Silhouette UK: Using the Pen Holder to draw Dingbats

Friday, 23 February 2018

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,