Here’s the 3nd in my series of Beginner’s Basic Design tutorials. This is a really easy one to do, limited only by your imagination.
A few years back I made a set of fun nautical designs which included the word Ahoy. Then, a couple of months ago a reader asked what font I used for that word.
I didn’t actually use a specific font. I had added oval shapes to an existing plain font to make a word that was a little bit different from the normal, but…. my reader’s query made me think about what else I could do.
I tried my technique out with other shapes as you can see in the pic above, however in this “How to” I’ll show you what I did by using the word AHOY along with a little oval shape.
- Type out the word in a slim line font. I used Arial MS Unicode – this is actually my Silhouette Studio default Font. Yours may differ. Just pick something reasonably plain and slim.
- Select the Ellipse tool and draw out a small horizontal oval shape.
- Copy the oval and then paste it until you have a bunch of them to use.
- Ungroup the word, the letters may be a little close to each other, so you can move them apart as needed. Position the ovals to overlap the letters slightly. How many you use and where you position them is personal choice. At this stage you can use the align tools if desired to line up the letters and ovals or just judge it by eye.
- When happy with the arrangement, Select the whole lot, Right Click and Select Weld.
That’s pretty much it in a nutshell. I did tell you it was easy 😉
The general steps remain the same for this technique, but I’ll just run through the variations shown in my top image and what I did for each one.
I didn’t necessarily pop a shape on every part of a letter like I did in the Ahoy Example. Add and remove the shapes on the word until you like the result.
Love: I found a little heart in my Silhouette Library, Resized it and used that. I rotated a few of the Hearts Slightly.
Fly: I resized a little bird from this post. I flipped it horizontally to make it face the opposite direction on some letters.
Square: I drew a small square with the tools in the software. (located on the left side of screen). Arranged the letters in an up and down way.
Ahoy: This time I also rearranged the letters in a random up and down pattern. In my original post here I also nudged them together and welded them again.
Devil: I used the Draw a Polygon Tool (located on the left side of screen) to make a triangle (adjust the slider to 3). I used the fill Gradient Window to get the colour in that image. (next to the regular fill bucket) I used the slider in the advanced options and kept moving it until I liked the result! In other words I was just experimenting – I didn’t actually have a plan (LOL) I kept going until I liked the fill. (I have Designer Edition)
Wet: I found a file in my Library and used the raindrops from that. I resized them randomly. I managed to exercise restraint (I was channeling minimalist me) by using only 3 Water Drops (It was tempting to use more!)
Hope you’ve like the idea of jazzing up your plain fonts to make unique Feature Words for your designs.
If you like this post/tutorial I’d love it if you pinned it to share with other Silhouette users. Thanks so much! 🙂
