They call it a "mat". With your welded word selected click on Edit>Duplicate. Now you will have a layer right on top of your welded word - with that new layer selected (you don't have to do anything it will be selected from you creating it) click on Path>Outset. That will increase the size of your new layer or mat. Keep clicking on Path>outset until you have the thickness you want. You'll have to move the mat off of your word and make sure there's room in between the two words for when you save and import to SCA. I saved and then opened and you can't move the words separately on your mat. If you wanted to be able to move each word separately I'm assuming you'd have to copy and paste the mat onto a new page and save them separately. But... I guess I don't know if you can import more than one file at a time into SCA - haven't played around with that yet.
In playing around with this last night i discovered that you have to have the font size set really high - in the tutorial I downloaded for Inkscape they have their font size at 120, but that must be with an old version because with this newest one it jumps up to 144, 120 is not an option. So I used 144. When I try to use a smaller font size the mat does weird things. I haven't tried alot of the other font sizes yet. I guess I don't understand the font sizing, cuz normally 144 would be huge... but it's kinda like electricity... I don't have to understand how it works to know I like it!!!
I wondered how big the word would be when I imported it into with the setting at 144, but it was rather small.. so I just enlarged it and it was perfect.
I haven't cut anything yet - I just downloaded Inkscape yesterday and played around with it while I watched Idol
I've been playing with it, but need to read the 'help' more...lol...The ropping was familiar because of Pazzle....