Saturday, April 13, 2013

Writing a PDF for an Origami Design is HARD!

Or time consuming at the very least.  First,  who would have ever thought that I was ever going to want to write down one of my designs.  I’m not a designer!   I break rules, use the wrong paper, cut, glue, heat gun…anything that works to make the design look good.   I’m usually a follower of other peoples’ designs. But lately I have been wrestling with the idea and actual process of putting my designs into a pdf file and possibly in my store.  
6I first started out trying to use a paint program, with very little results.   I could not get the squares to look square or the lines to be dotted where they needed to be.  I’m sure someone with more experience could have done a better job in a shorter amount of time ( isn’t that the truth for everything?!?!) but for a novice like me…both in design AND in program use, it took 4 hours to get JUNK!   that I eventually deleted. 
I tried several other programs with the same results.  I finally decided to just draw out my designs with my sloppy handwriting to see if I could at least finish a design.  The results….moderate.   Yes, they are sloppy, but I could follow them and Cheryl thought they were amazing!  ( She is so sweet!)  They, at the very least, provided me with a building block to start  from.8 
I then decided to use Microsoft OneNote as my program.  Several reasons for this:   I tried to use it to draw the diagrams directly, but it has its limitations.  However, in the process, I got to know the program a little.  I watched a few hour long videos of people using OneNote and decided it had promise!   And, I already had the program on my computer, along with many others that are either redundant, or unused.   I decided to give it a whirl and see if I could learn the program.  ( just like this Windows Live Writer Program I now use for my blog) And best of all:  It saved in a PDF format!
DSC_5813After 4 hours and only one page of the diagram, there were many other kinks to work out.  However I have been getting better and faster with each page.  I still have not been able to figure out how to draw with the darn thing, but perhaps there is another program out there that would work better.  DSC_5241
I'm still in the process of creating my file, but it is getting easier.  I may post more results as I continue.  It is one of the main reasons I have not posted much this month.  Or folded any new designs.   Which reminds me….I sold a TREE!  My first origami sale on Etsy!  YEAH!   I was a little nervous at first, but Cheryl helped me out with the printing of shipping labels and rounding up  the required packaging.  (She is so sweet!)   Ok,  This post is getting long, and I still have to work on the PDF…so hope everyone is having a great weekend so far.   Enjoy!

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