The Xara Trompe L'Oeil Room Page 8
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Delete the polygon. Select the cube, group the three sides (Arrange > Group or Ctrl G) and reduce the size of the group to 10%.

NOTE: To resize a selected object, either drag the corner bounding box handles, to resize proportionately, the middle handles to resize non-proportionately, or enter a precise number in the Scale Width or Scale Height text entry box on the Infobar, and press Enter to apply the change.

NEW FEATURE Select the cube, then select the Freehand Tool. In the Infobar the new Brush options will be enabled. Press Create Brush.

Now when you draw with the Freehand Tool, it uses the cube as a Brush Stroke. The point size of the line determines the size of the cubes. If you have a pressure sensitive pad, you will be able to vary the width of the brush stroke when you apply pressure while drawing.

Brush strokes are only the beginning. The Edit Stroke dialog (shown right) has more controls than you can shake a stick at. By varying these settings, we will create the randomly-placed bits of chrome salt on our pretzel. The tiny chrome salt crystal we just created will be our brush shape. 

The illustration shown on the left shows the effects of some of these settings. The new brush stroke is applied to an 8 point line creating an appearance similar to the blend. Random Scaling varies the size of the individual brush strokes. Increasing the spacing makes the cubes more apparent. Randomly spacing the cubes creates a less structured look. Finally randomly offsetting the brush stroke from path creates an even more random pattern.