Computer Scrapbooking: Using Draw's Slice Command for Scrapbooking

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Windows Draw 6 or CompletePublisher'99

Placing Text Along a Shape

Editors Note: Originally published as Micrografx Windows Draw 6, the current version of this program is published by Sierra as CompletePublisher'99. For all practical purposes, they are the same program. Both are referred to in this tutorial as Draw.

Yet another powerful feature of Draw is it's ability to let you easily put text along the outline of a shape. Draw refers to text that is applied to a shape or a line as a "Label".

We'll only use the basic options as we go through this tutorial, but, if you will take a moment along each step to look at the various options on the Visual Toolbar, you'll find there are lots more formatting options you can use.

Are you ready? Let's go!

1. Start a new layout and make sure the Visual Toolbar is visible.

2. On the Visual Toolbar, click on the Create Shapes button and select circle. When you do this, your mouse pointer will change to look like a crusher with a little circle next to it.

3. Move your cursor over on top of the layout and draw a circle by clicking, holding down the mouse button and dragging down and to the right. Make a fairly large circle and then release the mouse button.

4. When you clicked on the Circle creation tool, a little window also opened up that says "Circle". We only need one circle for this lesson, so click on the Finished button in the circle window.

5. With the circle still selected, click on "Change Label Text" command.

6. In the next Visual Toolbar menu, click on the "Edit Text" command. A text cursor will appear in the middle of the circle.

7. Type in: "And the cow jumped over the moon". After you've typed in the text, click on the Finished button in the small text window.

8. When you click on the Finished button, the Visual Toolbar changes back to the "Change Shape" window. With the circle still selected, click on "Change Label Text" command again.

9. Back in the Change Label Text window, click on the "Label Position..." command. Be sure and take a minute to look at all of the position options that are available.

10. For this tutorial, we're going to put the text along the outside top of the circle, so, in the third section: "Or Place Text Along Curve", go to the row labeled "Outside" and click on the circle icon with the little blue arrow pointing to the top of the circle. Then, click on "Finished Choosing Position".

11. You'll again be back at the "Change Label Text" window. We're done with this portion, so, click on "Finished Changing Label". When you do, the Visual Toolbar changes back to the "Change Shape" window.

12. When we created the circle, it probably had a fill color assigned to it, and possibly a line color too. We're going to change the circle so that it has no fill or line color. After we do that, all that we'll see is the text going along the curve of the circle.

13. In the "Change Shape" window, click on "Color and Format". When you do, the Visual Toolbar window changes to a window that has 5 tabs near the top of it.

14. Click on the "Fill" tab. In the color palette that appears, click on the "X" in the top left corner of the palette. This will change the fill to No Fill.

15. Next, click on the "Line" tab. In the color palette that appears, click on the "X" in the top left corner of the palette. This will change the line to No Line.

16. There are several ways to change the font attributes of the text. One way is with the "Font" tab in this window. From the Font tab, you can change any of the characteristics of the text, including the font, text color, text size, and text style. If you would like to experiment with this, do it now.

17. After you've finished changing the text attributes, click on the "Finished Formatting" command.

You now have text along a shape!