inkscape tutorial - put text on a path

This week's contest on spoonflower is birthday-themed wrapping paper. For my entry I used a design I made a few weeks ago but added the text happy birthday. I wanted the text to follow the lines of the vines and flower stems. This tutorial shows how to put text onto a path using inkscape.

1. Write your text, choose the font you want to use and size it so it will fit where you want it to go.

2. draw a path using the bezier curves tool, curving it to follow your line. I first drew the line in black,

3. and then made it invisible (unlike the clip function, with this function you still see the line after you put the text on the path, so if you don't want to see it, make it invisible). Then select the path and your text.

4. Text - Put on path

5. and your text curves to follow the path! If the text doesn't quite fit (it starts at the beginning of the path and gets cut off at the end) you can undo, resize and try again.

6. Basically thats all, but I wanted the text to take the place of the existing lines, so I had to remove the vine where the text was. For that I selected two nodes and clicked on "break path at selected nodes".

7. Then I could move those nodes, do the same at the other end, and delete that section of the vine.

8. The text fits perfectly!

Here's the finished design:

You can see the fabric here and vote in this week's contest (and see the other entries) here until Tuesday evening.

Sunday afternoon

I have a lot of projects simmering in my head that I want to share here. In fact, one of the projects has been spread all over the living room floor the last few days making me feel a bit antsy (I will clean it all up this evening!) But I want to rather share three pictures from right here and now. Sitting on the balcony in the evening sunlight with a big mug of milky tea, my embroidery and a book. It's a nice way to end a rather quiet weekend.

 

Here's a close up of the embroidery. Its a bit kitschy but I like it (others don't :-))

And a glance out across the trees and houses. Its nice to hear bits of activity around me, see people eating supper on their balcony, hear a ball bouncing somewhere and a neighbour listening to the radio.

I haven't planted anything yet this year. I want to buy some flowers this week. The purple ones I got from my neighbour yesterday as a thankyou for watering her plants. The strawberry is back in its fourth year and already has lots of little mini strawberries growing, I'm impressed! I think the rose is also four years old. This winter I didn't cover it but it seems fine. Not like my hydrangeas and lavender which all died. I was surprised to see a forget-me-not plant growing, it also survived the winter.  

garden tools

On Friday it was suddenly spring in Heidelberg. There was a big rain shower and when I walked out of my office at 3 in the afternoon everything was shiny, green, full of flowers and warm. I've never seen spring arrive so suddenly. Since then it has been warm and sunny and on Sunday we spent all afternoon on the balcony. With bare feet!

Last week's contest on spoonflower had the theme garden tools. When we stay at my parents-in-law's house, we sleep in the garden room full of books about gardening, which is where I got the inspiration for these garden tools. 

I tried a few different designs with different colours. Which do you like better?

hot water bottle cover

Its almost almost time for no more hot water bottles. So before its too late, here's my new hot water bottle cover. I bought a hot water bottle years ago with a soft red cover. Over the years the polyester covering bothered me more and more so I decided to knit a new cover. I used this pattern I found on ravelry. I had some blue wool from an unfortunate glove adventure as well as some red white and grey from other projects.

Sew it together, fill it with hot water and life is much better.

Jane Austen chairs

Did you notice the new header? I recently painted these chairs and thought they would look nice here. They were done for a contest on spoonflower, the topic is "living in a Jane Austen novel". They made beautiful chairs in those days! And the nice thing about the computer is that its easy to reupholster a chair just by changing the colour of the fabric. I painted four chairs in different colours but decided the whole design looks better in one colour.

You can see the other designs from the contest and vote for your favourite until tomorrow! 

some little boxes

Last week I finally had an idea for what to make with some wrapping paper I bought a long time ago that has been sitting on my desk. Little boxes! I love little boxes. These were constructed with thick paper, covered with the forget-me-not wrapping paper and stabilised with thick matting board.

I put eyelets in and added a little ribbon as a pull.

the finished box

which is a drawer. I got a bit lazy after making two and noticed that two cadbury tin boxes I have fit perfectly. The outside bit of the drawers I made out of a box we got as a gift box for Christmas. I only needed to turn the lid into a side, add some prop-ups to hold up the middle bit and glue some sides down.

I've noticed while writing that explaining the process isn't as easy as just doing it! So hope at least the pictures inspire you to make one too. I have one of those wooden small set of drawers and wanted to get another, but now didn't have to buy one, plus its a lot nicer!

painted easter eggs

Its finally officially spring, so time to take down the paper snowflakes and hang up the easter eggs, even though there is still snow on the roof.

 Martin's grandmother painted these beautiful eggs. This is three views of the same egg. Don't you love the little bear family?

This week's spoonflower contest is painted eggs. I took a picture of each egg and arranged them into a scattered repeating design to print on cloth.

You can see all the other entries and vote in the contest here if you want :)