ScanNCut Project - How to design a Charley Harper style papercut Cardinal Bird in Canvas

Evening. I originally designed this bird shape as a papercut within the machine itself. However, as it turns out, I've not actually seen my camera since Christmas Day so I assume it's still at the parentals' house. So this project has been done using the Free Brother Canvas software to then be transferred to the machine for cutting. Eventually if I ever remember to ask the parentals, I may well have my camera back. But for now, Canvas all the way!

This Project uses basic shapes in Canvas to create a 3 colour papercraft Cardinal Bird in the style of Charley Harper, a mid 20th century American designer. If all goes well, it will look like this:

Charley Harper style Cardinal papercraft bird

Canvas - Altering Shapes - removing holes in shapes with Path Tool.

This has come out of a question the group was asked on Margret Teta Singleton's awesome Facebook Group called Brother Scan'n'Cut Users - find it here https://www.facebook.com/groups/scanncutusers/

So the person in question had this image:

I have no idea if this has copyright etc. I'm using it solely to show you an example of what I'm talking about. If anyone knows who owns the copyright, tell me and I'll credit them here.

So. the question was, what if you have holes in an image, and you want to keep some of them, say the eyes, but not others (apparently this is the islands of Hawaii across the abdomen).

I had a think. And a play in Canvas. And finally worked out why it was such a simple answer...

Canvas - Manipulating Basic Shapes - Process Functions Explained - Weld, Divide, Remove Overlap, Subtract - and how to use them

Manipulating Basic Shapes - Process Functions Explained - Weld, Divide, Remove Overlap, Subtract - and how to use them

One of the trickiest things in Canvas is to get to grips with how the Process Functions work, particularly working out which ones I need to achieve my desired result. At least for me....

This blog post covers Process Overlap (the bottom section) and the Order section (above Process Overlap on the right)

Canvas - Manipulating Shapes - Aspect Ratio

Oh hai. I'm on a roll, nothing for a whole year, then like buses, three posts come along at once! Why? Well because I want to make a paper bauble garland for my mantelpiece and I need to create the shapes in Canvas, so I thought I might as well do a tutorial at the same time, as it's not hard to do screenshots and explaining as I go along.

Complex Bauble made from basic Circle using Aspect Ratio, Order, Weld and Subtract

In this post we are going to play with basic shapes and aspect ratio to make more complex bauble shapes.

Canvas - Manipulating Basic Shapes - Resize, Weld and Subtract

As it's December, I thought it'd be a fun introduction to Canvas to learn how to make a basic flat bauble shape with a hanging hole. This creates a simple shape that is one single pattern. Once made it can be resized, and the hanging hole is an integral part of the pattern.

We cover - choosing basic shape, duplicate, weld, subtract and resize with this one.

The end result - a bauble shape with hanging hole