Silhouette UK: Father's Day card using offset

Hello Silhouette fans! Maria here with you today with a tutorial on how to make a super cute and easy father's day card (Father's Day is on Sunday so you still have plenty of time!)

What you will need:

- Silhouette Cameo or Portrait
- Cardstock (different colours)
- Glue

Instructions:

Open up your Silhouette Studio. The first thing you need to figure out is the size of the card. I have a C6 envelope around, so I think it's perfect size for this card. So, I create a rectangle on my mat that is the same size of the envelope.

You can create any size rectangle and then go to the transform tab and manually enter the specific dimensions. This is not really that important, but I like to be accurate so I know that my final design will not be bigger than the envelope!

The next step is choosing your font and writing your message. I have gone for a font called LW Title Font and is available on the Silhouette Design Store.

As you can see in the image above, I have changed the line colour of my "envelope" to blue, so I can see it, but I don't get confused with the normal red lines. I will eventually delete the rectangle when I am sure that my design will fit inside.

I am writing the text in two separate text fields, as I want to be able to modify them separately.

I have manually made the words larger by just dragging the corners of each word until I reached the desired size. I am going to be offsetting both words, so I am leaving enough space around them inside the rectangle. For offsetting, the fastest way is to select both words together and right-click > offset.

In the offset options, I have increased the size to my offset to almost 1cm, but feel free to make it as big or small as you want (although not too small, otherwise it won't look much like a card!)

As you can see in the image above, there are a few little bits from the offset that look a bit out of place. So go ahead and select the eraser tool to delete them.

In the new Version 4 of the software, the options for the eraser tool come up at the top of your screen as you can see in the image below.

Once your offset has been cleared of any remaining loose lines, we are now going to move the words to the side for a while.

Right click on your offset and copy and paste it.

Select the newly pasted shape, and right click > flip vertically.

Move the flipped shape to the top of your original offset, until the borders overlap each other a little bit, as you can see in the image below:

You may want to make sure that both shapes are aligned, so go to the Transform tab and select "Align horizontal" as per the image below. You have to make sure that both shapes are selected, otherwise it will move only the one that you have selected, and it will move it all the way to the left.

Now we are going to delete the lines that overlap each other in the centre bit. You can go ahead and delete everything if you want, but I have left some bits as you will be able to see further down, which give a bit more shape to the card.

Now we are going to add some dashed lines which will be our scoring lines to fold the card in two. Select the line tool and then go to Line Style on the right had side tabs and choose a dashed line in the style options.

Add the dashed lines to each gap, making sure that they are all aligned (so they fold properly later!)

And your card is done! I have now brought the text back into the mat and coloured each letter to give me an idea of what the card will be like. Go ahead and cut each shape sorted by whatever colours you are using and put your card together!