Silhouette UK: Mother's Day Scratch Off Card

Thursday, 3 March 2016

Mother's Day Scratch Off Card

I've been having lots of fun with Silhouette's scratch-off sticker sheets and wanted to share a cute Mother's Day card that uses them.

Using the Silhouette, the stickers can be cut into any shape you like and then placed over the message you'd like to hide. When scratched, the opaque coating is removed and your message is revealed, in much the same way as a a lottery scratch card.

My card uses a retro flower design, which I find very reminiscent of Orla Kiely. I chose the message 'If mothers were flowers, I'd pick you', hiding the second part behind the scratch off panels on the flowers.

What you’ll need:

Silhouette CAMEO
Silhouette Scratch-Off Sticker Sheets
Silhouette pen holder or sketch pens
Paper
Card

STEP ONE: Create the sticker shapes

The centre shapes within the three middle flowers will have the words "I'd", "pick" and "you" written on them. We will then cover this message with the scratch-off stickers.

First, we need to separate these centre shapes from the remainder of the card overlay. To do this, we use Release the Compound Path via the Modify window.

Select and group the scratch-off shapes. Fill the shapes and colour the lines grey to help visualise.
The outside shapes have lots of gaps, so won't fully cover the words. Use the Offset tool to thicken the shape. You could also replace with simple circles if you prefer.

Now that we have the scratch-off shapes complete, move them to the side. Set the file and line colour to green for the paper overlay. The design will be hard to see because we released the path, so lets Make Compound Path again via right-click or the Modify window. The design should look like this:

STEP TWO: Write the Sentiment

The message is written a Sketch pens, so I opted for the Golden Rule Sketch font. This is a very clean and simple font, so matches the mid-century style. I set the line colour to black.

I also wanted to write 'scratch me!' underneath the centre panel, as the stickers look so good my mum might not realise that it she needs to scratch it. The text needs to be curved, which is actually pretty easy in Silhouette Studio.

Double-click the text to enter text-edit mode and you'll see a green boundary box and little circle with a cross in it at the start of your word. This circle can be dragged to any shape and the text will 'snap' to it and curve around that shape.

Once you are happy, right click and Convert to Path. This will lock the text into the curved and can be moved away from the shape.

Now create a backing card to the same dimensions as the paper overlay. As the first half of the sentiment "If mothers were flowers" will be written on the Card, move this over too, as shown below.

STEP FOUR: Cut Settings

The line and fill colours have been used to help visualise the card, but they also help for cut settings. I used the default blade settings for each material and the cuts were great, but always do a test cut when using new media.

The file is now ready to go, sketch the sentiments, cut the paper design, backing card and scratch-off stickers and assemble. Top tip - use tweezers to apply the stickers in exactly the right spot.