This project began with a photograph of Monica Lee, taken by Judy Chee of Judy Chee Photography. The final piece was cut from black cardstock and mounted on red.
I also captured a few process shots: shadows cast through the cut, the piece lit from behind the mat, against a window, and partially peeled off the cutting mat.
Today’s project was inspired by my badminton lessons. The final piece was cut from white cardstock, mounted on red with a green border.
It started with a simple sketch, which I processed in Photoshop using Image Threshold and the Cutout filter to produce a black-and-white PNG file. That PNG was then imported into Inkscape and traced.
Next comes the manual cleanup: deleting tiny nodes, fixing object spacing, and reducing sharp angles to make the file cutter-friendly. The result is saved as a Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG).
The SVG file is imported into Sure Cuts A Lot and sent to the die cutter, which cuts the design from white cardstock. The final cut is peeled off the mat and mounted on red cardstock with a green border.
After the first test cut, I updated the Inkscape SVG file to correct problem areas and improve the final result.
Today’s two cuts were created from a photo I took this afternoon during a walk.
I made two different cutting files from the same image, using different Photoshop and Inkscape techniques. The version cut from light green and mounted on white cardstock was auto-traced in Inkscape. The version cut from red, also on white, was manually created.
It’s interesting how the same source image can produce such drastically different results.
