. Set up the vertical line and horizontal line by taking a basic shape and node editing to remove two sides - So, we create one line using the path tool that's 5" long making sure the Snap to Grid in Artboard Panel is clicked, and in Edit Panel, make it vertical. Then we duplicate that line (right click on the shape in Layer Panel) and make it horizontal and 4.5" long in Edit Panel. Then also in Edit Panel we use Top align and Left align so that it makes the same shape as the green and blue lines in our plan.

But that's quite longwinded and fiddly. For this cutline we actually just want half a rectangle, so it's easier to pull up a standard rectangle (also if it was to be a topper you could pull up a rounded corner rectangle which would be nice), resize it and then use Node Edit to take away the two sides we don't want.

So let's do that.

Firstly, in the SideBar click the Shape Icon (top one).This shifts everything sideways and adds a new panel with all the shapes in that we're used to seeing in the Online Canvas, just organised a bit more clearly.

Click on Shapes Icon (first on sidebar) and Shapes submenu opens

L. Create the rectangle basic shape - Click on the first rectangle, and holding down the mouse button, drag the shape over to the mat. Normally I'd just click it, and it would appear in the top left corner, but I've already got my border cut lines there, so I've done dragging instead.

drag basic rectangle to the mat

M. Resize the rectangle - In the Edit Panel on the Right side of the mat, resize to 5" high and 4.5" wide, making sure Aspect Ratio is unticked

Resizing your rectangle

N. Magnify using the zoom icon - Now, to do the next bit, we need to be able to see better. So, up in the ToolBar, there's magnifying glass icon, if you click on that, and then put your mouse cursor and hold the left button whilst sweeping across the rectangle, like this below, you end up with a larger rectangle (max is 1000% but we dont' need that for this).

Click magnifying glass Icon on ToolBar above the mat, and scroll with button down with your mouse to highlight the area to be magnified

Afterwards, which is DIFFERENT to Online Canvas REMEMBER to click back to the Select Icon! Otherwise you'll end up magnifying the wrong place and I end up lost in the mat at ridiculous magnification and have to start over (though of course you guys aren't that stupid nope :) )

Remember to change back to Select Mode when Magnification is done

O. Node Edit to Open the shape to remove the right side of the rectangle -Then you just need to have the rectangle selected, so there's a blue outline. You do that by hovering your mouse cursor until it turns to a cross with pointy ends, and then you single left click once (in Online Canvas you have to double click, it's different). This brings you into Node Editing, and adds a whole new section of icons on the tool bar.

Node editing mode - see the new icons?

We're only interested in TWO of these icons for now - the Delete Node and the Open Shape. In that picture above, you can see that there's 4 nodes, one on each corner, three of them are dark blue circles, but the bottom right one is light blue, and one of the sides of the rectangle is light blue. The light blue means THAT'S the NODE you are WORKING WITH NOW. It's really important to be sure you are on the right node before you do things, otherwise it can go a bit odd looking. Remember you have an UNDO button on the ToolBar!

So, making sure your bottom right node is the one you are working with (single left click with mouse), you need to click the OPEN SHAPE icon. This removes that entire side of the rectangle (in effect it becomes a line bent into a sideways U shape). You can see that the Closed Shape icon is no longer blue, instead the Open shape icon is.

After clicking Open Shape icon

P.  Remove the third bottom line we don't need - Then, we need to remove the bottom of the rectangle. The Lines come out of Nodes in certain directions, the circled node above is the one we need to remove, it's light blue. If we removed the one to the left, it would turn into a triangle (I know cos I did that one first and realised I was wrong lol).

So making sure you have your bottom right node light blue, click the Delete Node icon circled in the picture above.

This leaves you with an upside down L shape, which is exactly the shape we need to cut out the motif per the plan above (green and blue lines) because the right side and bottom of the rectangle are already cut out, they are the edges of my printed cardstock.

Final shape of cut lines for motif

Q. It's a shape by itself, no grounging needed.Finally, we DO NOT group this shape with anything else. It doesn't need to be, it's a single line bent in the middle - this is easy to see in the Layer Panel - it shows as a single shape not two separate lines. If we'd done two separate lines and aligned them, we'd need to group them to keep them together for moving them around. But a bent line, nope, not needed. (It's always a good idea to work out what sort of lines you need, can it be done from a basic shape or will it need to be separate lines that are aligned and need grouping).

R. Move it to roughly where it needs to be on the mat when it's transferred to the machine - What we need to do now is roughly put it in the right place on the mat so that it doesn't need to be moved much in the machine. I know the border is 1.5" and the motif is 5" high, so if I take those away from that side of the A4 sheet, I know I need about 3 inches between the two sets of cutting lines. So that's where I moved the motif cut line, to the right, 3" below the border set.

Two sets of cutting lines, in approx positions, one grouped one not grouped. All are cut lines.

Step 6 - Learn the difference between Saving and Exporting in Downloaded Canvas - And now, I'm ready to save the file.

In Downloaded Canvas there's TWO sorts of saving. (there are in Online Canvas too, we just didn't see it like that).

In Online Canvas, you can make something in Canvas My Projects and use the Save or Save As buttons. This then gets saved in the Online Cloud. And eventually, when you need it you click the Download button which turns it into an fcm file for transferring to the machine.

However, with Downloaded Canvas, the Project can't be saved in the Online Cloud, it needs to be saved on your computer. So that is the Save and Save As in the File on the Menu Bar. What this actually does, is save the file as a proprietary Brother file with an extension of CWPRJ. This is EXACTLY the same as Saving/Save as in the Online Canvas. EXCEPT you really really need to give it a filename, otherwise you'll end up with a load of Untitled files in your harddrive, as there's NO WAY I know of to see what those CWPRJ files look like without opening them up in Downloaded Canvas, as it doesn't have the My Projects area that Online Canvas does.

What it looks like if you click MenuBar File, SaveAs

Personally I don't use it. Because I can export as fcm file, and bring that back into Canvas and work on it again then re-export it. But it's there if you want to.

Step 7 - Export as fcm to save onto the harddrive of my computer - So, we need to EXPORT the file for the Downloaded Canvas to turn it into an fcm, that is a file that the SNC machine can read and recognise.

That is done by clicking File in the MenuBar and choosing Export fcm file for me (as I have a usb stick machine) or transfer for people with wifi machines. You need to choose a filename and also save it somewhere you can find it again! I have set up a folder specifically for my SNC files and I try and use descriptive filenames so it's easy to work out what it is without needing to open it up in Downloaded Canvas to make sure.

Step 8 - Copy the fcm file to the USB stick and load it into the machine - Once saved, I download it to my USB stick. I take that and my patterned card to the Machine, do some test cuts in a place that won't be in the way or waste paper and I can cut out my sheet of patterned card. ooo will it work? I'm hoping so....

(this all feels like it takes a very long time, I've just done it from scratch in reality knowing the measurements and steps to take and it took me about 5 minutes. It's the learning that takes forever!)

Step 9 - TO THE MACHINE!!!!!!

Ok, well it did work, but needs some refinement.  In summary

I needed to do 4-5 test cuts to get it cutting right on this cardstock.

You can move the test cuts to wherever you want. If you find it hard to pick them up with your pointy tool on screen, you need to recalibrate your screen - see Appendix of your machine Manual for how

The scan didn't show up the actual edges of the cardstock very well so it was hard to get the cut files to exactly the edges of the cardstock

Just where the number on the mat is 260, you can see the cut doesn't quite reach the edge of the card. I need to think how to get the edge to show up in the scan better on a light cardstock (wouldn't be an issue with a dark cardstock)

 The pieces did cut out beautifully (once I used a knife to gently detach the bits that didn't cut to the edge)

See! Hurrah! I have two border pieces, one motif and the rest of the cardstock. My testcuts are in a place I'm unlikely to want to use to make another card.

As a result of the cut not making it right to the edge, I did have to do some trimming off after assembling the card

Back of the card, you can see one border was a bit too long, and also the centre motif was a bit wider than it needed to be. This is down to me not being able to be precise about where the cardstock edges are.

Front of the card, you can see more clearly the too long border on one side, and that the centre motif was a bit wide

So. Did it actually work? Well yes it did, but not precisely enough. So I need to think about how to enable the scanner to actually see the edges of light coloured card clearly enough for me to be able to match my cut files exactly to where I need them to be.

I can think of several potential ways forward:

1. to put thin strips of dark card butting against the edges of the light coloured card so the scanner can see them (given that the card is A4 which fits pretty perfectly onto the mat, there may not be space, so perhaps use some dark string temporarily, but find some way of it not getting stuck in the machine. This needs some thought. Or maybe draw along the edge of the card with black pen, but then the edges would be black which I don't want, so nope not that...

2. Make it easier to match the scanned edges of the card, to use DRAW lines as the outer edges of the cut file, as the machine won't cut these but it'll make it easier to match them up in the machine.

Or, the easier route, actually cut out the entire shape I need, and sacrifice a margin of cardstock instead of trying to use the already cut edges of the cardstock. With this motif, it was so close to the edge, I didn't want to, but I think going forwards, it might be easier to do this!

So, I have another couple of pieces of this patterned cardstock I can use to make a similar card, and I'll use the same cutlines file (possibly resized if necessary) and try to get a better result in the machine before I actually blog about how to get the cut file to match the card and produce a perfect end result that doesn't need cutting!

so, Part Two, the cutting and assembling (with no need for trimming) will follow shortly.....