Welding a Word Using Paint Shop Pro

I've made this screen-shot tutorial to show how I weld letters into words for cutting on the Craft Robo.  Presumably this will also work for the Silhouette machine too.

I use Paint Shop Pro to do all my graphics "stuff" and these pictures show the various screens for using PSP - I'm hoping that the processes will be similar for other programs (such as Photoshop) or at least give you some idea as to what to look for in the program you are using.

Once you get the idea, it's really easy to make "joined up" words and of course, you have your whol font folder at your disposal.

Please let me know if you find this useful - click on each picture for a larger view I've used lots of pictures so that you can see all the steps.

1.  Open Paint Shop Pro and Select a new page,  type in the dimensions you wish it to be.  This will depend on how large a word you want to make.  Remember to set the background as White.  This picture shows the settings I use for a simple, quite small word

2. Click on the Add Text tool and then check out the instructions on the screen-shot below to see what ettings to use in each area

3. Type your chosen word into the box, alter the settings as shown, then click OK

4. Now your word should appear on your page.  You need to merge the background and the "Layer" which has your word on.  You'll find the command in one of the drop-down menus:

5. You need to reduce the colours of your word to 2 - just Black and White, to do this use another of the drop down menus:

6. Now we can move the letters around with the funky Magic Wand tool!  Remember, if you do anything you're not happy with you can always just use the "back" button to undo it and have another try

7. Once you've selected the Magic Wand tool, click on one of the letters - you'll know it's been chosen because a dotted line will appear around it - it looks like ants marching around the shape!

8. Move each letter so that they overlap just a little, just follow the instructions in red on the screen-shot

9. Once you're finished moving things around, you'll probably have loads of white space left on your page, so get rid of it:

10.Now SAVE your word as a gif

11. Save it wherever you keep your Craft Robo templates (I save all the words I make into one area, called Words which is subdivided into; "Words A-F, Words G-N and Words O-Z , if I remember, I add the font name to each one I save.  eg this one should be saved in A-F and be called boy_crazyH)

That's it all ready to cut.

Now open a new page in Craft Rob, select the word you've made and resize to your preference - you can make it bigger or smaller, and you can also make it fatter or taller - and of course now you've made it you've got it to use again and again.

I hope you found this useful, and easy to follow.  If you are interested I can show you how to make a mat for your letters and welded words next time.