Scallops Anyone?

First, I must ask your forgiveness in getting off topic for a week. I know I planned to cover embellishment techniques for acrylic albums this week, but I've had too much going on personally in the last week to get that post together in time. Next week, I hope to be able to get back to the topic of acrylic.

But, that doesn't mean I don't have a cool hump day technique for you today!

Recently, I've found myself making scallops, in several different ways. First, I used the Cricut Design Studio to combine a large circle with small circles to create the large brown scalloped circle in the following layout:

Also, in the layout above, I used a 3-inch circle punch to to create the black scalloped circle. In both these cases, my scallops ended up a bit....wonky. When using the Cricut Design Studio, I took a guess at the diameter of my small circles that would create my scallop. I didn't know if the diameter I chose would work until I got all the way around the large circle. By the time I got that far, I no longer cared if my scallops looked a little wonky!

I chose to use a 3-inch punch for the black circles in the layout above, simply because I HAD a 3-inch punch. But as you can see, my black circles don't touch each other, creating a not-quite-scalloped look.

I couldn't help but wonder if there was a better way, so I took my engineering skills and applied them to scrapbooking! Using a little bit of trigonometry I was able to come up with a method to relate the diameter of the inner circle, the diameter of the scallop, and the number of scallops for scalloped circles like that shown below. All of this information is summarized for circles up to 12 inches in diameter in this table: Scalloped Circle Table .Please tell me if you find this information useful. I have a how-to-scallop-a-rectangle version that is more complicated so I only want to post it if you find this kind of information useful.

Happy humpday....I now return you to your regularly scheduled acrylic technique.....