Ready for Easter?

As Easter is creeping up on us, here is a fun bunny make.

For this make you will need

vinyl green brown and tan

Heavyweight cardstock blue and green

Drinking straw

Wooden skewer

Two eyelets

Glue

Double sided tape

A4 sheet of acetate

 Bead

Download the free file HERE and open in silhouette studio. When the file opens the first piece to be cut is the fan.

As this is the “sky” I am cutting it in blue cardstock. The card I used was a textured card so I selected this from the preset menu and did a test cut I found it was not cutting quite the way I would like so I increased the thickness by 1 and tested again this gave much better results. Remove the cut piece from the mat and insert an eyelet into the center of the piece, I used a cropodile for this. Move the fan off the mat in studio.

The next pieces to cut are the pieces of green that will form the base. Select the green circles the sawtooth strips and the rectangle and bring onto the cutting mat in the studio software and send to your machine to cut. The cardstock I used was the same brand of cardstock so the cut settings remained the same if you are using different brands/types of card you will need to adjust your settings to match, remember test cut so as not to waste your card.

Once cut remove the pieces from the mat. 

Attach the strips with the saw tooth edge to the circle without the hole as shown in the picture.

Take the straw and wrap the straight edge strip to one end making sure it is flush with the end of the straw and glue in place.

Insert the straw into the hole of the other circle and apply glue to the coil on both ends.

 lower this piece onto the free sawtooth edge and glue into place this piece gives strength and stability to the straw, ensuring that the straw is straight, allow to dry.

Load some tan vinyl onto your cutting mat and bring the bunnies onto the cutting mat in studio.

 Use appropriate settings for your media, for silhouette brand I used blade 1 speed 5 and thickness 10 as I had a new blade. Send the file to your cutter once you are happy with your settings. Repeat this process with the tree trunks using brown vinyl and green vinyl for the tree tops. Having cut all the pieces take the sheet of acetate and arrange the bunnies and trees along the long side of the A4 sheet. 

Try to keep these fairly even to balance the weight. Allowing some space above the trees trim the acetate. Run some red liner tape along the top and down one side.

Stick the two short sides together to make a drum. Using the edge of the tape as a guide attach the fan pieces allowing an overlap of 1-1.5cm. Take time to look at the direction your bunnies are running and ensure that the fan will turn in the direction that the bunnies are facing. 

The edges of the fan can be glued down or a length of red tape can be applied to the piece and a decorative strip can be applied. 

Load some Green card onto the cutting mat and bring the grass pieces into the cutting area. 

After working out the correct cut settings send this to cut. Remove the grass pieces from the mat and glue around the green base created earlier.

Drop the skewer down the straw and place the other eyelet down so it drops to the straw. I have added a strip at the top of my straw for stability.

Slot the drum into the skewer to rest on top of the eyelet. Your drum will now spin freely around. to top off my spinner I added a bead. glue the bead to the top center of the fan and allow to dry. using a pencil make where the top of the bead end on the skewer.

Remove the drum and cut the skewer just below the pencil line. Replace the drum and you now have a neat finish.

This completes all the construction part of the make now you can enjoy adding some decoration, perhaps some flowers and gems. I will share mine to the Silhouette UK facebook page when it's decorated. I'd love to see your finished pieces up there too.

Designs used

PRODUCTS USED: