Wednesday 30 March 2016

Free Design of the week - Folk Heart 3D Basket



This week's free file is of a folk inspired basket. The image provided as a guide of the finished product has wood effect sides, but I wanted to "bling" it up a bit to see how different I could make it.

SUPPLIES REQUIRED:

A5 Mirror card in silver and red
Brass coloured paper clips
Glue gun + glue
Optional - ribbon, cellophane wrapping, decoration such as rhinestones and glitter glue

STEP 1
Open the file. The original design was larger than I wanted, so I selected all the pieces and scaled them down to 75%. There are four pieces like a fence. If you want straight sides, keep the bottom two. If you want folded back "petal" bits at the top, keep the top set and delete the others. I decided on the second option. 

I use the colour fill to help me identify what needs to be cut in which colour and decided to use silver and red mirror card. Note that before cutting you need to replicate the polygon shape so that you have 8 pieces. The heart should be replicated so you have 3 pieces. This is to add strength and stability to the pieces.

Put your card stock of choice into your Silhouette. If you want the holes to be slightly larger, for example to take the paper clips, release the compound path of each shape showing a hole. Make the holes larger in exactly the same spot as in the design and then cut the pieces out.

I find using a glue gun quite messy, however it has the advantage of sticking really quickly. Glue four of the polygon shapes together, matching the sides. Glue the other four together. Glue one set underneath the bottom of the basket. Glue the second set to what will become the inside, bottom of the basket. Bend all the perforated lines upwards.



STEP 2
Bend all the perforations on the two fence shaped pieces. Glue the two side pieces together at both ends to make the sides into a cuff shape. Glue the bottom to the sides working around one "arm" at a time, and easing it into place.



STEP 3
Glue the outside bands around the basket, matching the dots. You use 2 strips for each band, and they overlap.



STEP 4
Glue on the contrast half petals to the rim.
If you now discover the holes are too small for your embellishment (as I did), and you failed to alter the design to have larger holes as explained in step 1, now is the time to enlarge the holes very carefully. I used a scalpel and skewer. Ease in the paper clips, opening them up inside so that the long arms are hidden.


STEP 5
Glue the three hearts on top of each other. Glue and attach the medallions. Embellish the heart with thread, glitter glue and rhinestone. Attach the heart to the front. Fill the basket with goodies, and serve!



DESIGNS USED

folk heart 3d basket

Design ID #125189




PRODUCTS USED:

Light hold cutting mat for Cameo

Tuesday 29 March 2016

Challenge :: Free Design of the Week - Folk Heart 3D Basket

Morning Folks, hope you all had a nice Easter, if you did some Easter makes we would love to see them over on our Facebook and Instagram pages (links to the right)


We are back this week with another great FREE Design of the Week for you, this week we have a 3D offering with this cute Folk Art Basket

 As usual our Design Team have made some lovely projects with it already!
Please click through to see the full projects on their blogs




We always love to see what you do with the files so please join in below

Monday 28 March 2016

Princess Birthday Themed Cake Topper



No birthday party for young kids is complete without an awesome, yummy birthday cake. On top of that cake I wanted to give you an option of adding an equally awesome cake topper that will wow your birthday child as well as the guests. 

Supplies needed:

1. PREPARING AND CUTTING YOUR DESIGN:


A. Preparing the Princess design:

  • Once you open the princess file, it will be ungrouped and without color. You will need to ungroup the file, color each part in the color you like and assemble it together and group. 

  • I wanted the cake topper to be a bit big, so resize the design to about 15 cm tall. Add registration marks, position the design to be inside the markings and print. 

  • Before you cut your design, open your cut settings and choose cut edge


Now your design is ready to print and cut. 

B. Preparing the writing:

  • Write in Caps Lock "HAPPY BIRTHDAY", choose the LW Splendid font. Add character spacing to 126 and align the writing in the middle. Decrease the line spacing to 80.5%. Resize the writing to 18 cm wide. 

  • Now you can cut the file, if you are using glitter cardstock, make sure you choose the write settings. You might have to increase the thickness as glitter cardstock, so make sure to test cut before you cut the whole file. 

C. Preparing the background:

  • In a new window, position the princess and writing in the way you want them to look on the cake topper. Choose offset on both designs and set offset distance to 0.8 cm and apply. 
  • Release compound path and remove the offsets inside the design. Now you can remove the princess and writing and your background is ready to be cut.

2. ASSEMBLING YOUR DESIGN:

  • Glue spray the backside of the princess and writing and assemble it on to the background. 
  • On the backside of the cake topper, use either tape or glue gun to attach the skewers on both ends of the cake toppers. 
And now you have an adorable cake topper for any princess loving girl or boy's birthday party!


















DESIGNS USED:







PRODUCTS USED:

Light hold cutting mat for Cameo















Sunday 27 March 2016

Glow in the dark framed quote picture




I have never worked with glow in the dark sticker paper before, but I will most certainly be using it again (and again!)

I decided to use a quote from the silhouette design store, and frame it ready to hang in my little boys bedroom.  He has brought light into our lives, and I wanted to do the same for his bedroom!

Step One 

Firstly, import the design into your silhouette program and re size if necessary.  I adjusted the size to 6 inches by 4 inches as I knew my frame size would house this size design.


The design is ready to be sent to the silhouette machine to be cut.  In cut settings, choose the printable glow in the dark sticker paper - silhouette brand and adjust your blade settings accordingly. 


Step Two

Once your design is cut, it is time to transfer it to whatever you would like to display it on,  I chose a cardstock that would live in the frame.  I carefully took off the uncut sticker paper which left me the complete design on the backing paper.  If you have transfer paper then it is a good idea to use this now to transfer your design on to the cardstock (or whichever meduim you are using)  I didn't have any transfer paper to hand so I carefully used the Silhouette pick me up tool to move each individual letter across.  It took some time and a steady hand but once it was done it was very effective. 
I added the cardstock to the frame and tried to photograph it in the best possible way.  However, due to the absence of darkness when I was taking the picture, I had to do my best Harry Potter impression and squeeze myself into the cupboard under the stairs.




It is going to be a lovely addition to my sons room and I really enjoyed creating it.  I have loved sharing with you and am looking forward to sharing again with you really soon!



Designs Used
http://www.silhcdn.com/3/i/shapes/lg/7/0/d87207.jpg
Design ID #87207

Tools Used 


Light hold cutting mat for Cameo

















Saturday 26 March 2016

3D Pink Tipped Daisy Wall Art

I love daisies. I have no idea why, but they are just so cute! I wanted to make a daisy with petals that were pink at the tip, but the Silhouette software just has a linear gradient, not a radial gradient. I worked out that by using one of the free files you get when you buy the machine, you could take one petal, give it a linear gradient, then replicate it around the flower centre. I used the file shown below, called "flower"! Of course, if you don't want to learn the shading technique you could easily make white petalled daisies and hand colour them with markers. I make small ones for cards usually, but today I decided to make a daisy as large as I could from A4 card.

Please note that peeling vinyl off the wall in the future, may remove some paint, depending on the wall finish, so if this is an issue, I suggest sticking this art onto a canvas, then hanging it.

There are oodles of excellent video tutorials on Vimeo and YouTube for beginners, so I have made a video (see below) for those of you that know the basics of where the various tools are around the work area, but want to stretch yourselves a bit more. I don't believe in wasting your precious crafting time, so the video may seem a little fast paced compared to many out there, but just remember you can hit the "pause" button and take notes as I go along. It is my very first video for Silhouette so I hope it makes sense for you!


SUPPLIES:
Card stock
Silhouette matte vinyl in two colours for leaves and vase
Yellow glitter card for the centre
A canvas frame if you do not want to stick this directly to your walls


Double click the flower library item to get it onto your work area within the software. If you want the petals to be shaded at the tips, watch my video now.



I used 4 pieces of A4 card stock and made one daisy per sheet as large as I could within the registration marks, which must be "on" to allow the print and cut to work. They measured 18cm across. Cut four flowers in all. Take two flowers and place them on top of one another, so that the top flower petals lie over the spaces between the petals of the flower below. Stick them together in the middle, and if wanted, cut a circle in yellow glitter card for the flower centre. Glue that in place. Once fixed, hold the centre with one hand and push forward the flower petals. It helps to do this at the edge of a table.
Roll the edges back of each individual petal. The Silhouette Pick-me-up tool is perfect for this. Sorry about the wrinkled hand. I don't know where that came from!

Using file #32594 Make two stems and some leaves on an A4 page. Put the settings to cut Silhouette vinyl, adjust the cutting knife in your machine, pop some vinyl on the cutting mat and feed into the Cameo. Cut the greenery.Weed the unwanted vinyl from the mat and then one by one, peel off the pieces you want and place them on your wall. The pieces are easy to handle without transfer paper. They look lovely just like that, but the other options are to
  • Put a real vase in front of them for a bit of fun. No watering required.
  • Or cut and decorate a vinyl vase for them using a Silhouette file such as #58448. See the photo at the top of this post.


I would love to see what you do with this. Will you go large or small?






ESSENTIAL EQUIPMENT:
  • Silhouette Portrait or Cameo
  • Cutting mat
  • Printer
  • A Silhouette Pick-me-up tool 
These are all available from GraphtecGB.

DESIGN FILES:
  • For the vase: Silhouette file #58448 Flower pot and vase by Lisa Norris
  • Vase decoration: Silhouette file # 121625 Spring Flower by Dresden Carrie 
  • The free Library flower file shown above
  • For the stem and leaves: Silhouette file #32594 Flower pot by Patty Young Designs