Wednesday 29 November 2017

Free Design Every Day - November 23 to Dec 1



Hello, hello, Karen here with a little project made with one of the free designs that have been available for the last few days.

Have you been taking advantage of the free design each day - I have and how opportune that the one that popped up on the day that my best friend became a Grandma for the first time was a cute little print and cut deer.




I added it to a design that said Baby's First Christmas.  Removed the word Baby's and added the name of her granddaughter.  Used the colour picker to fill in the text with colours from the design and then printed it out onto some printable transfer paper - popped it onto a little onesie that I happened to have and I had a unique little present for the baby. 




Tuesday 28 November 2017

Santa: Mirroring Designs to Make them Work for You


Hi !! Niki here today with this very Christmassey layout! This photo was actually taken last October but I have never got around to scrapping it for some reason, so now was the time!  I wanted to use this lovely Bauble design by Paige Evans, available in the Design Store but with the orientation of my photo (with my daughter looking towards the left of the photo, I wanted to position the baubles on the left of my layout but the bulge in the design were going the wrong way.

This is no major problem: I simply opened the design on my mat, selected it and then went up to the Object Menu and selected Mirror - Flip Horizontally. This flipped the design around so then I was good to get cutting!

I copied the design and pasted so that I had three, then resized and arranged onto my mat.

I decided to cut in Red Glitter cardstock! I therefore selected the Cardstock, Glitter option from the 'Material' menu.

Once cut I started to make my layout but wasn't happy with being able to see my background through the cut glitter baubles so I want back to my computer and released the Compound Path, moved the outline of the design to one side and deleted all the middle bits. I then moved my bauble back into position - just the outline. I repeated for all three and then cut these from white card, to act as a backing for my glittery baubles.

I positioned my baubles onto my layout and added stitching with my machine to make them appear as though they were hanging and then built the rest of my layout.



Thanks for joining me today for this quick and easy tutorial.
Happy scrapping, Niki xx 

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Monday 27 November 2017

Print Your Own Custom Cards with Silhouette Studio



Hello Janet here again with ideas for quick, custom, batch-made cards designed in the Silhouette Studio® software.

One of the fastest methods, for making a batch of cards, is to print from the Silhouette software onto pre-made card blanks. I took some baubles by my daughter and quickly turned them into a set of Christmas cards.  The watercoloured baubles were refined in the Silhouette software and sentiments from the Silhouette Design Store were added. Then several copies of each were printed out. Here is a short tutorial to show you how to make them for yourself. This method uses the images without saving them as patterns in the library. To see how to import your own patterns see my tutorial on Using Custom Patterns as Backgrounds and Fills.





What You'll Need

Card Blanks with matching Envelopes
Watercolour Images
Colour Printer (that will print on card)
Matt Silver Metallic Card
Adhesive
Black Pen


STEP 1: Create and Import Images

Scan or photograph your images (easier if the images are captured separately). Open all the files in one tab in the Silhouette software by copying or merging the files.


These bauble images were hand-painted by my daughter with watercolour paints. A similar look could be achieved using other media such as blended inks, watercolour pencils or watered down acrylics.


STEP 2: Remove the Background

Using the shape drawing tool, draw a circle around one of the images whilst holding down the shift key on the keyboard. Adjust the size of the circle until most of the bauble fits within the circle (a little white showing around the edges in places helps retain a handmade appearance).  Copy the circle to use again.



Open the Modify Panel. Select both the circle and the image and click on Intersect.




Paste the circle twice and repeat the Intersect function on the other images.

Now all three baubles have transparent backgrounds and are ready to use.


STEP 3: Add Sentiments

Open the sentiment files in the same tab, or type your own using the Text tool. I used a selection of phrases from the Silhouette Design Store by Skyla design. Fill the words with the colour of your choice and change the line colour to clear. Position and resize the phrases.
(Optional) If you plan to overlap the baubles on a card, you can make the baubles more transparent by adjusting the transparency slider in the Fill panel.


STEP 4: Design Cap and Hanging Loop

It is easy to design a cap in the software.  Draw a rectangle, select it and then click on 'Edit Points'. Click and drag the upper points towards the centre of the rectangle to make a trapizoid shape (guess who swallowed the geometry book today).



Draw an oval, and then make an internal offset, select both and make into a compound path (right mouse click, select Make Compound Path).


Overlap the loop onto the cap and weld the two together (right mouse click, select Weld).

Fill it with a colour and set the lines to clear.

Resize it to fit one bauble and then duplicate it by the number of cards and cut from metallic card.


STEP 5: Prepare Card Layout

Measure a card blank and make the page size the same as the open blank.


Draw a rectangle/square equal to the size of the card front and place it where the font should print. Locate and resize the bauble leaving room to draw a hanging thread (alternatively, draw a line for the thread at this point).




STEP 6: Print Cards


You made need to reorientate the page size and card front if your card size exceeds the size capability of your printer.

Change the Print Page Set (File > Print Page Setup) to match the size of your open card. This will probably require that you make a custom setting.

The card is now ready to print.

Hint: Print just one card to start with and fine tune the placement of the bauble if necessary.

Once that is correct you are ready to print multiple copies. Change out the baubles and phrases to print some variations and you'll have a stack of cards in no time.



All that remains is to draw on the strings and to write your custom-made cards.






Bye for now,





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Wednesday 22 November 2017

Early Bird Layout: Just for Fun



Hey again, Niki here today. You probably know me fairly well by now and that I love to put big bold elements onto my layouts. For this layout I wanted to tell a story about my daughter and how she was so excited for her school trip, that she got up at 11pm thinking it was morning already and got herself dressed and ready for school! An alarm clock was the ideal element for this layout so I picked out my favourite from the Design Store and opened it up on my mat.

I simply re-sized and separated out the designs so I could cut them onto my chosen papers. For the large clock I wanted to use the same piece of paper for the clock as for the outline around my background (the other side of it) so I cut it directly out of the middle. I also cut the hands from here too. The other two circles needed to be cut from two more papers so I positioned them onto my mat and cut those too.

Once all the pieces were cut, I layered the clock together. I poked a brad through the hands and assembled the rest of the layout using the Shimelle Glitter Girl collection.


Thank you so much for joining me today - what bold elements do you think you might use on your next layout?

Happy scrapping xx

DESIGNS USED:
Alarm Clock


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