Silhouette UK: Using Metallic vinyl to add foil decal to cards

Hi everyone. It's Verity here from Pretty Little Button bringing you another project. Today I've created a card using metallic vinyl to add a foil decal. If you love foil but don't have the means to add it to your papercrafts i.e no laser printer, no heat reactive foils, no Curio etc, but wish you could add it, then this is the post for you! There is some great metallic vinyl out there which are easy to cut and have a great shine to them. You probably have several in your stash as we speak. Well, why not add them to your papercraft projects! I went and create a 'Love you' card today, as I had red or green metallic vinyl to choose from. It screamed Christmas at me, but I just can't bring myself round to making anything Christmas related yet, I know many of you already are! So instead I went an made a 'loved' theme card. Yes, Valentine's day is a long way away, but this could be sent at any time of the year to your loved one!

Using Metallic vinyl to add foil decal to cards detail:

To create the stencil, draw a 6.25" square. Next, you need to create an internal offset, this will allow the struts of the stencil to attach to this when we later modify the stencil.

Following this, you need to draw a thin oblong. You can use the width and heigh measurements boxes to easily alter the size so the oblong measures at 6.125" wide and 0.25 inch tall.

Using the replicate window, replicate the oblong 11 times. Position, one oblong towards the top of the square, and one towards the bottom of the square. To make sure your oblongs (struts of the stencil) are equally spaced out, highlight all the oblongs so they are selected. Make sure you unselect the squares if they are accidentally highlighted. Next, open the transform window and select vertical spacing.

To connect the struts to the square to make this a stencil, open the modify window. With all the oblongs and inner square selected (do not select the out square), press the subtract button.

You struts will have connected and subtracted from the inner square forming the struts of the stencil. Now when this is cut, the inner oblongs will form the open spaces of the stencil.

This was cut out of the stencil material from Silhouette, I used the settings for stencil material in the programme, however, make sure you do a test cut. These setting worked for my blade and machine this time but your machine could be different, especially your blade so you may need to tweak the settings!

For the vinyl decal, I used a 'Heart' design from the store. I also used another cut file from the store 'Love you' for the sentiment on the card and cut this out 3 times for more depth and dimension.

To make it easier to work with the vinyl on my card, I first adhered a piece of vinyl large enough for the design, to a piece of white scrap card. I then proceed to cut the hearts out of this vinyl/card piece. If you decide to do this, don't forget to do a test cut! You have two materials to cut through, so will require for force and a deep blade depth. I happened to have chosen a thick piece of card, and require a very deep blade. But you can easily do this with thinner card, and I would recommend that!

Once I had everything cut out, it was time to assemble the card. I applied grey ink through the stencil onto a white card panel. This was done in a patchy manner as I only wanted this to give texture behind the elements, but no to be the focal point of the card. The hearts were adhered down with glue and before adhering the sentiment down, I covered this in several layers of Platinum embossing powder. This tied in well with the grey of the background but did not detract from the shine of the hearts.