Wood effect jigsaw birthday card

Hello everyone! Today I am making this lovely jigsaw card using the Silhouette Wood Effect vinyl and some card stock that I already had. Its a great card for any of the men in your life as we know they are all really hard to craft for :)

Materials 

• Wood effect vinyl. I used all three colours listed on the website. 
• Dark brown card stock two A4 sheets
• Teal card stock one A4 sheet
• Design store file 89926
• Design store file 22504

Step one

The first thing that I did was open both files in Silhouette Studio and resize them. I wanted them to fit onto a A5 size card so I resized the back ground jigsaw file to 19x16cms so that it would fit onto an A5 card. I then cut the jigsaw design in the dark and medium coloured vinyl. I wanted used two colours of vinyl so that I can alternate the colours in the jigsaw pattern. I used the cut settings for the 'Wood effect vinyl' in the 'send' menu.

Step two

For the 'happy birthday' part of the card I used three pieces from file 89926. To do this I selected the file and then 'ungrouped' all of the elements. I chose the happy birthday circle and the two scalloped circle to back the happy birthday sentiment. I enlarged these to 9.8cm for the sentiment and 10.5cm and 11cms for the two scalloped circles. The sentiment I cut from the lightest vinyl using the same settings and I cut the circles from the dark brown and teal coloured card stock. I also cut an 20cmx13.8cm card out of the teal to assemble the design on.

Step three

After I had cut all of the pieces out I weeded the vinyl and was then ready to assemble the card. I pealed of the vinyl jigsaw pieces and stuck them onto the teal card alternating the colours of the jigsaw pieces for added interest. I then stuck the sentiment on the teal circle and then mounted the teal circle onto the dark brown one. The sentiment piece was then stuck onto the main card. I finished off the card by mounting it all onto an A5 card made from dark brown card stock.

Thank you for reading the blog. I'd love to read any comments you have below! 

Helen x

 

Design Of The Week - Adventure Awaits - 31st July 18

Hello, hello - Karen here with this week's free design - which is a phrase cut file Adventure Awaits.

I thought this would look lovely as a large title cut from a piece of white card and overlaid onto a piece of patterned paper.  I resized the design to 10 ins wide and added a 11 inch square as I wanted a .5 in border of patterned paper to show around the edge of my page. I also removed 'awaits' as I wanted to add this to my photo later. 

Once cut I added it to a piece of paper from the All Occasions Pad (available from Graphtec UK).  I then printed some embellishments onto Printable Glitter Sticker Sheets and the word 'awaits'.  

Before cutting out my sticker sheets I peeled off the backing sheet and stuck the whole sheet to a piece of white card.  This was to give the stickers a little more rigidity as I wanted to use foam pads to stick them to my page.  I then adjusted my blade to 7 and the pass to 2 and they cut beautifully.

I used this globe (click on picture to follow link to Silhouette Store)

and these stickers 

The colours were quite subtle when printed onto the glitter sticker paper but I liked that effect.  If you wanted them to be more intense you could print them on a photo setting.

Giant 3D Paper Pinwheel

Hi, Janet here with a fun project using some bright and lovely papers from the All Occasions paper pad from GraphtecGB. The papers are double-sided, so perfect for making windmills (or pinwheels, as our friends across the Atlantic call them). They are 180 gsm too, so a great weight for sturdier paper crafting projects. The file, the 3D Double Pinwheel, is designed by Lori Whitlock (#81178), and is available from the Silhouette Design Store.

Cutting the File

I cut the file pieces at the original size. This made a windmill measuring 28 cm (about 11-inches) across. This is a tad surprising, as the pieces only measure about 21 cm square (just over 8-inches), but by folding the edges to the centre it creates 'sails' that use the paper on the diagonal. The paper pad is 12" x 12", so it is possible to make the pinwheel even bigger. However, I used the extra paper to cut duplicate centre pieces.

The cut pieces are shown here along with some of the materials needed: paper straws, and a brad, or paper fastener. Use a brad with long prongs. I found that the brads in this picture weren't long enough and I had to change them out for something longer.

Assembling the Pinwheel

Place one of the main pieces directly on top of the other, ensuring that the patterns that you want to be dominant are facing upward. Bring each of the corners with a hole into the centre, to line up with the centre hole, with the centre pieces aligned on top. Temporarily place a brad through all the holes, open out the prongs, and fold them open lightly. Now rotate the top main piece until it stops against the bottom one. When viewed from behind there shouldn't be any gaps between the 'sails'. Leave the pinwheel to one side and prepare the stick.


Making the Stick

One straw alone isn't long enough for this pinwheel, so it is necessary to join two straws together.
Flatten the end of one of the straws and then pinch the sides together (like the top straw shown below). This then easily slides inside another straw, resulting in a stick of better proportions for the size of the pinwheel.

Mounting the Pinwheel on the Stick

Flatten one end of the straw/stick and make a hole. I used a small hole-punch and an eyelet, but this  is optional (see the lower straw in the picture above).

Now, while holding the pinwheel pieces in place with one hand, ease open the prongs of the brad, squeeze them together, and push them through the hole in the stick. Then open up the prongs once more and secure them at the back of the stick. Don't fold back the prongs too tightly or the pinwheel won't be able to rotate.

N.B. If you want the pinwheel to turn freely in the breeze, you'll need an even longer brad and a spacer of some kind (my pinwheel will turn by hand, but won't spin).  A smooth bead should work if you can find a brad long enough to pass through the pinwheel, the stick, AND the bead.


Additional Decorations

You might have noticed that my pinwheel has a flower in the centre. I fussy cut one of the flowers from the paper scraps and used that in place of the centre pieces provided. I used those to make some additional hanging decorations.

I paired them up, then pushed a eyelet through the centre hole. Before flattening the eyelet, I threaded a piece of embroidery thread around the centre, between the pieces. The thread was then trapped once the eyelet was attached. I then hung three of these from pinwheel centre, wrapped around the pinwheel centre where it is joined to the stick.

The finished pinwheel would make an impressive centre-piece on a party table, or a number would be great as decorations around a party room, or in the garden for an outdoor party.

I'm sure they could be used in many other ways too. I'd love to hear your ideas, so do share them on any of Silhouette UK's social media locations.

Bye for now,

  Crafting Quine Blog | Instagram @CraftingQuine

DESIGNS USED:


PRODUCTS USED:

Design of the Week - Mermaid Off Duty - 24th July 2018

Hello, hello - Karen here with this week's free file.  It's a really pretty phrase file 'Mermaid Off Duty'.

I thought that this design would be really cute cut from metallic vinyl on a little girl's bedroom wall, but as I don't have a little girl, only a big one I used it as a scrapbook title. 

I used the Graphtec UK  'All Occasions' paper pad for my background, layering up three of the pieces of paper but before doing that I gutted a piece from the two lower ones to use as a photo mat. 

I wanted my title to be eye catching so used Teal metallic vinyl for the words and Green metallic vinyl for the tail. 

I then used these designs to cut out some mermaids from the Teal metallic vinyl.

I added some die cut sea themed pieces to the edge of my page and photo and top left and then tucked the vinyl mermaids into these so that they gave the illusion that they were swimming through the flowers and shells etc. 

So what will you do with this cute mermaid themed title?