Duel aspect bunting

Those of you who have attended the NEC to pick up your Silhouette supplies may have wandered into the artists' avenue and seen the beautiful bunting.

The lovely ladies of Crafts of hearts, the driving force behind the artists' avenue, will this year be hanging their bunting with a twist, With the help of silhouette and Picscan, we are personalising the bunting.

Carefully the stitches are removed from one of the flags to act as a donor to create our template.

As our bunting is cream we will not get a great contrast for tracing, so a piece of black card was used as a background.

The black card and the flag are placed on the Picscan mat and photographed. For help with Picscan please see the blog by Nicky pixscan-from-start-to-finish
Open silhouette studio and open the Picscan panel, click on import Picscan image from file.




When your Picscan image has loaded open the trace panel.

select your trace area using the outline trace, and adjust the threshold until the trace picks up all the areas of your design. Click trace in the trace style section to trace the entire image.
Drag the newly created cutlines off the mat and release compound path by right clicking on the design and clicking on release compound path.
 This will separate all the pieces of your design picked up in the scan, any areas such as the outside border that are not required should be selected and deleted using cut, located in the top toolbar.
After editing, drag a box around your cutlines to select them all, and right click. From the pop-up menu select "make compound path".
You may want to save this new cut file to your library.
With the cut line of the flag selected, click on "copy" from the top toolbar and then open a new silhouette page.

With this new page open, select paste from the top toolbar and a copy of your flag will appear on your virtual workspace.
To make things easier, I have rotated my flag to the way it will hang, I have also used fill to colour the flag in for ease of viewing.

Draw a box on the flag to determine the usable space in which the letters can be placed, type the first letter you will use and using the box, determine the size your letters.
Individually type all the other letters that will be needed for the project to one side of the mat for later use. delete the box it is no longer needed.
As I have 12 letters, I will require 12 flags to place them on. Of course, the bunting will be viewed from both sides so it needs to read correctly from both sides, so if we were to simply merge the letters into the bunting, they would not read correctly. To create an illusion we will add a piece of reflective card between two pieces of bunting and add separate letters to both sides allowing the text to be read correctly.
Ensure your silhouette machine is plugged in, switched on and connected to your computer. Depending on the size of media you are using, you may be able to arrange a number of flags on your mat at one time. I am using A4 stock, so I must cut my flags one at a time. Place your chosen material on the cutting mat and load into your machine.

Click on send, choose your material type and adjust your blade accordingly and carry out a test cut to check your settings, adjust again if necessary. Proceed to cut out the file by clicking send at the bottom of the control panel. Repeat this until you have twice as many flags as letters in your word or sentence, for example with Craft o hearts I will need 24.
Only 12 of my flags require a tab, so it will be necessary to adapt the original file. Select Paste from the top tool bar as before and another copy of the trace will be added to the workspace. Open the fill panel and fill your new flag with any colour, I have used yellow (as the cut line will show up better) select the knife tool and cut the tab as shown.

Proceed to load media and cut out the original number of flags, for example, I will be cutting out 12.
Move your flag off to one side off the mat to clear your workspace.

 Arrange your letters to make the best use of your chosen media,(silhouette adhesive card works well for this project) load your media for the letters onto your cutting mat and load into your silhouette. Choose the correct setting for the media and carry out a test cut to ensure a clean cut, repeat this process until you have two of each of the required letters.

To create the reflective central piece of card open the modify panel and select open the offset panel with internal offset selected, create an offset on the flag without the tab.
 Ensure you leave enough area for the application of glue. Click Apply and move the original to one side. With the newly created cutline selected, right click and select "release compound path" select the outer line only and move to one side delete the rest of the offset, this gives you a solid triangle slightly smaller than your flag. You will need one of these for each of your letters, I will require 12. Place your reflective card stock on your cutting mat and send to your machine, (remember to carry out a test cut)

Sandwich a reflective triangle between one of each of the other two types of flags using the pointed tip as a guide, 


Use wet glue to allow yourself some wiggle room

Place a letter on each of the flags with tags and glue into place. Then assemble the letters in order to spell out your phrase.


Decide how your bunting is to be hug. Artist avenue has it zig-zagged over the main walk way so I drew a zig-zag on a scrap of paper a wrote down the words as they should read when hung, rotate the piece of paper and write the text again, this is your template to follow when applying your letters.
Keeping your flags in this order lay down some cord or ribbon, close the tabs on each of the flags to enclose the cord making sure not to catch the cord in the glue. This allows for repositioning of the flags after hanging. For a professional finish run a single line of stitching along each folded tab.

Remember when you next visit the NEC to pick up your silhouette supplies, pay a visit to artists avenue to see the finished project.

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Where are my Silhouette fonts? Making Herb Labels

Hello Janet here with a post on locating the fonts you've purchased from the Silhouette Design Store.

There are some beautiful fonts available from the Silhouette Design Store, but I sometimes hear folks saying that they can't find fonts once they have purchased them. Today I have some hints for helping you locate them if you are having a similar problem.

I recently downloaded this lovely font (#212857) from the store called Vision, by designer Rhonna Farrer, with the idea of cutting it from vinyl to make plant labels. It is a lovely thick script font - a combination of style and thickness that was just perfect for the job.  I'm not singling out this font for criticism, it just happens to be the last font I purchased; there are other fonts, by other designers, that can be similarly difficult to locate.

However, I had a great deal of difficulty finding the font, convinced that it hadn't downloaded it.  I found the font in the Library, but couldn't locate it in the dropdown font list. I've included a brief tutorial for making the labels further down the page, but firstly I'll run through a few things which might help you locate those elusive fonts.


(1) Is the Font Installed?
When fonts from the Silhouette Store are installed you should see them in two places, (1) in the library,

and (2) in the font list (Text Style panel > Text Style tab > All Fonts).

Note, fonts purchased elsewhere, once installed, appear only in the font list and not in the library.



(2) Restart the Silhouette Software
Some versions of the software require that you to close Silhouette Design Studio and reopen it in order to see your newly downloaded files in the places shown above.

(3) Find the Font Name
You might have noticed in the above example that the font name in the font list is different than that in the library (that is why I initially had difficulty finding it).

(a) From the Silhouette Design Store
Sometimes the correct name (corresponding to the one in the font list) is shown in the store listing. If you can't locate it easily by browsing searching in the store you can look it up via your purchase (STORE > My-Account > My Download History, or STORE > My-Account > and browse My-Downloads).

(b) From your computer
You can also look up the correct font name (corresponding to the one in the font list) in your computer system's font list.

Search Font Book (Mac)
Open Font Book (double click it  in  Finder > Applications > Font Book, or Launchpad > Other > Font Book, and enter part or all of the font name in the search box. Results are shown in the list on the left of the window.

Search Installed Fonts (Windows 10)
Open Control Panel and select Fonts. In the search box (top right) type the partial file name. Results are displayed in the window below.

Using the Fonts

Once your fonts are installed you can either access them by (1) double-clicking on them in the library, which will take you to your workspace with a text cursor ready to place to type, or  (2) by clicking on the text tool located on the left-hand side of the software screen, and while still in text editing mode, highlighting the text you've typed, and selecting your desired font from the dropdown font list. With some older versions of the software only the second method is available.

These instructions relate to v4 of the Silhouette Studio software (v4.1.191, at the time of writing), but in earlier versions you might receive this message on downloading fonts "Fonts are different from other designs you purchase and do not appear in My Library. Rather, you will find access to all of your fonts by using the Text tool in the Silhouette software and choosing your new font from the dropdown selection box in that dialog box."

Making the Plant Labels

I know I'm a bit late in the season, but I wanted to mark my perennial herbs before they died down over winter, so I could locate them again in spring (they are slow to get started again this far North)


What You'll Need
Plastic or slate plant labels
White permanent vinyl
Clear transfer tape
Rhonna Vision Font (#212857)


Brief Instructions

1. Type out the herb or plant names in your chosen font.
2. Reduce point size to fit the labels (I drew a shape of similar size to the label).
3. Adjust character spacing as required.

4. Draw boxes around the names to aid weeding.
5. Left align the words so that they will be readable when the label ends are in the ground.

6. Cut the names from white vinyl.

7. Lift the names from the backing sheet with strips of clear transfer tape.

8. Burnish (rub) the words firmly onto the labels and peel away the transfer tape.

9. Hold off using them in very wet weather until the adhesive has had time to cure (48 hours).

10. The labels are ready to use.



I hope this helps you keep track of your fonts AND your herbs.


Bye for now,

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Journey : Piecing and Stitching

Hi! Niki here with you today to show you how to turn a multi-pieced cut file into a something really pretty.

I started off by selecting a file of a plane.It had several different bits so was just what I was looking for.

  

To work out what was what I filled each piece with different colours. Each colour represents a different paper that I want to cut the design from, ie the two grey pieces will be cut from the same piece of patterned paper.

 Here is the design all sorted and put back together

Now I want to create an internal offset around some of the pieces so that I can create a stitch line template. I have applied an internal offset to the large piece.

Now I select the internal line and change the line style to the 3rd one down - the dashed line. When cut, this will now cut as a perforated line rather than a solid line.

I did the same with the others and re-sized the whole lot until the design was the size I wanted it.

I then separated each colour onto different sections on my mat I then arranged different papers onto the mat and cut.

Once cut I then assembled my plane onto my layout. I stitched around each piece using the internal offset stitched line and stuck the stitched pieces in place. I absolutely love the result.

 Thanks so much for joining me today and I hope you'll give this effective technique a try - it is soooo worth it.

Happy scrapping

DESIGNS USED:

Cartoon Plane

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