Faux leather paper dimensional die cuts

Hello, it's Verity here from Pretty Little Button. I hope you've had a busy weekend with your machine and finding plenty of inspiration over here on the blog to help you on your way. I have a trio of cards today where I used the Faux Leather paper from Silhouette to create dimensional and striking die cuts.  The paper comes in three beautiful colours - brown, white and black. Now I am using it in a more non-traditional way I was wanted to create dimensional intricate die cuts for some cards. I didn't wet the paper to create that leather look. Instead, I was focused on make thing the most out of the strength of the paper.

As the paper is strong I thought it would be perfect of cutting thick and intricate die cuts without worry it could rip when peeling off the paper, or having to cut it with many passes or fraying like it can do with thick cardstock. Whatsmore, this paper is thick, it has some weight to it and I used blade 6 to cut it. That means if I want dimensional die cuts I've got it with this. No die cutting the dame shape 3-4 times, the layering over one another and adhering with liquid glue. Which to be honest is very fiddly! So remember to have a look through your different media and think what non-traditional ways I can use this? How can I get more out of my supplies?

Faux leather paper dimensional die cuts process: 

To start, I want to show a little tip for those that may not be aware of it. When you look up a design in the store, you are greeted with the window below. As I wanted the designs to pair well, I needed to see if I could find any other designs that are similar to this. The best and easiest way to do that is to check out the designer of that design and it is so simple to do!

In the window pop-up, click the link below the title of the design - This is the designer and will be coloured with the Silhouette blue showing it is a link. You will then be redirected to the designers 'page' in silhouette where you can view all the other designs/cut files by that designer. It is a great 'filter' where trying to find similar designs.

Once I had located all my designs and download them, I added them all to my design space. Now I just kept adding each one, and they were just landing on top of one another - although it looks a hot mess, it makes the next step so much quicker than if I had done this each time I had added one to my design space. 

I drew my cursor around all the designs to highlight them all in one go. Then to make it easier to 'plan' my cards out in the design space, I turned the fill and line colour to black. As I waited until I had added all of the design into my design space and selected them all together, this sped to the process up ten times!

But, once you have changed the colours all together, don't let go of that group just yet, you can also quickly resize them in one go to. Make sure you hold 'ctrl' down whilst your resize them using the cursor and grabbing one of the four corners. Doing this with 'ctrl' held down resizes the shapes evenly without distorting the shape.

 To help plan my cards, I drew two rectangles to represent my card bases and used the width and height boxes to adjusts the rectangles to my desired sizes. 

 Lastly, I could position the designs roughly how I would want them on the cards to see if I needed to resize any of the designs so they were in proportion to the card base.

When I was happy with the designs, I adhere a small cut of the paper onto my mat, making sure this corresponded to where I had placed the design on the studio mat to cut out. My cut settings for the faux leather paper were blade 6, speed 5, depth 33 and 2 passes. But remember, do a test cut first, every machine and blade will differ when it comes to the cut settings!

TITLE photos:

To put the cards together, I created 3 watercolour backgrounds using some hot press smooth watercolour cardstock. I used the36 pan set by Altenew and add a wash of water to each watercolour card panel. 

With the wash in place, I started to add in small hints of colour allow the colour to blend out and soften. For this card, I used Persian blue, Industrial Diamond and desert night. The panel was dried before I added paint splatters of Jet black  to added interest.

To adhere to the die cuts I used Gina K Connect glue and added a heat embossed white and black sentiment from Altenew Sketchy Floral stamp set. 

For this next card, I added strips of green colour across the card from Evergreen to Forest Glades, Frayed Leaf, Bamboo and lastly Citrus Burst. Instead of using black splatters, I used to paint splatters of Evergreen. 

I finished the card with a simple stamped 'hello' from Altenew Ink Flora stamp set. 

For this last card, I used soft yellows and oranges: Fresh Lemon, Warm Sunshine, Orange Cream and Autumn Blaze.  For the paint splatters, I used Autumn Blaze. the soft colours of the background pair well the with white faux leather paper. 

Again, this was finished with an embossed white and black sentiment from the Sketchy Floral stamp set from Altenew.

If this has inspired you to try this out, please post below. I would love to see it! And let me know what you think of the Faux leather paper, have you used it? What did you create with it?

Until next time,

Verity




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DESIGNS USED:

Leaves by Wild Pilot, Deisgn ID#282488
Magnolia flowers by Tanya Batrak, Deisgn ID#197470
Floral flourish by Skyla Design, Deisgn ID#275947
Floral flourish by Skyla Design, Design ID#275531
Branch leaves by Skyla Design, Design ID#275948
Branch leaves by Skyla Design, Design ID# 275949
Flower bud flourish by Skyla Design, Design ID# 275950
leaves by Skyla Design, Design ID#275951
Leaves by Wild Pilot, Design ID#282487

PRODUCTS USED: