Saturday 30 April 2016

Vellum Meadow Flowers window decoration



I have the city bypass being built right outside my front door. You can just see the yellow digger behind the top right pane of glass. After living 22 years in the countryside this is a trifle upsetting, so I thought I needed something to improve my view. I absolutely love this design by Nik Squirrel, which is called Meadow flowers papercut and I knew it would help to disguise what lies beyond.

I began by using frosted vinyl, but with such a delicate design I had problems getting it off the backing paper and onto the transfer sheet.  After much coffee, I persevered, but then as I approached the window the design jumped onto the glass, probably due to static electricity. This left me with a horrible silver spaghetti junction style mess.
 

The final straw was trying to remove the design which took about an hour, using a razor blade. There was no way I was going to try that again, but I utterly loved the look of the design on the window, so I switched to using vellum. As you can see from the first photo, it worked a treat. Best of all, it is not permanent, and can be updated at another time if wanted.

SUPPLIES:
Vellum
Silhouette hook
Tweezers, scalpel and scissors
Re-positionable spray glue such as Crafters' Companion Stick and Spray

STEPS:
1. The sheets of vellum are a little smaller than A4 so you need to resize your working area. From the top menu open  the Design Page Settings. Select Custom, and type in 21.5 x 28 cm. Open the flower design and resize it to fit your needs. I wanted as large as possible to fit the pane so I resized it to 20.5 x 27 cm.

2. Click on the Cut settings on the top menu. Go down to Material type, and select Vellum Silhouette brand. Go to your Cameo and check your blade depth is set to 1. Do not remove from the machine after the first cut, but check if it has cut properly. My vellum had not cut cleanly so I increased the Thickness of the blade setting and did a second cut. This was much better.

I weeded the pieces that were to be removed, using a scalpel if there were any troublesome areas. Once that was done, I carefully removed the vellum from the sticky carrier sheet. I laid it on the grass outside and gave it a very light spray of re-positionable glue. It can give you trails like cobwebs, but simply clear off what you can, and position on the glass. The fantastic thing is that if you don't get it exactly where you want it, you get a second and third chance, unlike with the vinyl! The other great thing is that it gives me pleasure from both inside and outside the room.

I have a lot of windows and panes of glass in my workshop, so I suspect more will get decorations during the year. Of course this will be great at Christmas for snowflakes, deer, snowmen, quotes, polar bears and anything else that takes your fancy. In the meantime I am going to sit with my feet up, coffee in hand and admire my new, easy care garden!











PRODUCTS USED:
Light hold cutting mat for Cameo

These are all available from GraphtecGB.


DESIGN FILES:
Meadow Flowers Papercut #120401 by Nik Squirrel





4 comments:

  1. What a lovely project - perfect for disguising the digger or in my case the piles of rubble.

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  2. I love this project, such a silver lining that you decoveree this idea. I can absolutely see me doing some in my craft room :)

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    Replies
    1. I am a great believer in learning from your mistakes! I hope to see what you do Nadine :)

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