Don’t you love it when you teach someone, then they take that information and run with it and become great at doing what you taught them? I do! One of my sisters took my class on the Modify panel at one of the first All Things Silhouette conferences. Last week she showed me a mask she was making with a smile design on it. Here’s the design:
I am proud to say she made the design herself from the principles I taught her. Today, I’m going to share with you how to do it. It just takes 1 simple shape and 2 simple Modify options. I’ll walk you through it step by step, then at the end I’ll include a video of the process. Feel free to jump straight down to the video if you like.
Note: This post contains affiliate links. That means if you click the link and purchase something, I may receive a small commission. You pay the same price. This helps me to be able to keep my business going and provide more tutorials.
Step 1: Draw an oval
The key to drawing absolutely any shape is to see it as a combination of simple shapes. In this case, it’s ovals.
We’ll start by using the drawing tool to make an oval (ellipse). Look at the icon bar along the left side and find the one that probably looks like a rectangle. It may look different if you have already drawn a shape in this software session, as it will stay defaulted to that shape until you change to a different one or close the software. Hover over that and you’ll see a menu of the shapes you can draw pop out. Move your mouse over the ellipse and click on it.
Now the oval is what shows in the icon bar, and you are ready to draw. Move your cursor over to the Design area and you’ll notice it looks different than it normally does. It looks like a set of crosshairs or plus sign. That’s always the indication that you are about to start drawing out a shape. Click that on the mat area and drag the mouse to create the shape. When you let go of the mouse, you’ll have your oval.
HINT: If you want to draw a perfect circle, just hold your SHIFT key as you draw your shape. This works for many shapes. It also helps you make perfectly horizontal, vertical or 45° angle lines.
Ugh! My software won’t stop drawing ovals!
Before we go on to the next step, I want to mention something that confounds many beginners. Unless you change something, your software will just keep on drawing ellipses endlessly. It’s quite annoying and many times users can’t figure out how to get out of that endless loop. You can hit the ESC key or another icon, but there’s a simple way to fix it permanently. You just have to change a setting in your Preferences. I talked all about that in this post. Once you change it, it will stay that way unless you change it back.
Step 2: Duplicate the oval
I always like to work with filled shapes, but especially when I’m using any Modify option. I’ve filled my oval with black and raised the transparency to around 35%. As we go along I’ll show you why that’s important.
We are going to need more copies of the shape. I very much prefer to use the keyboard shortcuts for this because the shapes stay aligned with one another. So I select my shape, then use CTRL/CMD+↑ to make a duplicate right above. I also changed its color and I’ll explain why in the next step.
I’m going to need another copy later. I use the same keyboard shortcut, but with the sideways arrow key so it’s to the side. This second one I pull out of the way until I’m ready to use it.
Step 3: Subtract with 2 ovals
We’re going to use that upper oval to cut away a portion of the lower one using Subtract. That takes selected shapes and removes (subtracts) any part of any other shape that’s below it in the order. You can do that with as many shapes as you like. When it’s done, only the bottom shape remains.
Move the upper oval down to overlap the lower one. I like to use the arrow keys on my computer keyboard so that the shapes remain aligned.
By making the duplicate above the original, it’s in the front (top) of the order. That’s because each new shape you create is made on top of all other shapes already present. And I can double check that because it’s a different color.
Now, here’s why I changed the transparency — it allows me to see what the resulting shape will look like after I subtract. There are 3 color areas here — all blue, all black and a blue-black mix. Different Modify options will retain different areas. With Subtract, the blue will cut away all the black that’s behind it — so it will remove the blue-black area. The all black area is what we’re left with.
Select both those ovals, open the Modify panel and click Subtract. Then you should have this:
If the blue had been behind the black, what would remain would be the all blue portion. If that happened to you accidentally, don’t worry. All you have to do is rotate it 180° and you have the same thing.
That’s the main portion of our smile design. Now, you could leave it like that if you like, but we’re going to go further.
Step 4: Rotate and resize the remaining oval
Now we’ll do the dimples on the sides of the smile design. Grab your copy that you pulled off to the side. Bring it over to your subtracted shape. You’re going to rotate it and make it smaller. I’m also going to make my oval squattier, but that is totally up to your personal preference.
This time I’m going to keep them the same color. We’re going to combine pieces, not remove portions, so this will help us more easily visualize the outcome. If you like, you can take the transparency back to 0 and remove the line color to visualize even more. Here’s what that would look like:
Step 5: Make a mirrored copy of the smaller oval
We’ve gone a dimple on one side of the smile, but we want one on the other side as well. This time we want to mirror it so that it angles in the opposite direction.
We’ll select that smaller oval and use another keyboard shortcut — ALT+SHIFT+→ to make a mirrored copy to the right.
If you prefer, you can make a mirrored copy in the Object>Replicate>Mirror Right drop down menu, or in the Replicate panel.
Step 6: Distribute and Align the pieces
Make sure that mirrored copy is still selected. Then move it over to the right side of the smile. Again, I like to use my arrow keys so I don’t accidentally move it up or down.
HINT: If you hold your SHIFT key as you press the arrow key, the shape will move in bigger chunks. To move it in even smaller chunks than with a regular arrow click, zoom in. The closer you are zoomed in, the smaller amount the shape will move with the arrow keys.
Let’s double check the alignment just to be safe. Select both the smaller ovals and in the Quick Access Toolbar, align their tops.
We’re almost there. But how do you make sure your dimples are placed equally across the smile? In other words, how do you ensure they are both the same amount away from the center? Here’s my simple way — group them, then align their centers with the smile.
Step 7: Weld everything
All we have to do now is to use our second Modify option: Weld. What this does is joins overlapping shapes into a single shape and eliminates any lines at the overlaps. So just select the smile and the small oval grouping and then Weld in the Modify panel. Weld is used so often that it actually has its own icon in the Quick Access Toolbar.
Your smile is done! Are you smiling now that you created it on your own?
Optional: Save the smile design to your Library
You want to save your design in some way. I’m often asked if I save my designs to the Library or to my hard drive. That’s up to you, but here’s what I do. For a single design like this, I save it to the Library. That way I can find it quickly to use it for other projects. To save to the Library —
- Select the shape.
- Go to File>Save Selection>Save to Library.
- That opens the Library to the User Designs folder.
- Name the design, then click OK.
Once it’s saved in that folder, you can move it to a different folder if you choose. You can also give it a description, add keywords for searches, etc. by hovering over its thumbnail picture, right clicking and going to Show Properties. To see that in action, watch the video below.
If I were to combine this with a saying and maybe some other designs and use it on a t-shirt, I would save that to my hard drive as it’s a full project.
Video: how to create the smile design
Well, that seems like a LOT of words for a simple process. I know some people prefer to read a tutorial, while others prefer videos. So, here’s a video for those of you who fall into the latter camp.
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