Using Inkscape to Create Patch Artwork

My friend Shannon is involved in a Cub Scout pack and had asked me a while back if I had any interest in designing cub scout patches for their upcoming pinewood derby event (he is the event master) using Inkscape. I am always up for seeing what cool things can be made with Inkscape; Shannon and I have tested out Inkscape in other off-work projects including the jar labels for his honey business, Hughes Honey. (I especially like working on these side-projects with Shannon because he pays me in delicious honey 😉 ) I had some free time so I agreed to do it. Here’s what we came up with, using the Cub Scouts’ official blue & gold colors, the troop number, and of course an OFL-licensed font (Chunk Five)…

I created a new document in Inkscape that was 3″ x 3″, created a circle using the ellipse tool and centered it within the document using the Align & Distribute tool, and kept layering artwork into it. I got the artwork for the flags and the fleur de lis from Open Clip Art, and I drew the derby car using pinewood derby car photo references I found via search. I rotated the text around the circle using the “Put on Path” tool under Inkscape’s text menu. To keep creating circles within circles that are perfectly centered, the trick I used was to Ctrl+D the outermost circle and hold down shift while I scaled the circle down – this scales from the center of the circle rather than from the point you’re dragging the scale edge from.

Anyway, after a few iterations we got to the mockup above and sent it over to the patch makers, Stadri Emblems. They took our Inkscape-produced artwork and created this proof:

I thought it came out pretty awesome so I figured I’d post it. So now you see Inkscape is not just awesome for Girl Scouts, but for Cub Scouts too! 🙂