Stamped Sexy!

There was this awesome inkscape tutorial for creating a rubber stamp that I was trying out. Here's the link - http://howto.nicubunu.ro/rubber_stamp_inkscape/

This is what I ended up making.

However, there were a few issues that I encountered while trying it out. I was not able to apply an intersect on the text and the random calligraphic lines. Whenever I was doing an interesct, strangely, the outer rings would disappear. Or some other similar annoying thing would happen.

Then I did a bit of experimentation. Here is what you need to do to get the desired effect.

1. Select your text, convert Object to path.
2. Select your concentric circles - Stroke to path
3. Select your text, Object->Ungroup. (This ungroups the different alphabets, which are actually paths)
4. Select everything, i.e. The circles, and the text and do Path -> Union. (Now, all the different paths are considered to be one single combined path)
5. Now select your random calligraphic lines, and then your stamp, and then do a Path -> Intersect.

Voila! You got your effect.

The issue was that when you use an interesect command, if you have more than path to interesect, the result of the intersect operation yields areas that are common to all the paths. When we convert the text to a path, each alphabet becomes an independent path. So, if you try to interesect it with a common figure, you will end up with nothing because in order to get something, all the paths need to overlap at least at a single point.

Signing Off
Ryan