# Help with start up



## tlcg (Jul 29, 2013)

I am excited about starting my new bling business and thought I was on track. I purchased Corel Draw x6 but I am sooooo confused! Do I need to purchase another program for rhinestones? I've read about Easy Stone. Is this something I have to have along with Corel Draw? What exactly am I using Corel Draw for?


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## katruax (Sep 30, 2010)

tlcg said:


> I am excited about starting my new bling business and thought I was on track. I purchased Corel Draw x6 but I am sooooo confused! Do I need to purchase another program for rhinestones? I've read about Easy Stone. Is this something I have to have along with Corel Draw? What exactly am I using Corel Draw for?


Hello Tina,

Welcome to the bling business!

Being you have CorelDRAW you have taken a good first step... Once you know what you are doing with CorelDRAW it will really open the doors to what you can do... 

To me the greatest thing about CorelDRAW is the vast numbers of FREE resources online to learn how to use... YouTube has a CorelDRAW video for really anything you could possibly want to know... 

To answer your question about the Easy Stone Macro... You do not need it for doing rhinestones in CorelDRAW... You don't need any Rhinestone Macro for doing rhinestones in CorelDRAW for that matter... Now you will find design to be easier I think with some sort of Macro and but to start... You can technically get the job done with CorelDRAW alone...

Here is a video I did long ago showing you how to use just CorelDRAW alone for creating a rhinestone pattern...

Rhinestoning with CorelDRAW - YouTube

Hopefully that will get you started and then from there you can explore all the possibilities... It will likely be a bit overwhelming at first but if you take your time what a few videos over and over and over again... Really in just a matter of weeks you can be well on your way...

Kevin


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## tlcg (Jul 29, 2013)

Hi Kevin-

Thanks for your reply. Your video was great! It made it look so much easier than the videos I watched last night. I am still thinking of purchasing a macro. I have been looking at Easy Stone and TRW Stone Wizard. Do you prefer one over the other? I know TRW just did an upgrade yesterday.


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## katruax (Sep 30, 2010)

tlcg said:


> Hi Kevin-
> 
> I have been looking at Easy Stone and TRW Stone Wizard. Do you prefer one over the other? I know TRW just did an upgrade yesterday.


Being the developer of Easy Stone I would have to give a slight edge to Easy Stone... LOL 

There are two other Macros for CorelDRAW... RStones and DrawStone... RStones has a bit of a silly license setup in my book... You buy it for a single computer and that's it... You get a new computer you buy it again... That's no fun... 

Easy Stone, Stone Wizard and I'm pretty sure DrawStone all allow two installs...

RStones and DrawStone are not as feature rich as Easy Stone and the Stone Wizard but then the cost is considerably less... I would add too both Easy Stone and Stone Wizard offer far more training support than RStone and DrawStone where for you as a new CorelDRAW user would be critical....

Perhaps some other folks could give you a more unbiased opinion on the two macros who have had the opportunity to use both or one or the other?... 


Kevin


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## nycmerch (Mar 29, 2009)

tlcg said:


> Hi Kevin-
> 
> Thanks for your reply. Your video was great! It made it look so much easier than the videos I watched last night. I am still thinking of purchasing a macro. I have been looking at Easy Stone and TRW Stone Wizard. Do you prefer one over the other? I know TRW just did an upgrade yesterday.


Hi there. 

welcome to the forum and rhinestoning with coreldraw. 

I just thought I would give an review. I have used rstones, draw stones and easy stones. All of which have a free trail so you can try out the macros prior to purchasing it. I tried them all and bought them all. Stone Wizard does not have a free trail and in fact they have a no refund policy either. So if you buy it and don't like it or find it lacks a lot of features, as you probably will find... guess what you just lost $209.

I also bought into the large stand alone products... including winpcsign ($250) hotfix error ($500) Bling It ($699). And after al,l this... For the money... EasyStone with corel is the best choice. it does what rstones, drawstones and Stone Wizard combined. It even does more then the stand alone rhinestone features on the products I just mentioned.... and it does so much more. Not to mention that it is the only macro that gives you 100 pre-made designs and about 20 true type rhinestone fonts to get you started. rstones and drawstones do not have designs or fonts. Stone Wizard charges additional for fonts and designs... on average $15-20 per font and $15-$20 per design. 

So for $149 you get the macro which has more features, 100 awesome and useful designs and 20 rhinestone true type fonts. 

Oh I forgot to mention, you also get 3 months of Design of the Day membership free with your purchase too. so thats another 90 or more designs, for free! Sometimes they throw in project files which include additional fonts too!! Here's a look at the latest designs from the design of the day membership:

Rhinestone Templates Made Easy with Easy Stone - Macro

scroll past the videos to see the daily designs... and you would get 90 days of designs for free.


Lets talk additional features between the two options you are considering:

1st and most important... Easy Stone comes with a full featured free trail Try it for 30 days before you buy it. Every feature is unlocked to try and play. Stone Wizard... does NOT have a free trail. So I never used it... I can only base my comments on the videos that I have seen and Im guessing you seen too.

2nd, Easy Stone has been around for almost 2 years. The Stone Wizard is new as per Matt from TRW was created because they applied for a dealership to sell WINPCSign and were denied. It appears to me that the stone wizard was created with duplicating the functions of Easy Stone... so Easy Stone creates a function... the stone Wizard copies it and throws the word magic in front if it and claim they created it for their crew, when in reality the feature was a part of Easy Stone for a long time. 

They still have a lot of catching up to do and will always be behind the times as I see it. Example: They just upgraded and charged their users $30 for the upgrade... adding Magic Glitter fills. This was copied from Easy Stone as easy stone introduced it almost a month prior for free!!. Stone Wizard saw it and copied it. But they did not do a good job. look at the designs they show using the tool and if you look closely you will see that the glitter images they used were merely copied from google images and they tile repeat so they look ugly with these swatch squares, where Easy Stones are more pleasing to the eye. 

The Stone Wizard has a lot of buttons and if you are a button pusher, you will be attracted to it, but after watching every video put out on the macro... you will find a lot of the buttons are basic functions of corel like copy and paste, nudging to left and right etc things you can do faster with a key board short cut like Ctrl C for copy and ctrl V for paste. or simply hit the arrows to nudge. So to me, having a button for these functions is redundant and takes up a lot of space and that's why their macro is so big and takes up so much screen space. To me that is just a waste.

Some important features provided in or with the Easy Stone Macro and lacking in Stone Wizard. 

Easy Prep, which is an awesome and addition to Easy Stone which allows you to easily prep your files and have full control over how the templates are laid out. You can choose to have different size or different color stones on the same templates, there are custom mock-ups where your not limited to a handful of items but can now create your own custom mock up for products for your customers with custom layouts etc. I guess the best way to describe it is let Kevin do it in a video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMKmEGXXtXg



Another really awesome feature that Stone Wizard will probably never have is the ability to create your own true type rhinestone fonts. You can even take EPS (cut and paste) fonts that you buy from companies like TRW or whomever, and with the Create Font Function... change those terrible EPS Fonts into type-able fonts where you can now have control... easily arch or follow a path etc.
I dont see the Stone Wizard ever offering this because they sell of a lot of the EPS and TTF rhinestone fonts and would lose profit. So why give you something to help you save money when it will make them lose money? So much for caring for their crew. Here's the video for the Font Feature: 

Easy Stone


Another cool feature you will not see on Stone Wizard is the ability to create your own sticky flock or easy flock alphabet templates. Stone Wizards make a lot of money selling sticky flock alphabets and numbers so again they will not lose profits and give you the tools to do it yourself. But Easy Stone does provide this feature. Very cool.. take a look:

Easy Stone


And there's a long list of other features that Easy Stone has over all the other software and macros out there. So hands down, dollar for dollar Easy Stone is the best for the money:

Stone Wizard - $209
No Free Trail - No Refunds if you dont like it.
Does not include designs
Does not include fonts

Easy Stone - $149
Free Train - Try before you buy!
Includes 100 pre-made Designs
Includes 20 Rhinestone Fonts
Includes 90-Day membership to the the Design of the Day program.
Includes the ability to create your own Rhinestone Fonts.
Includes the ability to create your own flock alphabets.
Includes a lot more features.

So which makes more sense? LOL

Give Easy Stone a try here is the link for a free demo:
Rhinestone Templates Made Easy with Easy Stone - Macro

Then Call TRW and see if they will give you a free demo. LOL

Hope this helps.


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## brndagayle (Oct 29, 2009)

I'd like to offer my experience here:

I have Easy Stone and it's my GoTo rhinestone software... I have other programs, including RStones and DrawStone, and have even purchased other rhinestone programs in the past, but Easy Stone is still my go to software... Since I seem to be a rhinestone software junkie, I might would have purchased Stone Wizard - just out of curiosity - but dropped that idea quickly when I found out there was no demo available.

One of the most important differences to check out is whether the product you are considering purchasing has a demo that you can try out before you plop over your money. Easy Stone has a demo that you can download here:

http://www.easystonetemplates.com/HTML/store.htm#!/~/product/category=592321
8&id=25010938

Kevin, the developer of Easy Stone, has also created a custom toolbar which he offers for FREE. You can get that here.

http://www.easystonetemplates.com/HTML/store.htm#!/~/product/category=592321
8&id=23619740

Every function in the Stone Wizard is in Easy Stone... Easy Stone has been around for almost 2 years, so Easy Stone was first to implement many of the functions you will find in the Stone Wizard since the Stone Wizard has just been around for 2 months

Easy Stone still has many features the Stone Wizard does not yet have...

There are lots of videos on the Easy Stone You Tube channel teaching you how to use Easy Stone. The great thing about the Easy Stone videos is that we are shown real world examples and how the design is created from start to finish. While it's nice to have videos showing what a particular function in a program will do, if you aren't sure how to make application of that function, then you are still left scratching your head and wondering what to do.

www.YouTube.com/EasyStoneTemplates

Like was mentioned previously...

Easy Stone comes with 100 rhinestone designs ready to go where the Stone Wizard does not come with any designs

It also comes with 20 type able rhinestone fonts TTF Fonts where the Stone Wizard does not come with any fonts...

It also comes with a 90 day membership to their Design of the Day where a new design is posted everyday for download... TRW has a similar setup but you have to pay $25.00 a month. I can tell you I extended my membership after first purchasing Easy Stone over a year ago and it's the best $15.00 a month I can spend!

You can checkout the high quality designs that Design of the Day members get here:

http://www.easystonetemplates.com/HTML/store.htm#ecwid:category=3520304&mode
=category&offset=0&sort=addedTimeDesc

Easy Stone has some unique rhinestone font capabilities the Stone Wizard does not have...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ7Ywkn-7_s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYtBiyrdepQ

It also has a neat design conversion tool built into Easy Stone... This is useful when converting designs you purchase from any source including TRW...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMKmEGXXtXg


There is a unique color separating function where you can specify exactly how you want to cut your templates if you are cutting templates....

Easy Stone

This feature is very useful because you can specify more than one color or stone size per template... With the TRW Stone Wizard the color separations are automatic by color and size rather than giving you a choice of output.

 With the additional features in Easy Stone along with the Design of the Day Membership and the Designs and Fonts you get with Easy Stone I think as a package it offers more value...

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, -- check out the Easy Stone Facebook group -- there are lots of freebies that are offered there.

www.Facebook.com/EasyStoneTemplates


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## mesewsatx (Aug 4, 2007)

tlcg said:


> I am excited about starting my new bling business and thought I was on track. I purchased Corel Draw x6 but I am sooooo confused! Do I need to purchase another program for rhinestones? I've read about Easy Stone. Is this something I have to have along with Corel Draw? What exactly am I using Corel Draw for?


I use the Stone Wizard from TRW and am very happy with it (no affiliation -just a happy customer). I did download the trial version of Easystone but but chose not to buy it for various reasons. I think it is a matter of what you are comfortable with. Buying Corel is a good move, it has so many other uses than just the rhinestones. Go to Youtube and watch the videos for the various programs. Good luck on your new business venture.


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## LouieM414 (Jul 8, 2009)

OMG I wish it was easier to make a decision on software. I'm so lost! I'm ready to buy software now. I'm a photographer that also uses dye sub and I want to collaborate it all together. HELP!!!!!


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## BML Builder (Jul 8, 2008)

Some have posted previously that TRW Stone Wizard did not have a free trial, but this isn't true. Here is the link to the free trial to TRW Stone Wizard. Rhinestone car templates, decals, apparel, vinyl decals | TheRhinestoneWorld.com
If I were you I would try the free trials for all of the Macros and or programs to find the one that fits your needs most. Most of them have the free trial available.


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## ifusion (Jun 3, 2011)

At the time of those posts TRW did not have a demo. I want to say their demo didnt become available to around december 2013 or january 2014.


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## genesissat (Sep 29, 2013)

I wish i would have known about Easy Stone, I bought the Stone Wizard from The Rhinestone World and it has never worked (always crashing) I called them and they stated that there was nothing that they could do that could help me.. I am so disappointed i almost wanted to do a chargeback on my credit card. So i thought it must be the computer, its a little older running windows vista. Still runs smooth but nonetheless i bought a new desktop wioth i7 processor blah blah lol called Rhinestone World to get the serial number transferred and they say no, that once you install it on a computer you cant move it.. I just have to laugh at these guys and never buy product from them again. Just thought i'd share my exp with them. thanks for reading if you read this far.


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## mesewsatx (Aug 4, 2007)

I use the Stone Wizard and no problems with it - when I have a crash is is Corel and not the rhinestone macro. It is not unusual for the product to be computer specific - that is the only way they can keep people from not sharing or selling the macro themselves. I am an honest person but there are many out there that are not.


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## genesissat (Sep 29, 2013)

mesewsatx said:


> I use the Stone Wizard and no problems with it - when I have a crash is is Corel and not the rhinestone macro. It is not unusual for the product to be computer specific - that is the only way they can keep people from not sharing or selling the macro themselves. I am an honest person but there are many out there that are not.


I thought it was Corel also, I removed and reinstalled, I also use some of Advanced Artist macros with no problem at all. I paid $209 for squat i just want it to work. They could at least give me the support to get it running on the original pc. They won't even take the time to do that.


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## mesewsatx (Aug 4, 2007)

From the TRW site: "This license is valid for installation on up to two computers." I think you just have to download it to the second computer. I only have it on one computer right now as I may buy a new laptop (my laptop is still running XP) in the next year and want to put it on what ever I buy.
Every software has a learning curve, I see people using the Easystone macro have issues also. I would suggest going to the Facebook page and ask for help there.


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## genesissat (Sep 29, 2013)

mesewsatx said:


> From the TRW site: "This license is valid for installation on up to two computers." I think you just have to download it to the second computer. I only have it on one computer right now as I may buy a new laptop (my laptop is still running XP) in the next year and want to put it on what ever I buy.
> Every software has a learning curve, I see people using the Easystone macro have issues also. I would suggest going to the Facebook page and ask for help there.


I have it already installed on 2 computers, they other works fine. Its the older desktop that it will not work on. I realize theres a learning curve but its not my fault, the thing crashes nonstop. I have 5 Computers running CorelDrawX6, anyway thanks for your input. I'll have to wait untill the main guy from TRW comes back from Disney.


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