Sometimes Super Bowls are known more for the commercials than the game. Super Bowl LII will go down as a fantastic football game. The Philadelphia Eagles outlasted the New England Patriots 41-33 to become National Football League Champions in the 52nd Super Bowl.
This was the Eagles first Super Bowl win and their first championship since 1960 before the Super Bowl started. Even more remarkable they did it behind the super effort of backup quarterback Nick Foles. Foles looked every bit the match for the legendary Tom Brady of the Patriots. Both QB's looked great but to the winner goes the spoils.
Congratulations to all the Philadelphia fans. Enjoy the championship. Looks like you have a quarterback controversy coming up next season. :) That's a good problem to have.
Designing Scroll Saw Patterns:
My Affiliate Link $59.99
I get a lot of email asking what software is needed to design scroll saw patterns. Obviously you need software that allows you to draw the pattern. There are two different types of graphics programs. Bitmap and vector graphics.
Bitmap graphics programs are used to manipulate photos. You can draw with them but they draw with pixels. The screen is divided up in a grid of points(pixels) that are either turned on or off with a color. If you wish to enlarge a line drawn with a bitmap graphics program it will add pixels and just get blurry. They also tend not to have very good printouts on your printer. This type of graphics program does not work well for scroll saw designs.
Vector graphics programs work different. A line drawn in a vector graphic program is a calculation between two points on the screen. If you want to enlarge the line, the program recalculates the line between the two new points and draws the line. This produces fine line drawings. A circle is an object calculated that can be stretched, skewed, enlarged in any way without loss of line detail.
You can also take two drawn objects like a circle and square and weld them together in a vector graphics program to produce a completely different object.
I'm not going to sugar coat it. These vector based graphics programs do have a learning curve. The good news is that as pattern designers we use a limited subset of the tools in these programs. We are just drawing black and white lines. This makes the learning curve somewhat easier.
The two programs that many pattern designers use are Inkscape and CorelDraw.
Inkscape is free open source software available on Windows, Mac and Linux. It has all the tools you need to draw scroll saw patterns. There are thousands of users of the software and many online tutorials available. I am personally not a user of Inkscape for scroll saw patterns because it does not have certain features I need. I also find it clunky to use. The one feature that is hard to argue with is the price. Free is hard to beat.
CorelDraw is a commercial program. The full version is quite expensive. Luckily for home users they also have a Home and Student version. The price for the Home and Student version runs around $130 for the most current release. Amazon often has earlier versions much cheaper. Version X8 which is one version old is currently $59.99 for the download edition. That is a great price for this powerful program. The Home Student has everything you need to make scroll saw patterns.
Should you use either of these programs? If you have a desire to learn something new and have moderate computer skills then yes give them a try. You can start with Inkscape to get your feet wet then if you like the process move up to CorelDraw.
Designing patterns or even editing existing patterns can add a great deal of fun to the hobby.
Click Image to Enlarge and see contest details.
You can also submit the pattern by email
service@bearwood.com
January's 2WAYS2WIN contest had great participation so Stephen at Bear Woods and I want to do it again.
WAY2WIN #1: Click the link above and enter the giveaway. That simple. Enter everyday.
WAY2WIN #2: Post up to three photos of your wooden trains, planes or automobiles on the Bear Woods Facebook page.
Email Newsletter Readers: Remember that the Newsletter is just a copy of the daily blog post. To see the post in it's proper formatting click this link. If you ever misplace a pattern or any item you see here you can always find it on the blog. Everything stays on the blog forever.
your source for Pegas scroll saw blades and craft supplies.
for your scroll saw ready boards.
Let me teach you to create a beautiful wooden portrait pattern. I will show you everything you need from start to finish. The video will show you the free software program you can download for Windows or Mac OS. I will show you how to install the program and configure it for best results.
Then I will show you the technique to take your photograph and make a pattern from it. When the pattern is complete we will go in the shop and cut it.
The DVD is $10 plus shipping. This is a data DVD that you will use on your computer to watch the video tutorial
Purchase the entire Scrollsaw Workshop pattern catalog for offline access.
This DVD has 2,300 patterns published from 2007 thru 2017.
The DVD is $20 plus shipping. Ships to 60 countries around the world.
The DVD is $20 plus shipping. Ships to 60 countries around the world.
If you use the DVD on a Windows PC there is a simple viewer program to browse through the patterns.
The DVD also works fine on a MAC. The viewer program is not MAC compatible but there is an included PDF with all the patterns shown as thumbnails for easy viewing.
My two "Wooden Vases on the Scroll Saw" books make it easy.
The books are $12 each and available for instant download after purchase. Click for Video
Demonstration.
