How I make my border frames

I said I'd talk a bit about the border/frames around my photos in the word books I've been making. I believe I used some unusual methods to create my photo frames (for lack of a
better thing to call them!).


I started off in Inkscape with a rectangle sized for the photos I had already cropped...such as 4" x 6"....I had many different sizes! Then I began by picking a font I liked and typing 3 different letters: D, U, O.


I used U's welded around my rectangle for this one.


I stacked o's and it came out like this - sort of an eyelet - after I cleaned it up some.

I used capital Ds for these last two, overlapped. I don't remember what font I used, but it had both thick and thin parts and a serif (the line as in the bottom of a capital I). The serif made the tiny slots at the edge of the photo when welded to the rectangle.

I think a pretty border would be to put another row of D's (or maybe just the round part of the D), offset from the first row in the picture below.

B's might be interesting...Asterisks? and what about using X's as faux stitching??? And there's always stretching the letter. And once you change it from text to a path, you can change its shape further.

TIP: Once I type the letter, I convert it to a path, then I copy it and paste. Then I copy them both, and paste. Then I copy the group of four, and so on. It goes much faster that way. It also helps to use the arrow keys on the keyboard to move things around once they're selected. Then once you get your row of letters as long as you wish, you can copy them and use the buttons to flip or rotate them the way they fit on the other side of your rectangle. The key to completing it is to drag your pointer (holding down the mouse) around your rectangle and shapes to select them all, and then do a ctrl++ for a union.

I mentioned that I make the rectangle the size of the photo I'm matting. I change the default page to 11" and the measurements to inches and then I know what size to use. I have actually stretched the frames as I make them to fit a different picture but I try not to do that too much if it's too noticeable a distortion. It's easy enough to keep a copy of a few of your shapes on the side so you can quickly copy and paste a few on after adjusting the size of the rectangle. I tend to work in a designing document and then paste the completed shapes to another document that I use in SCAL. TIP: I've been known to do a union, copy the resulting shape, undo the union and then paste the copy I made. Then I have my original shapes to add or subtract from. TIP: If you decide you want to have scallops instead of cut out circles, you can use the shadow function in SCAL. Happy cutting!