Making Your Own Die Cut Paper Shape

I like the look of the many die cut 12 x 12 patterned papers that are available at the moment but don't like the price - usually £1.75 per sheet so decided that I would try to make my own.

Honestly, this only took me a couple of minutes and I now have a design that I can use on any patterned paper of my choosing as often as I wish.

Making your design.

• Draw an 11 inch circle and centre to your page.

• Draw a 5 inch circle and duplicate below. Centre all three circles.

• Group the two smaller circles and under the Replicate menu use the replicate copies function - I used the second one from the left to get the number of circles I wanted. 

• Repeat with 1.5 inch circles

• Select all shapes and weld.

Before I cut out my shape I added an internal offset and changed the line to a dashed one to give my paper a faux stitched effect. I also experimented with different variations and now have a selection of die cut paper for use in later projects.