Dear Santa...I can Explain

Merry Christmas everyone! It's Niki here today and I'm sharing this funny layout. I saw this great file in the Design Store and it was completely perfect for a recent photo I took of my little boy having a major tantrum.

As usual I wanted to do something different with it rather than use it in it's original format so I ungrouped

and rearranged.

I then selected the top part and changed the line style so that the cut line was dashed.

I was then able to send this file to my Silhouette. The top part of the design I sent to cut with my regular autoblade. The bottom part of the design I sent to sketch with a black sketch pen - one of the best things about the Silhouette Cameo 3 is that it can do both these things at the same time. Happy days. I also cut 'Dear Santa' on another sheet of card.

Once cut and sketched, I painted the sketched letters with green water colour paint, and stitched around the Dear Santa with pink thread. I painted around the stitching too to make my letters pop. I then used the cut 'dear santa' to lay over the stitched design and flicked paint all around the title. I then removed this to reveal lovely white letters beneath.

Thank you for joining me today - what are you making during the holidays?

DESIGNS USED:

Dear Santa I can Explain

PRODUCTS USED:

Last Minute Christmas Cards using Free Christmas Design

Hello, hello - Karen here with a quick Christmas Card.  I usually make my own Christmas cards and this year made them using a free DOTW from November.

I thought I had made sufficient cards but realised that I needed a couple more and so decided to make some quick and simple ones.

• I used this Santa from Echo park.  I drew a 4.5 in square and turned this into a faux stitched border.  I used the colour picker to get the same red as the Santa.

• Next I manipulated the 'Ho, HO, HO' phrase (which was a free design yesterday) and added to the bottom of my Santa.  I again used the colour picker to make this the same red as the Santa.

• All was left to do was to print and cut them out.  Mat on a piece of red card and add to the front of a 5 inch pre-made card. 

I kept the file so that if any more cards pop through my letterbox from people I haven't sent to I can quickly 'knock up' a card in return and get it into the post that day.

Introducing Glitter Sheets - Decorating Christmas Crackers

Hi, Janet here with an introduction to the NEW Silhouette® Glitter Sticker Sheets which are now available in the UK.

I've included a little festive project, using the glitter stickers to decorate some home-made Christmas crackers using the Oh Deer! heads by Lettering Delights from the Silhouette Store.

GLITTER STICKER SHEETS

There are 8 sheets in a pack, each sheet being 8.5in. x 11in., or 215 mm x 280 mm. The sheets are glittery with a slightly silvery colouration.  They can be printed with any pattern on a home printer. I used my regular inkjet printer and the colours were bright and clear. The sheets are adhesive-backed, so no additional adhesive is needed.

Recent versions of the Silhouette® Studio software have a recommended setting for the Glitter Sticker sheets under "Sticker Paper, Glitter" (Blade 1, Speed 5, Force 10 and a single pass). I found that this setting gave a  perfect 'kiss-cut' with my AutoBlade and a sticky mat.

However, I didn't find the whole Print & Cut process as straightforward as usual so thought I'd share my difficulties and some tips in case you have a similar experience.

I started off using the sheets to make a sheet of round stickers to use as gift seals and to add to gift tags, but was alarmed to find that on my first attempt the round sticker shape was distorted. Additionally, the circles were not aligned with the printed designs.


TIP 1: PAGE SETTINGS/TEST CUT - Set Page Settings to US Letter and then carry out a test on regular white card or paper. To eliminate any user error, do the first Print & Cut with media of the same size as the sheets (i.e., US Letter size). If you don't have letter sized card you can trim down a piece of 12" x 12".

TIP 2: PRINTER SETTINGS/PRINT & CUT GUIDE LINES - Ensure that your printer is also set to print to US Letter. I find it useful to check with the 'Show Print Border' and 'Show Cut Border' guides turned on in the Page Setup panel.  UPDATE: Set up your Print & Cut in portrait rather than landscape (as I did). This allows the marks to be printed entirely within the material's non-glitter corners. For the same reason, use the other default settings too.

If the grey (print) guide line is off the page on the virtual mat, then check the page setup and orientation and change the Print Page Setup if necessary (File > Print Page Setup).  

If you still have a problem with alignment, check that your printer settings are not set to 'borderless', that 're-size to fit' is off, and that scale is set at 100%.

Tip 3: GOOD LIGHT CONDITIONS - Carry out the Print & Cut process in good light. If the software fails to pick up the registration marks once the printed media is loaded into the Silhouette, it is most likely a problem with light. Low light, bright light and shadows can all cause problems. I had no success with the glitter sticker sheets until I used them in good daylight.

Tip 4: REGISTRATION MARKS - The Sticker Sheet instructions advise the use of default registration marks. To restore the defaults, in the Page Setup Panel select the correct Style of registration mark (usually Type 1) and click on 'Restore Defaults'. (optional) At this stage I increased the Thickness from 0.50 to 0.70 (regardless of the unit of measure).

Tip 5: WHITEN THE REGISTRATION AREA - The sticker sheets have a smooth area at the corners where the registration marks print. However, I found that I didn't have success with the sheets until I covered these with pieces of white sticker paper (this is a hack I use for any shiny or coloured Print & Cut media). Only 3 pieces are required as shown in the photo  below.

GLITTER STICKERS FOR CHRISTMAS CRACKERS

I used these same designs to decorate a set of home-made Christmas crackers (we really wanted some fun rose gold crackers this year). Here is a quick overview on making the decorations.

1. Open all the Oh Deer! files in one tab.

2. Arrange them as you want them to cut (they are already coloured).

3. Recolour the grey colour to match the copper/rose gold crackers. You can enter the RGB numbers shown, but you may need them to be a little different for your printer.

4. Move the facial features aside and make an offset of the heads. Release compound path and remove any tiny pieces. Print & Cut the heads from a glitter sheet.

5. To make the wrapper, use only the offsets, and weld each one with a rectangle which is long enough to go around a cracker with a small overlap.

6. Cut the wrappers from medium weight white card.

7. Cut the features from black and red vinyl (I made duplicates).

8. Adhere the stickers onto the wrappers and partially cut around the lower part of the head to allow it to stand proud from the cracker.

9. Transfer the vinyl features to the lower part of the wrapper.

10. Adhere the wrapper to the top part of the cracker. Add additional decorations and scraps of glitter sheet.

I'd love to see what you make with the sheets. You can share photos of your makes over on the Silhouette UK Facebook page.


Bye for now,

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DESIGNS USED:



PRODUCTS USED:

DOTW - Special Delivery

Hello, hello - Karen here with another quick project made with this week's Design Of The Week, Special Delivery.

I had just bought a couple of gift cards as Christmas presents and thought it would be ideal to put on the front of a gift card holder.

I chose this gift card shape - I only used the outline and not the chevron tree.

 And  used my sketch pens to draw the sentiment.

I then added a 3D tree from this design to finish it off.

By the way Silhouette are giving away a free design for the next 12 days and this little cutie is the one for today.