Silhouette UK: Happy | Niki Rowland

Hey there Silhouette Fans, Niki here with you today sharing a layout I made using one of the files from the Design Store, by Paige Evans, and a quick tutorial on how to backfill all those hearts using your machine instead of scissors.

I started off by opening my chosen design on screen and I cut it from white card.

After cutting the original design, I then selected it and went to the Object Menu and clicked 'release compound path'. This makes all the little bits and pieces in the design individual.

I then picked up on of the internal hearts and moved it off the mat, then deleted the rest of the design.

I was then left with one heart. If I then cut this from patterned paper, it wouldn't be big enough to fill the hearts - I needed it to be a little bit bigger so that I could stick the coloured hearts to the back of the cut file. So I selected the heart and clicked on the Offset icon on the right side of my screen. I then applied an offset of 0.105. I then deleted the middle heart, so I was left with the offset line only.

Now my hearts were the right side, I could cut them out from patterned paper. I had a sheet that was made up of 2" squares so I arranged two hearts per each 2" square on my mat, and then copied and pasted until the whole screen was filled.

Here are all my hearts ready to be sent to cut. I simply loaded my paper onto my mat and set it off cutting - much quicker than scissors! That particular piece of paper I had worked brilliantly as it was divided into 2" squares of patterned paper but if I had wanted to use lots of individual sheets to get multiple patterns, I could have simply stuck 2" squares onto my mat.

Once my hearts were cut I stuck them onto the back of the hearts. I raised them up on foam pads to give the cut file lots of dimension - it was a labour of love!