help with rosewood standard in three colors of vinyl

[picks2592]

Hi total newbie here to cutting vinyl although i have designed several boat names in photoshop for others to cut out.I now have purchased a graphtec ce 5000-60, and illustrator cc but cannot figure out how to cleanly seperate the three different cuts of vinyl i will need to make my new boat name.
The font I am using is Rosewood Standard, I want the bottom layer to be the black (drop shadow) the middle layer( the actual letter shape) to be engine turn gold leaf, and the inlay portion of the letter to be a silver leaf. I cannot figure out how to get the three layers seperated or how to fill in the "empty" spaces left on the bottom two layers once seperated, Can do easily in photoshop but once imported to illustrator it becomes quite messed up, as I need to put my boat in Friday I am quickly running out of time to figure out how. Any help would be greatly appreciated even if just pointing me to the proper tutorial, I have not found one yet. Thanks so much!!!

 

[CanuckSigns]

the text has to be converted to outlines first, you should then be able to break apart the different elements.

I don't use illustrator, but in coreldraw it's:

convert text to curves
break curve apart

done

 

[picks2592]

thanks for help

Will try when home from work, appreciate you taking time to help !!

 

[J Hill Designs]

add registration marks and duplicate across all three layers for easy install

 

[picks2592]

have three layers , Duplicate Index marks ?

have to find a tutorial on that as well Thanks for your help so far guys Half way there lol

 

[J Hill Designs]

put marks in before you break the layers apart, copy marks with each layer as you separate

 

[J Hill Designs]

i use triangles, but yeah most anything works

 

[Trip59]

In illustrator, if you have any styles, warp, etc. applied, go to Object and choose Expand Appearance (I always duplicate the layer then hide the duplicate to preserve editability) then select all the text and go to Object and choose Expand. The top two of three checkboxes should be checked by default, just hit OK.

If there are three colors, I'd have three layers plus a layer for registration marks. Turn off all layer visibility but the one you want and the reg... rinse and repeat.

 

[picks2592]

thankyou all for the help !

Name worked out good for my first attempt thanks to everyone's help. Put on my boat last night, now if the sun will come out so I can decide if I like the silver leaf......

 

[J Hill Designs]

would look better black IMO

edit: or maybe put a black outline around the silver