Saturday, May 4, 2013

Tutorial: Using MS Paint to Modify Stamps

Hey Folks,

In order to save memory in my shop and therefore offer more stamps, I have offered the Crazy Mayzy line as one big stamp sheet with all five stamps together, rather than as individual pieces.  I've received some questions about how to separate them all out, and I thought I'd show you an easy way using MS Paint.  

Now I'm sure some of you have way more fancy and high-tech programs that you can use, but just about everyone with a Windows computer has MS Paint.  If you're on a Mac... sorry, I'm clueless.  :(

Please note that, depending on how old your computer is, your Paint may look different, but it should still have the same options.

First... Open MS Paint.  If you click on the start button in the bottom, left-hand corner of your screen, you should be able to find MS Paint under Accessories.

Windows always comes with MS Paint, as far as I know, so it should be in there somewhere!

Now pull up your MayzyArt stamps.  They're going to look really big!

When using Paint, I recommend the jpg files, as Paint doesn't have the capability to utilize the transparent background of a png anyway.

If you go to the VIEW tab, you can zoom in or out to the right size.

Now find the select tool on Paint.  It should be under the HOME tab.

From here, you've got two options.  If you've got a good mouse and a steady hand, you can select Free-Form Selection

This will allow you to just outline your stamp.

Copy what you've outlined...

And paste it into a blank Paint canvas.

Voila!  Save it to your computer and resize it as you normally would.  Ready to print!

If you didn't want to use the Free-Form Selection, you can also choose the regular rectangular Selection option.  This is good if you're using a laptop with a touchpad instead of a mouse.

But when you paste this into a new Paint canvas, you may have overlap from neighboring stamps.
You can either cut around this after you've printed out your stamp or, if you prefer, you can color over it with a white paintbrush in Paint.

I hope that this is helpful to you!

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