Silhouette UK: Design of the Week

Wednesday 16 March 2016

Design of the Week - Butterfly Purse Box

The design of the week for this week is one that I loved working with! It is the Butterfly Purse Box and is so easy to make.

What you will need:

Silhouette Cameo or Portrait
Card stock (I used two different colour cards as I liked the idea of a contrast between the layers)

Optional:

Silhouette Tool Kit for weeding the design
Rhinestones for embellishment
Rhinestone Setting tool for application of the rhinestones

Step One

Open a new page in the design studio and bring the design in from your library

When you open the file, it will appear on the page as a grouped image (all of the components will be grouped together) I like to try and be as economical with my materials as possible so I tend to move the shapes as close together as they will go. This means using the group and ungroup feature that is available when you right click on your mouse. Once right clicked, choose 'ungroup'. Now on some files this will ungroup the items you need it to and all is right with the world. Other times (like this time for me) it can ungroup every single element of a design. This can be problematic when it comes to moving it. Elements can get left behind etc and you lose the make up of the design. If this does happen you can always hold the Ctrl key and the Z and it will undo the last action that you carried out. So if the whole design is ungrouped, select all elements by dragging your mouse over them whilst holding the left mouse button down, right click and 'group'

You can then move the individual shapes closer together.

Step Two

You can use one single patterned paper/card for the whole design or you can use more than one and have a contrast. I chose to have two and therefor had to work out which layers to cut in the plain cardstock and which to cut in the patterned.

I then moved the ones i wanted to cut second out of the frame. This enabled me to concentrate on my first cuts.

To make sure the cut settings are correct, click on cut settings. The parts that are going to be cut will be shown with a thick red line. As this is a complete design and all of the components are within the file, most of the work is done for you.

If you are using a piece of cardstock that is patterned on one side only, make sure that the patterned side is facing down. Then press the silhouette button (to send your pattern to the silhouette) and choose which material you are using. I chose card stock and adjusted my cutting blade to the recommended setting for that medium.

Step Three

Cutting and assembling! Now comes the fun part. for this particular design I chose to do a double cut and it worked a treat. Once the design has finished cutting, repeat the steps for the other elements in the design.

You will then have 5 elements in total to assemble and embellish! I used a regular glue stick to layer the pieces and assembled the box by following the fold lines on the design that have already been perforated for you.

Step Four

Adding embellishments can be a really effective way of bringing the design to life and making it really stand out. I chose to add rhinestones down the body of the butterfly and to the dots on the cardstock. I used the Silhouette rhinestone setter and rhinestones. The rhinestone setter is such a simple yet incredibly effective tool to use, and I had the rhinestones set within minutes.

This design is such a great one to work with. I hope you all have as much fun as I did with this project and I look forward to sharing with you again very soon!