Leaf motif earrings

Leaf Motif Earrings | Leather Sheets

Hello, it's Verity here from Pretty Little Button. Today's project features leatherette sheets from Silhouette and a lovely leaf motif design by Kristen Magee to create a lovely pair of earrings. I'm showing you how to use the edit points to adapt the design to add in enough space to cut a hole to attach the earring holders. This was so simple to do and you could create a pair of earrings out of a variety of designs from the design store.

Leaf motif earrings process: 

Locate the leaf design in the design store and download. Open up the design into your design space. The designs come as pair so decided on which design out of the pair you want to use. 

Next, right click on the design and select edit points. Alternatively, with the design selected you can also press the edit point icon in the left-hand toolbar (third from the top). This will add a lot of little squares to your cut lines - these are the 'points' to edit. 

When you have one selected, you can move the edit point about - from side to side, up and down etc. In addition, each point has a little handle. Moving this handly around can change the direction of the path line from the previous point to the point you are on.

When you are happy with all the changes you have made to the points, select off of the design and the points will disappear showing your design in its changed format. 

Draw a circle with the circle tool from the left-hand toolbar. If you hold shift down whilst you draw the circle, it will draw a symmetrical circle, and will continue to keep the circle symmetrical whilst you enlarge it as long as you continue to hold shift down. 

Insert the circle into the design, and make sure you group the two items together - with both items selected, right click and select group. 

You need to copy the design to create a pair of earrings - but depending on your design, you are more than likely going to need to mirror the design. With the second design selected, right click and select flip horizontally. 

You should have two mirrored designs to cut from leatherette sheets. Make sure you do a test cut for your machine and blade to ensure you get the best cut possible. 

Leaf motif earrings photos:

To add a little more to the earrings, I decided to add some foiling to the pair. 

I added some Heidi Swapp Minc reactive paint to the earring with a paintbrush (make sure you wash this well after use). 

Once the paint was dry, I covered them with Gunmetal Heidi Swapp foil and ran this through my Minc machine on heat setting 3.

I added a couple of fish hook earring holders through the holes to complete the look. 

If this has inspired you to try this out, please post below. I would love to see it!

Until next time,

Verity

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DESIGNS USED:

LEAF by Kristen Magee, Design ID275205 

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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

 

Ewe will be missed - a flip top retirement card

Hello, Janet here with a cute card that I made for a work colleague who is retiring. The file is one of a range of files by Lettering Delights called 'Feeling Sheepish' from the Silhouette design Store. All the files feature a cute sheep and punny sayings. I can't resist a pun and I thought that the file I've chosen would work well with the sentiment "Ewe'll be Missed".

Now, I was so distracted by this cute sheep and her eye lashes, that I didn't read the file name. It wasn't until I opened up the Feeling Sheepish Treat Tent that I noticed that it wasn't actually a card. As it came, it would be great with a small bag of treats inside, or as a gift card holder, but I really wanted a card. So, I took the sheep elements and added them to the front of a card blank.

Materials Used
Silhouette Cameo, Portrait or Curio
Silhouette Glossy Permanent Vinyl
Silhouette Transfer Tape
Textured Cardstock (white, light pink, medium pink, light grey, black)
Heavyweight Square Card Base
Ribbon & Thread
Liquid Card Adhesive
Dimensional Adhesive Pads
Liquid Glaze

Adjusting the File

All I really needed to do was to adjust the flap part and detach it from the wraparound treat holder.
I used the knife tool to create the grey piece you see below. Then I added a score line and moved the holes so that the flap would make a larger sheep body.

Making  Score Line - TOP TIP ALERT!

This is how the piece looked. Rather than adding a perforated line, I drew a regular cut line, changed it's colour (to blue in this case), and by choosing 'Cut by Line Colour' made a custom setting for this line.  I reduced the Force and Blade depth to the minimum possible values and saved the custom setting as "Score Line'. This makes a very shallow cut and makes a really neat fold line. If you'd like know more about saving custom settings, you might like to read this earlier post, "How to Add a Custom Material Type".

Layering the Pieces

This photo shows how I layered the pieces. I thought it would be fun to add some space between the front and back legs. In order to do that I mounted the front legs onto the reverse of the sheep's body, and adhered the back legs directly onto the card blank. Ultimately the body would be adhered to the card base only by the flap (onto the rear of the card front).

Adding a Bow

Bows aren't really my strong point, but I made this one with three pieces of ribbon and threaded a length of embroidery floss through the back. The threads were then pushed through the holes in the layered head pieces and tied at the back of the sheep's body prior to adhering it to the card base.

Assembling the Card

The fold on the sheep's body was tucked inside the card blank and adhered to the inside, then adhesive foam pads were added behind the lower edge of the body. Leaving the backing on one side of the pads allows the flap to be opened, while still lifting the body away from the base.

Adding a Sentiment

I cut the sentiment in two colours of vinyl. Here it is shown applied behind the flap.

Finishing the Card

All that remained was to add glaze to the sheep's hooves.

This is such a fun card, and I think it turned out well, despite my initial mistake.


Bye for now,

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Organise your craft room: Duct tape wire labels!

Hi everyone. It's Verity here from Pretty Little Button bringing you another project. Have you ever tried the printable duct tape from Silhouette? Well, I hadn't before today, but I was quite surprised with it! It printed really well and I found it very easy to peel off. This will certainly be a useful media to use in the future. My idea for today's project was to organise my craft room more. With these digital machines comes lots of wires which at times can be hard to keep track off. Especially with all your other wires. So I thought why not use the duct tape to create some bright fun labels to keep myself more organised!

Converting a Print & Cut file for Minting details:

Start off by selecting a shape for your label. I saw these lovely Chevron labels in the design store and thought they would make a perfect background. However to make sure my actual label stood out from the background I added a slightly transparent white rectangle behind my label. To do this you need to have your 'Fill' window panel open. To find this, select the paint palette on the right-hand toolbar.

Underneath the colour blocks you will find the transparency slider, if you move this up and down it will change how transparent your block would be. This transparency will allow the underlying shape or patterned to show through depending on what you set it too. I didn't want my block to be a bold white shape so set my transparency to 16% to show the background a little. Once I was happy with my labels, I added an offset around the labels. 

One thing you will always find with your Silhouette is that you never stop learning! I recently picked up a Tip from Janette, another design team member on how to alter your print &cut window to prevent too much wastage. In the advanced options, which I have often tinkered with, you can alter the bottom insert. I didn't realise that you can adjust this inset, even more than the slider allows you too, by directly typing in a figure to the right of the slider. This allowed me to create a small print and cut window, just large enough to contain my labels. To see Janet's post on altering Print & cut window, head over HERE. 

When you have printed and loaded up your duct tape onto the mat, select the Printable Duct tape from the material list. Make sure you only cut-to-edge so only the offset will cut. As always make sure you do a test cut. The settings were initially set to 20 for the force. When I tested this cut all the way through. I ended up adjusting the force down to 5 for the perfect kiss-cut!

If this has inspired you to try this out, please post below. I would love to see it!

Until next time,

Verity




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DESIGNS USED:

Set of 4 chevron labels by Sarah Hurley - Design ID #47506

FONTS USED:

PN peach preserves solid by ScrapNfonts -Design ID #128942

PRODUCTS USED:

Genius Card - Print & Cut on Coloured Cardstock

Hello, Janet here with a clean and simple birthday card idea. I made this card for my son who is a chemistry student.  I used the Periodic Table Genius design to make a row of dimensional toppers, arranged them on a landscape card base with the remainder of the sentiment printed onto the background using the Silhouette's Print & Cut technique.

The card background is made from a piece of 12-inch square, duck egg blue, textured cardstock. This presented a number of possible problems; would my printer successfully print on that size of card, and would the sensor in the Silhouette detect the registration marks on the texture and strong colour of the card?


Preparing the Print & Cut

The Print & Cut for the card front was set up as shown in the screen shot below.  The font used is the Beautify Bold Font (#194131) by Lettering Delights.

I used a large format printer that would take the 12-inch wide cardstock, and set the Page and Print Setups to print on 12-inch square media. The printer didn't have the option for that size in the Page Setup Options, so it was necessary to save it as a custom setting.

To check that the printer page size options have been set up correctly, turn on the Show Print Border line on the Page Size tab. It will show up as a red line.  If the red line corresponds exactly with the edges of the  page, it is likely that you have borderless (or print to edge) printing turned on. This should turn this off for a successful Print & Cut.

Note: With a regular-sized printer, the cardstock can be trimmed to A4/Letter size prior to printing, the design rotated, and the settings chosen to reflect that size.

To help the sensor pick up the registration marks on coloured and textured card, the line Thickness can be increased on the Registration Marks tab in the Page Setup panel. I like to use a thickness of 0.6 (strangely, it is 0.6 whether using inches or metric in your preferences).  Now, because I had good lighting conditions on this occasion, my registration marks were picked up by the sensor. However, if lighting conditions were poorer, or the colour of the media darker, you can add squares white of sticker paper where the registration marks are to be printed.  To locate their exact position, send just the registration marks to the printer first (make the other items temporarily clear), add your stickers over the printed marks, then reveal the items, and send the piece through the printer again.

Saving Paper and Cardstock

To reduce waste when carrying out a Print & Cut covering a significantly smaller area than the paper size, click on the Advanced Options on the Registration Marks tab. To bring the bottom registration mark up, and to reduce the scanned area, move the slider on the Bottom Insert up until it reaches the bottom of the cut area. It is possible to reduce the area further than the slider allows by typing in a bigger value (see the screenshot above).

Ensure that the cut lines fit within the cut area by turning on the Show Cut Border line on the Page Size tab. It will show up as a grey line. Fine tune the slider as necessary.  It is also possible to reduce the width of the scanned area by adjusting the Right Inset in the same way as the Bottom Inset.


This is how the finished Print & Cut looked.

Making the Remaining Card Pieces

The remaining card parts were cut as shown below, with the mats cut in black, and the periodic table letters from the same cardstock as the card front.

Assembly was simply a matter of aligning each letter with a black background piece ...

and then mounting them onto the background with dimensional sticky pads.

The finished card fits a DL, or business-size envelope (I made a custom one from this funky zebra print paper).

These tips should help you with other non-regular Print & Cut projects too.




Bye for now,

   Profile | Crafting Quine Blog | Instagram @CraftingQuine

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