Silhouette UK: Star of the Day: Creating an Open Alpha with a shape too

Hey there, Niki here today with a tutorial how to make the title above. I wanted to create the word 'star' as an open alphabet font that I could backfill but to also replace the A with a star shape, also open-style so it could be filled like the letters.

I started off by typing the word STAR using a font called Playful. It is already an open style alphabet so I didn't need to create offsets - the Silhouette store made it easy for me.

I have several stars in my library but my favourites are within this star background. I ungrouped it and chose a star to use. I deleted the rest of the stars I didn't need.

I positioned my star in place and re-sized.

I then selected the star and created an offset.

Then this next step is very important. I selected both the star and the offset and created a compound path. The reason this is important is, if it were only grouped together it would not weld correctly to the letters either side. Creating the compound path means it will weld correctly with other things.

Once the compound path was made I could then move my other letters into position so they all overlaped and then weld them all together.

Once cut out of white card, I backfilled my letters and my star with different coloured papers. Once my title was finished I then built the rest of my layout around my title.