Free Design of the Week - Butterfly - 27th February 2018

Hello, hello - Karen here with my weekly take on the DOTW.  This week it is this lovely butterfly.

As soon as I saw it I knew it would make a beautiful card to go with the gift box I made last week. 

I put a sketch pen into my Silhouette to draw rather than cut the lines as I figured this would then give me the exact placement for the intricate shapes I was going to cut later.  I also added a sentiment using a sketch pen font.  I drew the butterfly and sentiment onto a 13.5cm square card.

Next I separated all the colours out into separate areas and cut them from the same papers as I had used for my gift box last week.

Once stuck down, I had a very pretty card to send to my mum.

Pop-up Sentiment - Its a boy!

Hi everyone. It's Verity here from Pretty Little Button bringing you another project. I had originally made this project when I first joined the team. However, I had technical difficulties at the time- my computer stopped working, so I never got round to putting up in the blog. Since then, I have updated it and I ended up adding more to the inside, and used the pen holder again aftering loving it so much from last week. This sweet little baby card opens up to a pop-up sentiment and foam mounted print and cut balloons as though they are bursting out of the card. You can easily change the colours of the card to suit a girl and I think this elephant is adorable!

Pop-up sentiment - It's a boy! card  details:

To start off you will need to create the pop-up sentiment. Draw the shape you wish for you sentiment to sit on, in my case this was a oval. Whilst you have the shape selected, you need click on the Pop-up Panel icon on the right hand bar (it is a little heart on a folded card). This brings up the Pop-up panel box - select the 'convert selected shapes to Pop-up. Remember to keep you shape selected when you do this.

This will convert your shape into a pop-up adding adding score lines and boxes above the shape, to the side and at the bottom. In the Pop-up panel, you have 3 areas you can adjust: base width, Min. Strut width and Dash pitch.

The 'Base width' determines how much of the shape's bottom is scored to create the fold. The larger the width, the more it will score. However, bare in mind it can alter the look of the shape too especially on curved shapes. I used a small base width for this shape.

The 'strut width' relates to the struts that sit at the top of your shape, these create cut and score lines to help 'pop' the panel out from the portrait background. The smaller the width, the more struts there will be, but the more it will maintain the shapes structure at the top.

Lastly, the 'Dash pitch' relates to the score line dash and how small or wide you want this to be. The smaller the dashes, the more susceptible the cardstock would be to breaking. You can see below the settings I used for this oval.

If you take a look above, you will notice two lines extending from the side of the shape, each with a small red circle at the end. These lines are the score lines the pop-up creates. You will want these lines to sit in the fold of your card. If you pull horizontally on these lines, you can extend their length and match this to width of your card panel. Before you send this to cut, make sure you draw an oblong the size of the inside of your card - this needs to expand the top and bottom of the card. 

The 'Congratulations' sketched using the pen holder and this font was such a great font to use with the sketch function. It almost looks filled in. 

For the front of the card and the for balloons inside, I used the print and cut feature of Silhouette. I created several different sizes and colours of balloon. I used an adorable little elephant on the front, but I decided to print and cut the ear separately so this could be foam mounted onto the front for dimension, along with the main body of the balloon. 

I positioned the balloons inside the card to give the illusion as though they are floating out of the card. Some balloons were foam mounted to give added depth and dimension. 

 Lastly, I decided to make a quick matching envelope by sketching the outline of the elephant and balloon on to the front. To see how easy it is to use the pen holder for mail art, check out this post here. 

What do you think to this adorable little card? I hope it has inspired you to use a 'Pop-up' sentiment on your next card.

Until next time,

Verity

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FONTS USED:

Miss Molly Font - Miss Kate Cuttables, Design ID #215911

DESIGNS USED:

Elephant - Rivka Wilkins, Design ID #41842

PRODUCTS USED:

      

Sunday's with Steph - I'm sure we are all guilty of saving paper because it to nice to use - I know I am!!

Hello and welcome to this weeks addition of Sundays with Steph :o)

If you haven't looked in before I run a weekly blog for Silhouette UK, of my trials and tribulations of my first year with my new Silhouette Cameo 3 machine. The ups and downs and my process of getting this machine to work for me!

So this week I was thinking what to make and write about and I thought I'd get inspiration from looking through my papers and photos and would see where this leads me.....so I came across a selection of papers (Cocoa Vanilla Studio - Bohemian dreams 😍😍) that I had been saving for no particular reason (probably because I just loved them!!) and I decided that I would bite the bullet and go from using only white card stock in my machine to some beautiful double sided printed paper that I had been saving for best. As me and the Cameo had been getting on quite well recently, I'd count us as friends and to be frank I knew that my beloved Cameo wouldn't mess up on one of my saved papers I just knew it....................

😪😪😪😪😪😪😪😪😪😪😪😪😪😪😪😪

So I selected my design https://www.silhouettedesignstore.com/view-shape/219438 loaded my precious paper on to my mat and sent it. Ok so the machine was making all the right noises in the beginning then I heard it slip.  Er slight panic! After giving it a quick glance all looked ok - phew! Then and another slip, OK that's fine no real damage......then it happens........just over half way down Cameo decides to do it's own thing........I cancel the job.....it furiously spits out my beautiful paper (this is a slight exaggeration it unloaded the paper in the normal way but it sounds a lot more dramatic that way!!) Aghhhhhhh 😭😭😭😭 my paper, my beautiful saved for best paper ruined.....waa waa waa.....or is it?!

So with a little help and encouragement from my scrapping besties, they believed that I could create something beautiful. I sat at my big girls desk and thought,"I've got this!"  I flipped over the "L" shape that had been cut off, stuck it down, cut some bits, ripped some bits, taped bits in a frenzy until it resembled this.  Ok  it's not looking to bad. I backed the stars, I layered the photo, added embellishments, ephemera, sequins and silver cotton.  I water coloured my cousins name and added a tassel and a flair button and that's it.  I actually love this piece of work and so glad that I stuck with it!!

Ta-da!

Signing off for this week!! Happy scrapping and thanks for reading!

Steph x

Everyday Adventure Layout by Niki using Glitter Sticker Sheets

Hi Silhouette fans! Niki here today with this layout I've created using the Silver Glitter Sticker sheets. My boy has an obsession with cutlery and a blue spoon in particular and we have a daily battle about this, if the blue spoon is not available for some reason (like it's in the dishwasher!) then we have a meltdown situation. I know he won't be obsessed with his blue spoon forever so I thought I would document this story and possibly re-tell it on his 18th birthday or at his wedding.

I'd recently seen a cutlery file in the Silhouette Design Store by Paige Evans and just knew that this was what I needed to document this story. I'd also got some Glitter Sticker sheets so thought I'd cut the cutlery out of the silver glitter - lush!

I loaded my mat with the glitter sheet and found the correct setting for this in the software. It seemed very low to me and I was a little skeptical that it would cut properly so I did a test cut (something I hardly ever bother with!) and it did not cut through. So I lowered the blade and incresed the pressure and set it on a double pass. It still did not cut through!

So I increased the pressure again and increased the blade again and put the pass up to 3 and this time on my third test cut it was fine. I'm so pleased I tried a test cut first until I had the settings right, otherwise I would have wasted a sheet of that glorious glitter! I then went ahead and cut the design.

So the moral of this story is that whenever you use a material you aren't familiar with always do a test cut until you get the settings right. Something I've learned over time is that every machine is different and every blade is different too. When I change my blade I find that my settings have to change quite a bit and it is just a case of playing around and getting it right and doing tiny test cuts without wasting lots of card or materials.

I always use the recommended settings as a starting point and then adjust slightly from there. Thanks so much for joining me today and happy scrapping xxx

 

DESIGNS USED:

Cutlery by Paige Evans

PRODUCTS USED:

Using the Pen Holder to draw Dingbats - Eclipse Card

Hello again.  Janet here with a cardmaking project using the Silhouette Pen Holder and the Cute Bunny Dingbats Font (#247342) from the Silhouette Design Store.  The dingbat font has lots of cute bunnies (unsurprisingly), and some additional decorative elements, totalling 26 images in all.

Once you have installed the font, it is easy to select the individual images using the Glyphs panel (available in the Designer Edition of the software in v4.1 and later). Read about this in more detail in my earlier post, Using the New Glyphs Panel. If you don't have access to the glyphs panel, type out the alphabet on your virtual mat, select it, and display it in the dingbat font. Then you can then simply copy and paste the images that you want to use, or delete the ones that you don't want.

I selected the images associated with the letters "vjhlce" to use on my card (N.B. Some of the bunnies have been flipped horizontally to face the desired direction).

I made the card using the lettering technique known as 'Eclipse', where letters are cut from the background and then raised above the background on several cardstock layers. Originally this technique was used with traditional metal alphabet dies, but by using the fonts on your Silhouette there is much more flexibility in terms of font, sizing, style etc.

Once I'd arranged the bunnies I added a font over the top spelling out the word 'party'.  As I later planned to cut these letters from the bunny piece, I chose a bold block font, LW Super Font (#80746) that would cut well.  The image below shows multiple copies of the card front. It was possible to fit three copies of my card front on one piece of A4 cardstock. This demonstrates one the major advantages of using pens over Print & Cut; less wasted space and cardstock.

Using the Silhouette® Pen Holder allows you to use your favourite pens too.  The holder comes with three sizes of insert, and the picture below shows some of the pens that I tested with this design.

Here are the results (note that the top two drawings are in reverse order compared with the pens above).  

Instructions for loading a pen into the holder are included with the packaging. Ensure that the pen tip does not protrude too far through the end of the holder or unwanted stray lines will result. I'd also advise using the Force as low as it will go and still draw a continuous line. The image below shows the settings that I used to produce these drawings.

I chose to use the pen from the top drawing, a hybrid gel pen and the medium (white) insert. The letters were cut from pink cardstock and the pictures below show how the layers were built up.

1. Adhere the drawn background to the card base.

2. Adhere one layer of coloured cardstock letters into the letter-shaped holes and locate the original small letter inner pieces in their original positions.

3. Layer up the remaining letter layers with the original drawn layer on top.

I made a couple of variations, and you'll notice that my final design also includes some text using the Sisters Sketch Font (#76091).

I loved using drawn versions of these bunny images, and I hope you'll try out a dingbat font with your pens. You'll find that the Silhouette Pen Holder gives so much flexibility and variation.


Bye for now,

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DESIGNS USED:



PRODUCTS USED: