176 Press Ctrl+K Right click on screen and select Shape Magic>Rhinestone Go to Edit>Shape Magic>Rhinestone. There are some very specific guidelines to follow when designing a rhinestone pattern: The shape needs to be sized before applying the rhinestone circles. If you wait until afterwards and thenrealize that you want your overall design to be twice as large, then resizing will make the circles twice aslarge and the spacing twice as large, too! So, before accessing the Rhinestone feature, decide on theoverall size you wish to use. The circle size selected will need to be larger than the stone size you purchased. As a general rule,select a size three numbers larger than your stones. Thus, if you purchased 10SS stones, then in therhinestone design window, you will want to be selecting 13SS stones. This larger size will allow the10SS stones to more easily brush into the holes. When selecting a font to use, be leery of “fancy fonts”. You want the lettering to be readable after it isconverted to circles. When in doubt, have someone who doesn’t know the words you’ve typed attemptto read the circle design on the screen. If they cannot decipher your words, then try a more basic font. Rhinestone designs almost always need “tweaking” which involves adding, deleting, moving, or re-spacing circles. You will need to apply a Break (Ctrl-B) to separate the pattern into individual circles.To quickly add a circle, select one, click on the Copy icon and then click on the Paste in Place icon anddrag the circle to its new location. Then you can continue to just click on Paste in Place to add more.To re-space a row or column of circles, marquee-select and then use the shortcut keys, [ and ] toprovide equal vertical and equal horizontal spacing, respectively.Rhinestone Outline In this example, the initials from a high school will be outlined. As mentioned in the introduction to thissection, the first step is to size width and height of the lettering. Make sure there is enough space betweenthe letters so that the circles will not overlap. Also, you may want to resize the lettering vertically to makethe letters taller. This allows more circles to be applied and can improve the ability to read the text: To apply a rhinestone outline, select the shape and then click on the Rhinestone icon. This window opens:Letter is 6” wide butonly 2.3” tallLetter is still 6” widebut is now 3.6” talland will show upbetter on the shirtPreview ofdesignClick on Acceptwhen done.Click on Previewbutton to see effectsof settingsSelect a circle sizelarger than your stonesSelect desiredSpacingClick on OutlineShapesOption to DeleteOriginal shape
