Sailboat monogram nursery storage basket using inkjet printable canvas

Hello. It is Hilary here today me hearties. As my new grandson's nursery is going to be decorated with sea/naval themed colours, this monogram free design came along at just the right time! I bought three canvas storage baskets very cheaply in B&M stores (UK) and decided to print my design onto the adhesive canvas that I used in an earlier blog post to make a nursery name banner.

The free file is simply a monogram frame. By this I mean it does not come with any letters. There are monogram fonts available in the Silhouette Design store, but I simply used three letters of a font I liked. The accepted convention, is that the first and second names are smaller letters and the central letter stands for the surname. If you are making for someone with more than one middle name, good luck!

In this tutorial/project I will show you how to convert a simple cut file, which has to be cut from coloured paper, into a Print and Cut file that you can colour yourself, and then print on canvas or anything else.

SUPPLIES:
Silhouette Cameo
Inkjet printer
Silhouette Inkjet printable canvas
A fabric item on which you want the monogram - bag, box, cushion cover.

STEP 1
Assemble the elements:

I used a circular rope stencil file to surround the boat, and could have simply given it a colour fill, but I had a gold glitter pattern and used that as it echoed the texture of the canvas. After a trial run of printing the design on paper, I realised that the larger elements should be pale colours, and smaller elements needed to be darker colours. I separated all the shapes by ungrouping them, and changed their colours. I made an inner circle and typed the text for "Harris ahoy!". I then dragged the typing to the inner circle so it became a path for the lettering. You will find other tutorials that describe putting text on a path if you search for them on this blog (Karen Moss on 8th May 2016)

As a bit of fun, I found a seagull I liked in the Silhouette Design store by Nik Squirrel. Her file is a simple Cut file, and as sold, the shapes cannot be filled with any colour, however I will show you how to convert this using the Trace function so you can fill the shapes with colour or pattern. The steps are as follows:

STEP 2
Making a Simple Cut File into a Print and Cut file.

When you open the seagull file in Silhouette and ungroup it, you find a white background and grouped bird shapes. Delete the background and further ungroup the bird shapes. You will now have three pieces (see 1 below left). Select the top shape with body/wing/eye. You will find this cannot be ungrouped. What you have to is Release compound path. Now delete that body piece. Follow the steps as shown below. In 2, select all four pieces (body with legs, body, wing, eye) with the Trace area.

Construct the final image by arranging the rope, boat, monogram circle, waves, initials, text message and seagull. Make a surrounding outer circle and ensure that this is the only line that will cut! Print out the design onto an A4 sheet of printable canvas, then put it on a carrier sheet and into your Silhouette, and cut on the Printable Cotton Canvas settings that you will find on your drop down Cut settings. Make sure you have physically adjusted your blade depth.

Once the pieces are cut, you peel off the backing and can stick the circles directly onto the canvas, however they are re-positionable, so if you want to stick them permanently, use fabric glue or hand stitch them. Using a sewing machine on these canvas boxes would have been very awkward. Another possibility would be to stick a larger circle of clear vinyl on top that overlaps the edges of the boat monogram.

I hope you will give this project a go, and let us see what you make with it!

PRODUCTS USED: