Design Rhinestone Templates With Inkscape

I have an electronic cutting machine. I love how versatile is. What I like the most is to make personalized gifts. Something very unexpensive and quick to make becomes the best present of the party if you made it especially to meet the receiver´s needs.

With no doubt when I gift something with rhinestones it´s a hit. But although there are lots of designs in the store, few of them are rhinestones templates.

I´ll show you how to use Inkscape, (a free drawing software) to make your very own designs.

Open the image, it can be a jpg or png. With the "draw bezier curves and straight lines" tool draw the outline. It´s ok if its not perfect, click "edit paths by nodes" and move the dots to improve the shape.

Add a box of text, and type dots "." many. Open up the text window and try different fonts until you find one which dots are circle.

Select the outline you draw and the dots, in the menu "Text" click "put on path". Now you have the dots arround the shape.

Continue typing dots until you fill the outline with small circles.

Select the dots and in the menu "path", click "object to path"

Erase everything but the dots. Now save your masterpiece.

If you are going to use a Cameo or Portrait, you´ll need it in .dxf

If your cutting machine is a Cricut save it as .svg

Now, I´ll use Silhouette Studio, but if you have a Cricut just finish this final step with its software.

Open your file and you´ll notice that there are some extra lines. Ungroup or release compaund path so that you can erase the extra lines.

Now if you find some circles that intersect, move them a little bit.

The final and more important step is to resize the design to the size of your rhinestones. Draw a circle that is 1/2 mm larger than your rhinestones. My rhinestones are 3mm so my circle is 3.5 mm

Now select all your design and resize it until each circle is the same size of the circle you drew at the end. Erase that last circle and thats it.

Now you have your own rhinestone template design!