Tag Archives: Technique

Character map with Silhouette Studio

Many of the most beautiful fonts that are popular today use more characters than we can easily get out of the keyboard. The fonts has extra squiggles and shapes that can only be found through the Character Map.
I’m going to show you how you most easily find these goodies and get them into the Silhouette Studio so that you can cut out that lovely saying you want on a pillow.

I use Windows 7. If you are using a different version of Windows it can be a little tricky, but patience will solve it I’m sure.

The little program that can display some extra characters is Character Map and the icon is a small key with some mysterious signs on it. This program comes with Windows, so there is no need to install it.

Click the Start menu and in the box labeled Run, type Character Map. When you type in the word you will see several proposals pop up in the list so you do not need to enter the full name. Choose the right program and click on it so that it starts.
(You can also check manually on your start menu and then you will probably find it under Accessories and then System Tools)

Also start Silhouette Studio and select the font you want to use (NOTE !! This works in the same way no matter which application you write in, try Photoshop, Word or another program, the approach’s the same)

Enter your word and leave the text tool still active. Do not move your word or making any other changes. When you have released the Text tool you can’t change the word.
I chose the font Samantha Upright, and I want more squiggles in the text than what’s visible here.

Change programs and bring up Character Map on your screen.

Select the font you used in Silhouette Studio, and then scroll until you find the character you want to use (do not scroll with the mouse wheel at once, that change the font, instead use the scroll bar to the right)

Choose the various characters to better see how they look.

Once you find what you want, choose Select. The character will now appear in the white box. If you want more characters that will follow one another you can choose the next one right away. When you are done, click Copy (Don’t forget to erase the character in the white box if you want another.)

Go back to the Silhouette Studio. Move the cursor (via arrow keys) and erase the letter you want to change. Then press Ctrl + V to paste the new character. The above looks good and much more fun than the first version, right?

Character Map is also very useful if you have a font that’s a DingBat (all letters are a small image). It is easy to find just the image you want to use.

Get started with Instagram – Part 4

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Time for some details about Instagram. I intend to go through what a hashtag is and how it works, how you change your profile picture and a lot more.

Shortcuts section

Search for a person, a tag or a place
Make a call out to a person
Tag a person in an image (and how it looks when you get tagged?)
I wrote something wrong or I want to delete the image, how do I do it?
Comments and Likes
Use a Hashtag (#)
Change Profile Picture

Start the app and go to your profile (the Man in the lower right corner)

We start with a small overview of a few buttons

I will quickly go through these four buttons that you see just above your photos on your profile.
Square – Viewing your images in rows of three each.
The stripes – Viewing your images the way they appear in feeds. One by one straight down with the comments.
Pushpin – Showing a map where you can see where your photos are taken, depending on whether you are using the Photo Map or not (See Part 3 for more information about Photo Map).
The painting – Here you find the pictures which you have been tagged in.

: Photos in rows of three

: Photos as in the feed

: Map with your photos

: Photos where you have been tagged

Search for a person, a tag or a place

Before we begin with a call out or anything else, it’s good if you follow someone. You can follow me if you want to; miensdotorg. You can safely do this without following precisely me, you may already follow a lot of accounts that you can send a shout to 🙂
To find me it’s easiest to do a search.

Click on the magnifying glass at the bottom of Instagram. Then type in what you are looking for. You can choose Top, which brings up the most popular result on that keyword, or you can look for a person, tag (hashtag) or a location.
As you can see in this picture, I’ve searched the top because I got a good hit at once. It‘s me who are the top one 🙂.
Don’t look to much at the picture, look for the correct account name instead. There is a possibility that I changed my profile picture after this screenshot was taken.

miensdotorg

Click on my name (miensdororg) and you will come to my account. There you can easily follow me by clicking on the large button that says Follow.

Make a call out to a person

Now that you are following at least one person, we try to make a call out.
Select the image you want to upload, and do exactly as in Part 2, but stop when you typing your text to the image.

Screenshot_2015-07-11-21-01-07

To get a list of names, you must follow the person you want to call out to. Otherwise, it’s good if you know the full Instagram name. I follow Kit & Clowder and can therefore invoke that account here.
Start by writing the @-symbol, then type the first few characters of the name and it should come up in the list. Select the account you want to call out to, and then make your picture ready (continue writing text or click on the check mark).

Screenshot_2015-07-11-21-03-26

The person you did the call out to will get a message on his account that you mentioned her or him.

Tag a person in an image (and how it looks when you get tagged?)

Now that we‘re at it we can tag a person in a picture too. This is most common on photos with people. I have chosen a picture of something I crafted, I don’t want to shoe people with their account name here.

Screenshot_2015-07-12-13-40-24

Add a picture and type in your text. Then click Tag People before you click the check mark in the upper right corner.

Screenshot_2015-07-12-13-40-44

You see your picture in a larger format and can tap on it. Click on the face (in my case the paw) that you want to tag. (I clicked on the left paw).

Screenshot_2015-07-12-13-40-51

Start typing the name of the person you want to tag and you will get a list that you can choose from. Click on the correct name.

Screenshot_2015-07-12-13-40-56

My left paw has received a tag. Do you want to add more people, click the next face and type the name. Click on the blue tick mark when you are finished.

Screenshot_2015-07-12-13-41-55

This is how it look when you are tagged in a picture (when you click on the button with the painting, see the top of this post). Click on the image to see who else are tagged in it. You can tag yourself in a photo (which I did here) if you want.

I wrote something wrong or I want to delete the image, how do I do it?

Sometimes you are in a bit of a hurry and write wrong or forgetting to mention something before you send the image. Then it can be good to go in and do some changes. You can change the text, make a call out or add a hashtag. You can also tag a person. You can only edit your own pictures.

When you look at photos in the feed or on your own profile you’ll see three small dots to the right of the comments. This is a small menu that you can click at.

In this menu, you can select Edit. Select Delete to delete the image from your account. Click on edit, we will change the text to the image. (you don’t have to change anything, but click the edit in any case so that you can see how it looks.)

Change the text or tag a person, and then click the check mark in the upper right corner.

Comments and Likes

It’s not difficult to comment on a photo or like a photo on Instagram.

If you look just below the image you’ll see a heart and a balloon. Click on the balloon and you can comment on the image. You can make call outs and use a hashtag as usual in a comment (for the hashtag, see the next section).

To like a picture, you can either click on the heart below the image, or double-click on the image itself. You will see a transparent heart on the image that disappear pretty fast. When the heart under the picture is red, you liked that picture. To remove your like, click the heart again.

Use a Hashtag (#)

When you use a hashtag you can say that bookmark an photo. You write you hashtag in you text to the photo and it becomes a link.

When you click on such a link you will see all images with that hashtag. (there are not that many pictures with #miensdotorg, but feel free to use the tag if you want to try 🙂) If you choose to share your picture on Facebook or anywhere else where the hashtags works the hashtag follows with your text.
There are hashtags for almost anything, and if it doesn’t exist, it creates when you use it. Be nice to your followers and don’t tag every word in your text. #It #Becomes # Very # Tiresome # To #Read. Large and small letters have no meaning in your tag, but can make it easier to read. #MiensDotOrg is easier to read than #miensdotorg. You can’t use spaces, dashes or other characters in your hashtag.

Try not to overuse tags, but if you want to use many tags it is better to write your text in plain text and write all tags at the end.

Change Profile Picture

Sometimes you want have a new profile picture. You may have a better picture of your self, or you want to celebrate something special.

Go to your profile and click on your image. You will then see a menu where you can choose how you want to change the image. I have chosen to take a picture from my archive (Choose from Library).

Place the image as you want it, and then click the check mark. You have a new profile picture.

Get started with Instagram – Part 3

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I should have written this part as Part 2, but it’s more fun to get going instead of looking at a lot of settings, right?
In this part I will show you the usual settings and how to pair your Instagram account with your Facebook account and other social media.
Some of these settings may be different if you use an iPhone or iPad. Make your settings the way you used to, which you usually don’t do directly in the app like I show you here.

Launch the app and go to your profile (the Man at the bottom right)

In the upper right corner you will see three dots. Clicking on these will take you to the Options where you can do some settings. Click there to get started.

If you chose Instagram not to check your Facebook account for friends when you created your account, you have the opportunity to do this below Follow People. You can also check your contacts here. When you do this, you get a list of people who have accounts in both places and you can choose which ones you want to follow.
Below Account you can adjust your account. Here you can edit the profile (we will return to this), change password etc. You can also make your account private, just drag the slider to the right. A private account means that your photos do not appear in searches. You also accept those who want to follow you.

Please note:
Your account will not be a secret. If someone who has an open account like one of your images, that image will appear when someone else is looking at the liked pictures. Therefore, think before you upload a very private photo on Instagram. You can never be sure that they do not spread. (This is true all over the Internet!)

Scroll down, you will find more Settings. We will return to the option Linked Accounts and look instead at Puch Notifications. Click here and you get a lot of options, see image below.
Under Camera, you choose if you want good or a little worse quality of your images. As long as you don’t have a very bad connection, I think you can have it on High–Quality.
The rest of the settings depend so much on what phone you use and how you use it so I leave them totally open. Generally, you can leave it as it is.

I can’t go thru everything here in Notifications, it is not so difficult to choose how you want your phone to tell you what happens. Personally, I have everything on From Everyone, but it is because I have an open account and it’s an easy way to keep track of what happens. I have not very much traffic, so it’s fun to see at once when anyone has commented on one of my pictures. Do you have an account with many followers, it may be more comfortable to turn off notifications. It is perhaps easier for you to go into your account and see what has happened over having the phone vibrate in your pocket all the time.
You can always go back here and make changes when you notice that it’s working or not.

If you now scroll back up to the Linked Account (below Settings) we will connect your Instagram with your Facebook (you can choose any account, just follow the instructions that appear on the screen).
Start by clicking on Facebook. The text will turn blue and you receive a blue check mark to the right. Click on the text again to get a new screen. If you do not have Facebook on your phone, then Instagram will ask for more specific information. Here I assume that the account already are on the phone.

After you click OK, you can always change your mind. Select Unlink and the pairing is removed and you only show your pictures on Instagram. (these settings are accessed by going to the Linked Account, and then click the account you want to disconnect).

If you go back a step and instead go into the Edit Profile (under Accounts) you can fill in some information about yourself. This is seen when someone goes in and looks at your account. There is nothing you have to fill in, but it is a good idea if you want to distribute or refer to your blog or website.
We start from the top, all these settings can be changed whenever you want. However, I recommend that you do not change the top two too often. This will only confuse your followers.
The little advertisement board – This is your username, it does not appear out in the flow, just on your profile.
Man – This is your name on Instagram. It is visible in the flow, and if want someone to give you a shout they use this name.
The Globe– the address of your web site, blog, or whatever you want, on the internet. The address must be a correct web address and end in .org / .org / .com / or anything else.
Quotes – Here you can write a short text about you, your website or your Instagram. Simply what you want.
It’s completely up to you whether you want to fill in private information. The email address is the same as when you registered the account.

This is how does look when everything is completed and anyone looking at your profile. The name in the blue bar at the top is your name in Instagram (man).

There you go, now you have come a bit further with your Instagram account. In the next part we focus on fun things like changing the profile image, how to give someone a shout and how to use a hashtag.

Get started with Instagram – Part 2

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Now that your account on Instagram is registered you may want to post your own pictures and find more people to follow?
We start here with uploading your own picture. Make sure you have an image on your phone or tablet that you feel you can add up.

Start the app Instagram

On the following pictures you will see three buttons that’s on my tablet, they have nothing to do with Instagram so just ignore them 🙂

Let’s begin with some more buttons. Along the bottom are four buttons. I describe them left to right.
1. House. This is your flow, here you will find all the pictures that the people you follow have published.
2. The magnifying glass. Do you want to search for a person or a hashtag? Search here.
3. Camera. Click here to upload a picture to your Instagram account.
4. Balloon. When someone likes one of your photos, comments on one of your photos or mentions you in a comment, you see it here.
5. Man. This is your profile. Here you can change your profile, view your own pictures and changing settings.

Now click on the camera, so we can put a photo on your Instagram.

The big picture is the image that is selected, below you’ll find the pictures that are on your phone or tablet. If you want to use an image stored on Dropbox, Google Photos or another cloud service, you must first download the image to your phone or tablet.
Under the pictures you have three options. Gallery showing pictures, Photo lets you take a photo right away and Video let you shoot a video instantly.
Let it stand at the Gallery and select an image you want to upload. Instagram using a format that is square. If your image is elongated, which is most common, you can move the image to get what you want in focus in the middle. Move around your image a bit to see how it looks. Click on the blue arrow at top right to get on when you are finished.

Now you are in the Edit, if you want to change the image, click the arrow at the upper left.
Here you can change the light in your image, go on and experiment with some different options.
Click your way around and see what happens to your image. Between your selected picture and the different options you have three buttons. On these you can change different things. Try it out so that you feel at home. When you are satisfied with your image, click on the blue arrow to the right.

Now you see your image as a tiny thumbnail and it’s time to write a small text to it. You type the text as usual with the keyboard that appears on the screen when you click on the Write a Caption …
There are some options here too.
Tag people – Here you can tag people in the picture you put up, just as you can tag people in photos on Facebook. Chose this and click on the face of the right person and enter their name.
Add to Photo Map – Here you can specify where the picture was taken (or where you are located). You can specify both a real place (New York) or a custom location (My crafting table). Drag the slider to the right to activate it or to the left to turn it off. Type in the place you want under the slide.
Share – Select where you want your image with text to appear in addition to Instagram. Right now you can not choose anything at all, because you have not paired Instagram with any other service yet.

If you look at the upper part of the screen you’ll see that you can choose two options here. Followers are selected by default, then all those who follow you see your picture. If instead you want to send an picture directly to a person, choose Direct. There you can select who should get the picture.

Are you ready to send your picture? If so, click on the blue check mark top right.

As soon as Instagram is finished your image is in your flow and the flow of all who follows you.

The next step is to check on some settings.

Get starting with Instagram – Part 1

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This post is for those who want to get started with Instagram, but feel a little unsure of how it all works. Right now I go through how to register, how to add pictures and looking at other people’s photos is in Part 2.First and foremost, you must have the app Instagram. This you can find where you buy or download your normal apps (different depending on whether you are using an Android phone/plate or any of Appels products).

Then, start by downloading the app and launch it.
(And sorry for the unusually poor picture quality. All the lights hit the screen for me, so it was difficult to get to the really bright and nice pictures).

This is the starting screen of Instagram. At the top you have two options; Sign up or Log In.

We will Sign Up, so make sure it is selected (the small white arrow should be under the text).

Click (dabbing with your finger) Enter your e-mail. Then you get the keyboard and can type in your email address.
If you prefer to use Facebook as login, click Log in with Facebook. You will then receive login using your facebook account and can jump a bit down in this text.

For safety, I have not taken photos of the following steps, but it is not so difficult.
Once you have entered your email address you’ll see a small blue text that says Next. Click on it.
Enter your name, if you want. This is not mandatory, so you can skip this if you want. Click Next.
Time for a username. This is the name that will appear on your account. If it is completely wrong or if you want to change it sometime in the future, you can do this without any problems. Click Next when you are done. (if your username is already taken it says so just below the field).
A good password is one that is not directly associated with you and it gladly contain a few numbers or other characters (!? # &)

When you come to this screen it’s time for a profile picture. The profile picture is round and appears next to your username. You have several ways to choose a picture, choose the way that suits you best.
I selected to upload a photo (Choose from Library), but if you what to select one from Facebook, or take a picture here and now it goes equally well.

You can move the picture to focus on what you want as your profile picture. The profile picture can be replaced as easily as on Facebook if you change your mind and want another later.

When you are satisfied with the image, click on the blue check mark on the top right to move forward.

If you want Instagram to will find your friends from Facebook, click on the blue button. It may take a while for Instagram to go through your Facebook account, so have some patience. If you don’t want to find your friends from Facebook, click Skip at the top right.
Instagram also want to check your contacts in the phone, but here you can select Skip also if you want.

Now your account is up and running. Instagram suggest some popular people that you may want to follow.

If you find something that looks interesting, click on the Follow above the profile you want to follow. When you are done, click the blue check mark at the top right. You can choose not to follow anyone if you want to.

This is what your flow look like if you have not selected anything to follow, if you selected something in the step before you will see a lot of pictures.
How to upload your own pictures, write text, etc. you find in the next step.

Print & Cut with the Silhouette

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Silhouette Studio has a feature called Print & Cut. I like this feature and use it to print pictures and cut them with the Silhouette. I then use them as a motif on cards and other things I create.

We start from the beginning and take a look in Silhouette Store. How do I know that the file I buy is a Print & Cut?

To begin with, you can use Filters if you are sure that it’s a Print & Cut file you want. Otherwise, you will see it on the little blue box with a P next to the price.

After purchasing a file and it is located in your library you find the same symbol at most of the files. I have no knowledge of why not all are shown with the symbol, it can be rally annoying sometimes. The rose in the center of this picture is also a Print & Cut, but it’s hard to know without the symbol.
If you know why, please leave a coment to this post. I whant to know!

My solution to this problem is to change the name of the file. You do this by right clicking on the image and choose Edit Properties.

Here you can change the search term, information and the name of the file. I choose to add PnC to the filename.

Close the library and open it again (or change file), now you see the new name and you get a clue as to what file it is.

Shall we get started then? With the actual printing and cutting?

Start by changing the paper to A4, letter or what size your printer use, especially if you use a Silhouette Cameo. Since we are printing these shapes, the paper must fit in to your printer.

Choose your shapes and place those on the mat, just as you do when you want to cut out a shape. If you look at my figures you will see that two have white backgrounds. That’s not important, it’s more that the person who made the file might not have been as accurate as I would like.

Open the Registration Marks. You’ll find it right in the tool menu.

Change the settings needed. Right now, just change the type of machine you have. I have an old friend, so I choose Original. The positions can be left as is, even though they can easily be moved to save paper.

As you see now, I have my shapes at the wrong place. It is the black corners that will be printed with your shapes. These corners can be moved (see above), but we are content to have those where they are this time.

Move the figures inside the markings.
Then cut the paper you want to use in order to fit your printer. A cardstock or similar paper (12″x12″) you cut to 21×29,7 cm (A4).
Place your paper in the printer. Remember to have any structure in the right direction if you want it visible or not in your figures. Make sure you printer are online.

Usually it’s about now that you click Send to Silhouette, but we should send it all to your printer instead. Click on the printer icon and print the same way as you normally print documents. I recommend to print in high quality when you know you really want to use the shape.
Don’t do anything with the document in Silhouette Studio while the printer is working.

Now you have a paper that should look something like this. The mark in the bottom corner is not visible on this picture. If you have a Cameo, you may have other types of marks.

Attach your paper to the cutting mat and feed it to the Silhouette just the way you usually do. My old model is practically hand cranked, so do as you are accustomed to do.

Now you’re on familiar ground. Select the type of paper you used, in this case, cardstock, and start the cutting.
Your paper will go in and out of the machine when it tries to find the black markings. As soon as that’s done the Silhouette starts to cut.

Now you have one or more shapes to decorate what you want with.

As you probably noticed in this blog, I like to craft with paper, but I know that it is possible to print on a certain type of vinyl and other media. The procedure is the same, but I can not answer how these materials behave or how you use them.

Note:
All files aren’t great, you might have to work a little by your self to get them the way you want. The cow I have used have the cut line a few millimeters off the edge, and the rose isn’t cut between the stems. (A little hard to see here, but it’s easier of the previous photo)

Quality of the shapes

Miens.org

Crafting closes to the heart

Tag Archives: Technique

Character map with Silhouette Studio

Print & Cut with the Silhouette

~ Du kanske också vill läsa ~

Shortcuts section

Search for a person, a tag or a place

Make a call out to a person

Tag a person in an image (and how it looks when you get tagged?)

I wrote something wrong or I want to delete the image, how do I do it?

Comments and Likes

Use a Hashtag (#)

Change Profile Picture

~ Du kanske också vill läsa ~

~ Du kanske också vill läsa ~

~ Du kanske också vill läsa ~

~ Du kanske också vill läsa ~

~ Du kanske också vill läsa ~