bieber
April 8th, 2007, 02:22 AM
So, I decided that I wanted to make a greeting card for my girlfriend (who's blind) for Easter, and had to figure out how to go about writing in Braille. Braille machines are expensive and I have no idea where to get one, but my local Kinko's had a set of stylus' (should it be stylii) and cardstock, which just left me with actually getting the pattern to emboss. The first thing that came to mind was writing a Gimp script to make a template of a given size from a text message, but I didn't have enough time to learn Scheme and the inner-workings of the GIMP, so for the time being I had to settle for making a template by hand (I still plan to write the script in question when I have the time). So, not sure if it'll help anybody, but the template I used is here. (http://filehost.bieberworks.net/braille-grid.xcf) It's just a grid on the background layer, with a translucent white layer above, leaving the dots at 14% gray. Just draw on the upper layer's layer mask to reveal the black underneath to make the patterns you want, print, and then emboss onto paper. Be sure to mirror the image if you're planning on going directly from the printed sheet. Here (http://filehost.bieberworks.net/easter.jpg) is the card I made with it; greeting cards are a little tricky, because you have to mirror the cover but not the inside (that is, if you, like me, are just copying from the printed paper onto cardstock using bleed-through from a permanent marker).