Popular with Cricut users this trend has been all over social media so I thought that I’d be a sheep and follow the herd but give it a go with me Scan N Cut.

So, what is a “Spiral Betty”? Well, it’s a spiral design, that’s for sure however it appears to have been inspired by a French painter and engraver, Claude Mellan, that used to do engravings with a single line in a spiral pattern so, not really a ‘Betty’.

It works by varying the line width as the spiral grows and this creates an optical illusion to the viewer. Sometimes to get the effect you have to stand back or squint your eyes. Trust me, it works.

Here’s an example of a very fine spiral with my mush…

I think you get the idea now.

Anyhoo, how does this relate to the Scan N Cut? Well, because this is one continuous shape, we can create a cutting file from it by tracing it in Canvas Workspace. With this file we can then either draw it and frame it or we can cut it from a thin material like vinyl or HTV and use it to adorn stuff.

Here’s a couple of examples…

Neat eh?

Now, there are a few steps to get from creating the design, through creating the cutting file and on to setting up the machine for cutting vinyl – blade settings and depth etc – so I thought that I would throw together a video to cover those points.

I have not covered actually cutting this out, as that is pretty standard across the board and nor have I shown the application as this will vary depending on the material used and the project it is being applied to but there are plenty of tuts out there no matter what you want to do.

Obvs if you have any questions, bung them below and I’ll do my best to sound intelligent.

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Just before I share the vid, if you are not confident with the basic operational aspects of your Scan N Cut machine, please do check out my full “Brother Scan N Cut – Cut, Draw and Scan with Confidence” course on Udemy. It’s crammed with over 14 hours of on-demand video right from setting your Scan N Cut up, all the way through the three key functions of cutting, drawing and scanning on both the CM and DX models and also covers using both versions of Canvas Workspace software too!

Oh, and whilst I am shamelessly plugging things, did you know that I have literally THOUSANDS of SVG cutting files available? Some are free too! If you are interested in checking them out, please visit the SVG Cutting File Shop Archive.

Right, that’s enough of that.

Ready for the video? Ok, it’s all yours.

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There we go. That’s about it for this one.

Hope you enjoyed that tutorial and will give it a go yourself. If you do, and would like to share your creations with me you can find all of my social media links at the top of this page.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them in the comments section below.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Thanks for stopping by and I look forward to sharing more with you soon!

Bye for now.

J :)

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There are literally hundreds more posts in the archives so please do check out the suggested posts at the bottom of this page or visit one of the category archives below or check out the related posts section at the end of this post.

Papercrafts	Digital Crafts
Drawing and Painting	Fabric, Fibre & Yarn
Glass Crafts	Jewellery Making
Mixed Media	Needlepoint
Photography	Woodworking