Large Vinyl cuts for walls

[Sweetness4713]

And Todd?? Is your nephew aware that you want to decorate his freshly painted walls with vinyl??LOL

[talanhart]

It doesn't really matter what he wants, it's his wife I have to convince. LOL

[TheresaTT]

did u save that one as a file so we don't have to design it ourselves, just copy yours.??hee
I was wanting to put it in my stairway with the kids pics. i can try out the little square idea too. gotta go order 631 first tho. i put up 651 on my walls the other day. not gonna try to take it down.

[janiek23]

I cannot for the life of me figure this out. When you are drawing the rectangles, are you using SCAL or AI? I tried placing the registration marks in SCAL but I'm finding its hard to move the image and line it up correctly to print out 2 or 3 separate images. I am ending up with overlapping vinyl. I tried to do the rectangles in AI and then cut up my image using a 23.5 x 11.5 rectangle and using Path>divide objects below>cut>paste in a new image. More often then not, areas outside of the 23.5 x 11.5 rectangle are being selected. Ugh. I'm so frustrated. This is really important to me to get this figured out. Anyone have a step by step tutorial on how do to this either in SCAL or Illustrator? Thank you.

[talanhart]

Can you post a picture of your artwork so we can help you?

[mickeyfn]

HI Todd - I LOVE this and plan to use it on my next large area. I have a question and wondered if you could assist. I have a 7' area and a quote that has 24 words that the DR wants in one line accross the wall. I am having trouble in SCAL. Once I type my quote it (of course) falls off the 12x24 mat space. How can I lay this out but keep the spacing and font size correct? In my head I though I should be able to cut what was on the mat and then "grab" what was left and scoot it onto the mat and cut that. It is not working. Any assitance is SO helpful!

[pennsylvaniakate]

While the writing is small enough to see the entire thing, ungroup and move sections of the writing down. Then you can group and resize the whole thing to fit on the wall.

[mickeyfn]

penn - ok so since I am a visual learner....I need some help. Once I ungroup and move the other part down how will I know how to size it to make it fit? I think I am missing something. I know from when I typed the whole thing out the height came out to just over 1.5 inches tall. If I grouped it all together again would it not take the height for the entire thing? sigh....I am not getting it!

[talanhart]

I would set up your document size to 84" wide by 12" tall. Zoom to fit document in the window. Type your phrase at the size that you want to cut. To set up the file to cut, try to grab groups of words that are 23" wide or less. You might have some groups that are a lot less than 23" but you want to keep each section in line. Put boxes under each group for aligning. Try to fit as many lines as you can in the 23" x 11 in area of your 24" cutting mats. You might have to copy and paste to new files. Make a note of the dimensions and compare them to what you get when you import them into scal.
I hope this makes sense. I posted a picture.

[balletcostumemom]

Quite by accident I figured out an easy way to see what the cuts needed to be which might help here also. I'm visual myself so this makes it easier than calculating which I'm not good at. I created a colored rectangle the size of my wording on Inkscape which also included my free space. So if my wall space was 11 x 45, then I create a colored rectangle 11 x 45 and used the zoom key to get it to a viewable size. Then if my wording is 9 x 40 with whatever size setting I have for the font, I put that on top of my rectangle and align horizontally and vertically. So now I have a representation of the wall and a representation of my design.

Now, I make another rectangle in a seperate color, 11.75 x 23.75 (which represents the Cricut mat), place it on my design and send it to one layer below the lettering but then highlight it. I can slide it, turn it, angle it. But by using this piece, I can see what my cuts need to be on each page. And if needed, I can tweak the size of the font lengthwise to make more words fit without splitting a word. Sometimes that works and sometimes not.

Then I use Todd's method of marks. I make rows of registration marks and usually put them top or bottom of my design as needed or flip them if I need them in between lines. Actually, I saved registration marks as a new file I can import and ungroup for other projects. I have a row of diamonds that are 2 inches apart 24 inches long. I then make each "cut" a page in SCAL to cut. As Todd stated, do make a note of your sizing to help with any differences from importing from Inkscape to SCAL.This method saved my sanity when I got an order to do the top of a small college scoreboard for a friend who is a coach. I then make each "cut" a page in SCAL to cut. As Todd stated, do make a note of your sizing to help with any differences from importing from Inkscape to SCAL.

lineupdemo.svg

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You'll have to right click and zoom out to see this fully when it pops up if you just open it, but if you open in Inkscape and ungroup, you can use the sliding red piece to see what I mean. Sorry, I don't know how to get it to show here.